In the Belly of the Beast : Letters From Prison

Rating:
Summary: OK, not as much on day-to-day prison life as you'd think
Review: "In the Belly of the Beast" is a selection from letters about prison life in America written by Jack Henry Abbott to Norman Mailer while Mailer was writing "The Executioner's Song." I figure there are more or less five reasons someone might decide to read it:

First, you might be curious about what it is like to be stuck in prison -- a voyeuristic, or even macabre interest. Perhaps schadenfreude. You will be disappointed, I think. Less than a third of the book is devoted to Abbott recounting his experiences in prison. Although there are some terrifying or just plain creepy moments, the majority of the book is not devoted to an anecdotal account of prison life.

However, Abbott does expend some effort explaining how prison life is structured to magnify the fear people experience in lock-up. For example, he explains how the authorities will take advantage of prison rivalries to off inmates they particularly dislike or just feel like taking down. The method I found most interesting is the "hands off list". The guards -- "pigs" in Abbott's parlance -- will decide amongst themselves to let one prisoner get away with anything he likes. He will basically be free to do as he pleases in the hopes that the fact that he is a "favorite" will irk the other prisoners so much that they will kill him. Apparently, the fact that a man in prison has this freedom means that he will feel compelled to abuse it -- in part because of the ethos he had to develop in order to survive. Give 'em enough rope, basically. But he doesn't offer much prison jargon and there is almost no information on gang life, for example, or on how the drug trade is carried out or on how value is figured in the prison "market." There is nothing on the role of the mafia. Guess it would be bad karma in prison to be known as someone who tipped off the authorities as to how it's done. There's some information on how prisoners are "socialized" to prison. There is more information, but not much detail or many stories, about sexual life in prison.

Second, you might be interested in how an intelligent man might develop politically in prison. Abbott obliges with a lot of grist for the mill. I believe that a significant portion of the prison population scores fairly high on IQ tests. (Abbott gives his as 139.) Given that there are more than a million inmates in the United States -- or a little less than .4% of the total population -- the book is rewarding sociological primary source material. In short, Abbott believes that our prison system is proof positive of the evil nature of our system and that it, like the society on the outside, is geared to make us less than men. As the Clash once asked, "What do you think they're gonna do to us" if they all got out at once? As others here have pointed out, two months after his parole, Abbott murdered another man.

Third, you might be interested in it as "authentic" political theory. Although Abbott does make some interesting connections, "In the Belly of the Beast" is no work of genius and there are better political thinkers who did their work in prison. It is no Antonio Gramsci's "Prison Notebooks" or even Marquis de Sade's sexual socialism. Abbott does make some philosophical remarks about the psycho-sexual roles in prison, homosexuality and the idea of the male that are intriguing, if confusingly put. You get the sense that he, himself, is trying to figure out the consequences of what he's thinking as he's writing. In any case, he doesn't present a coherent, fleshed out, theory on this. Unfortunately, Abbott's political musings account for about a little more than a third of the book.

Fourth, you could be interested in how inmates experience the "meta-structure" of prison. As I've explained above, there is some good material, but you should be warned you don't end up feeling like Abbott's given the complete picture. I thought it was interesting that a lot of torture methods used by prisons in the 1960's were the same as those used in the early 20th century as witnessed by Jack Black in "You Can't Win" -- a great book about hobos and life in prison at that time as well as William Burrough's favorite of all time. But Abbott gives examples from different times, never explaining it all for any given era. Still, should you be looking for points for or against Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" you would probably find Abbott useful.

Finally, you might be interested in Norman Mailer's introduction. It's well written and somewhat insightful, but I think I'm safe in recommending that you just go down to your local bookshop or library, pull it off the shelves, and give it a read. Won't take you more than ten minutes. You won't be blown away, nor will you necessarily feel like you've wasted your time. But you probably won't feel like you have to have it for this reason alone.

Rating:
Summary: Informative but filled with rants
Review: Abbott fully illustrates how ripe inmates in the penal system are for recruitment into hate groups. The desperate mind of a convict will search for any and all reasons for his predicament and never admit guilt or wrong doing on his own part.When these individuals are given respect and a list of other things or persons to blame he will fall in line with the statement of faith of the 'recruiter' when it makes him feel good about himself to do so. The hate and blame shifting will continue and there is then many times over no possibility at all for rehabilitation.

Rating:
Summary: and now, the rest of the story....
Review: Abbott has a second book... My Return. He wrote this after his return to prison for murder. I believe it is important to read the second book... as well as his obituary. I will reserve making comment on Abbott the man, I will however say I have heard it told over and over that his account of observations is accurate of both the juvenille and DOC.

Rating:
Summary: Murder and Intellectuals
Review: An "intellectual" according to Sartre, is one who "mettles in a field outside one's area of expertise." I have to believe that Abbott had read Genet and was aware of his relationship with Sartre. Abbott's area of expertise, in my opinion, was "conning" and "manipulation". When he takes on areas like foriegn affairs, for example, it is a purely intellectual exercise. Like all "cons", they are charismatic and I'm sure timing (Executioner's Song) had much to do with Mailer's adoration of Abbott, as well as his charisma. When you read Abbott's description of how it feels to kill someone, plunging a knife into flesh, we start to see the causal relationship between murder & intellectuals. The NY intellectual sect saw Abbott as an "artist", not a self professed murderer. The result was the death of a 22 yr. old boy and the sad "My Return".

Rating:
Summary: Greatest Book I Have Ever Read
Review: Greatest Book I Have Ever Read - anything else is just a waste of time... Savagebooks.net

Rating:
Summary: Insight into the life of a prison longtimer
Review: I found Abbot's work to be intriguing and intense. He tries to get the reader to understand the effect of almost two decades of extreme suffering, under conditions few people can relate to. Because of the latter, a common complaint of reviewers is that Abbot comes off as a complainer, or that he dodges responsibility for the crimes that put him in prison. In response, let me say that I have done 16 years straight in prison, and this account is highly realistic. It tells the story of a youth placed in prison for a bad check, who ends up having to kill in order to survive--and how the prison system itself creates killers. For those reviewers who show no sympathy for the horrific suffering of this man, let me say that people who have not experienced much pain in their lives find it easier to dismiss this kind of an account. But for readers who want to know just how bad life can be, and how it can twist a man's soul--then this is a sobering book.

Rating:
Summary: The raving's of a lunatic!!!!
Review: I myself was in a level 5 maximum security prison in the United States and I can say while I did not always find conditions to my liking, I was being punished, isn't that the point? Jach Henry Abbot is a dilusional idiot who's many story's obviosly are grossly exagerated, if not at times completely made up. It was no surprize to me to learn that he killed a bus boy in a New York City restuarant two months after his hard won relaese.

Rating:
Summary: the heart of darkness.....
Review: I'm a fan of memoirs and journals, and this paticular volume, an edited compilation of letters exchanged between Norman Mailer and Jack Henry Abbott, the latter 37 at time of publication and in Prison for a quarter century, is the very definition of the dark side of the American dream---certainly, some of the material regarding prison conditions and regulations may no longer apply, but as a document from a dark, lonely place, there's something deeply moving about it.

You don't have to agree with Abbott, or have sympathy for him....you just have to try to understand why he's saying what he's saying.

The fact that Abbott took three lives during the course of his, the last being his own, makes the grim subject matter of this memoir-cum-manifesto-cum-condemnation of an 'enlightened society' both more bleak and more poignant......in Abbott's own words "I never preached to you, nor tried to convert you. My respect would not allow that. Besides, I know more than most the futility of debate in such matters."

Rating:
Summary: WHAT A WASTE
Review: Jack Abbott is clearly an exceptional writer. He has intelligence, knowledge, the ability to think. However, he also has the unfortunate lot in life of being a hardened criminal. Without getting into where the blame lies for this tragic waste of human potential, and with the full admission that I have never been arrested, let alone spent time in prison or known anyone who has done so, I have to admit that Abbott failed to persuade me to his point of view. This is not to say that he is not persuasive in describing America's penal system as an inhumane machine of torture and fear. It is simply that his proposed solution - that of a worldwide "revolt of the masses" has failed, as it should have.

Abbott describes in excruciating detail the problems of prison life. He also explores the issues of racism, capital punishment, sexual depravity, violence in society, and other numerous social ills. Ultimately, he is involved in a long rationalization - how does one survive in a world in which one prefers to be dead? Abbott himself seems to feel that death is the final insult, the unholiest of possible outcomes. He is nothing more than a caged animal, guarded by animals. His is a world of gross injustice and terrifying irrationalism - the world of the brute.

In spite of the obvious sensitivity he demonstrates, in the end I had little sympathy and a great many problems with his opinions. Does the fact that I have never been to prison disqualify me from having an opinion? We can only hope for a world where we are all "disqualified" from having such opinions, because the world that is Abbott's is nothing more than Hell on earth.

Rating:
Summary: A good book by a hard man to grasp
Review: Jack Abbott is clearly an exceptional writer. He has intelligence, knowledge, the ability to think. However, he also has the unfortunate lot in life of being a hardened criminal. Without getting into where the blame lies for this tragic waste of human potential, and with the full admission that I have never been arrested, let alone spent time in prison or known anyone who has done so, I have to admit that Abbott failed to persuade me to his point of view. This is not to say that he is not persuasive in describing America's penal system as an inhumane machine of torture and fear. It is simply that his proposed solution - that of a worldwide "revolt of the masses" has failed, as it should have.

Abbott describes in excruciating detail the problems of prison life. He also explores the issues of racism, capital punishment, sexual depravity, violence in society, and other numerous social ills. Ultimately, he is involved in a long rationalization - how does one survive in a world where one may prefer death? Abbott himself seems to feel that death is the final insult, the unholiest of possible outcomes. He is nothing more than a caged animal, guarded by animals. His is a world of gross injustice and terrifying irrationalism - the world of the brute.

In spite of the obvious sensitivity he demonstrates, in the end I had little sympathy and a great many problems with his opinions. Does the fact that I have never been to prison disqualify me from having an opinion? We can only hope for a world where we are all "disqualified" from having such opinions, because the world that is Abbott's is nothing more than Hell on earth.