Rating: 
Summary: first class baloney
Review: This book is not an interesting piece of literature. It is largely a collection of psychobabble and wind. Its main purpose should be to demonstrate, through the fact that it was published, that "radical chic" types will fall for anything. Too bad this guy took out his frustrations with "the system" by killing a waiter weeks after he was released. I guess that guy just didn't feel his pain.
Rating:
Summary: first class baloney
Review: This book is not an interesting piece of literature. It is largely a collection of psychobabble and wind. Its main purpose should be to demonstrate, through the fact that it was published, that "radical chic" types will fall for anything. Too bad this guy took out his frustrations with "the system" by killing a waiter weeks after he was released. I guess that guy just didn't feel his pain.
Rating: 
Summary: Badly needed exposure of the American Gulag
Review: This is an outstanding, first-hand look into, and analysis of the unknown to the ignorant public, American academies of violence, hate, anger and crime. Carrying the grotesque name of "system of corrections", this is the system that corrected nobody and ruined lives of great many millions. It's a must reading for any consciencious American, who is willing to question the government propaganda that we live in a land of equal justice and liberty for all. A great, sad but meaningful story of the 12-year old boy, whose life was taken away by the culture of anger, stupidity amd hate, by the world's largest, infamous American Gulag.
Rating: 
Summary: Take it For What It's Worth
Review: Truly, the story of Jack Abbott is one of those late twentieth century chestnuts that will endure in literature and film long after people have actually forgotten the man and this book. Abbott is a symbol for the excesses of New York style limosine liberalism. Wealthy author becomes pen pals with convicted felon, publishes book of felon's letters, felon becomes cause celebre, author gets felon out of prison, felon kills someone while out, felon goes back to prison.The main thing I'd like to address is the idea of Abbott as a "hardened criminal" as he is referred to repeatedly in the other reviews. Nowadays, folks in the know don't call people "hardened criminals". The modern term is "career offender". I find both terms interesting. For the first term, I would like to ask the question: What is the difference between a "hardened" criminal and a "Non-hardened" criminal? Well, a hardened criminal has been to prison. Also: When does a regular offender become a "career" offender? Not to belabor the point, but once a prisoner becomes "hardened" or a "career offender", the odds are that he or she will spend the rest of their lives behind bars. People who have not been convicted of a felony like to judge those who do. Judging others makes us feel better about ourselves. It's harder to empthasize with the stigmatized then with normals. I think it is important to point out that the juvenille justice system in which Abbott came of age was, by modern standard, barbaric. Abbott was obviously insitutionalized from a very early age, and he stayed that way. How can we blame Abbott for internalizing the message that society sent him from the time he was twelve? Abbott should be celebrated, if only because he struggled against the label society gave him. That he failed in his struggle speaks not to any weakness of character on his part, it just means that he's a normal person who doesn't always succeed.
Rating:
Summary: Take it For What It's Worth
Review: Truly, the story of Jack Abbott is one of those late twentieth century chestnuts that will endure in literature and film long after people have actually forgotten the man and this book. Abbott is a symbol for the excesses of New York style limosine liberalism. Wealthy author becomes pen pals with convicted felon, publishes book of felon's letters, felon becomes cause celebre, author gets felon out of prison, felon kills someone while out, felon goes back to prison. The main thing I'd like to address is the idea of Abbott as a "hardened criminal" as he is referred to repeatedly in the other reviews. Nowadays, folks in the know don't call people "hardened criminals". The modern term is "career offender". I find both terms interesting. For the first term, I would like to ask the question: What is the difference between a "hardened" criminal and a "Non-hardened" criminal? Well, a hardened criminal has been to prison. Also: When does a regular offender become a "career" offender? Not to belabor the point, but once a prisoner becomes "hardened" or a "career offender", the odds are that he or she will spend the rest of their lives behind bars. People who have not been convicted of a felony like to judge those who do. Judging others makes us feel better about ourselves. It's harder to empthasize with the stigmatized then with normals. I think it is important to point out that the juvenille justice system in which Abbott came of age was, by modern standard, barbaric. Abbott was obviously insitutionalized from a very early age, and he stayed that way. How can we blame Abbott for internalizing the message that society sent him from the time he was twelve? Abbott should be celebrated, if only because he struggled against the label society gave him. That he failed in his struggle speaks not to any weakness of character on his part, it just means that he's a normal person who doesn't always succeed.
Rating:
Summary: WHAT A WASTE
Review: What a waste...and I don't mean that the author recently killed himself, instead what a waste of time it is to read this book. This is the only book in my life that I threw away in the trash when I was done with it. At the time I read the book it was "radical chic" to do so. Time has proven radical chic to have been a passing fad and this book nothing more than the then flavor of the month, not the work of art is was claimed to be. Norman Mailer has always had a inflated view of himself and his writing and he carries that inflation into his view of Abbott and Abbot's writing. I can only wonder if Mailer ever felt or feels guilty about his role in the parole of Abbott and Abbott's killing of a man in New York. I really don't want to expand more time in writing this review than the book deserves except to end with two comments: 1) Don't waste your time on reading this book, it isn't very good at all; and 2) after killing two persons Abbott finaly got it right and murdered the right man, himself.
Rating: 
Summary: Abbott is best observed from a distance
Review: While it must be said that "In the Belly of the Beast" has a certain seductive quality, for its reputation as "prison literature," and its colorful cast of supporters, the book is ultimately more important for simply existing rather than being a work of any literary stature. This obviously gave the career prisoner a voice that had never before been heard in the popular arena. His life experience provides the book's primary thesis: Prison is a culture that breeds career criminals. Abbott is reasonably smart, and his descriptions of prison life are coherent and literate, although they're buried in a morass of ideological recrimination. When considered purely in the abstract, his analogy between prison culture and the proletariat isn't entirely ridiculous. However, when he claims that convicts are the best and the brightest of human culture, and likens his fate to a class struggle, his arguments become overbearing. By the conclusion of the book, we learn more about his grasp of Marxism than about prison culture, and even less about Abbott himself. At some point, we can see that Abbott has even thought of himself as a political prisoner. "In the Belly of the Beast" is best experienced by examining what other people say about it, and not by actually reading it. It's more fun to read Norman Mailer's beatification of Abbott than it is to read Abbott himself. In this case, intellectual distance makes the book easier to tolerate.
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