Customer Reviews

In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison

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"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.

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.

I spent twelve and a half years in prison, but I have to agree with the correction professionals who have commented previously. The book is interesting in terms of describing what life behind the walls is like, but at some point, you have to take some responsibility for what you have done and where you are at, and Jack never seems to do that.

I read this book during my first year of incarceration and was truly stunned. Heck, I even put him up on a dais. Jack is the MAN! Jack is the MAN! Then, as the years passed (whilst staring at the tops of trees over the prison walls), my perspective moved to something less black and white.

My birth parents abandoned me. I hated the peeps that adopted me. I was smoking coke. I was doing steroids. I hit DYS and schools kicked me out. I was hanging out with the wrong people.

But it wasn't their fault.

I made the decisions that ended me up in prison for the best years of my life (23 to 36 - woot, where did my hairline go??). I decided to smoke base and shoot roids and rebel against that o sooooo terrible system. I made the decision to stick guns in peoples faces and rob them.

Ya dig your grave and, durn it, you have to eventually lie in it.

Prison wasn't nice. I saw men OD, hang themselves, and die right in front of me from multiple knife wounds. I was in riots and brutal fights. I witnessed it all, and it definitely left a whole lot of scars.

But it was me that brought me there. Not the drugs. Not the social inequality. Just my own decisions.

Actions and consequences, Jack, actions and consequences.

And please don't read his second book - it's pathetic.

A good book for describing the day to day life of prison and the attitudes that develop from it (I still don't like cops and have to sit at the far end of the restaurant so no one is behind me). But the whole "It's not my fault - it's the system" theme runs thin rather quickly.

Recommend A Day in the Life (I lived three houses down from Alex Solz prior to the feds catching up with me) or The Hothouse over this.

Finally (and another example of the carry over prison scarring issues), I have heard that Jack turned informant after his return to the Big House (before hanging himself).

Babbling........ shutting up now - just read it.

Jack Henry Abbott 's book is a must read read if the reader is interested in the life behind concrete and steel....Abbott is the consumate con, places all blame on everyone but himself, hoodwinking Norman Mailor in the process....this guy is a con, a person who could not adjust to societys norm....i work in a medium security prison in Massachusetts and i will agree that most of his account of prison life is accurate...a tough,dangerous, and care free enviroment is the truth..however abbott attempts to put the blame on the penal system and society...read for yourself....its not hard to see who the con is.......

This book is interesting mainly in that it shows the psycopathic mind's justifying that all they've done wrong is not their fault. It's the system's fault, Man! Blah, blah, blah. This book probably never would have seen print if introduction-writer Norman Mailer hadn't supported it. Norman Mailer famously stabbed his own wife badly enough to hospitalize her (but she didn't press charges). I wonder if Mailer's excusing Abbott's behavior was an indirect way of excusing his own behavior? So Abbot stabbed a waiter and ended up back in prison. As an example of his lack of a conscience, consider what he said on "Current Affair" when asked if he felt remorse: "I don't think that's the proper word. Remorse implies that I did something wrong. IF I'm the one who stabbed him, it was an accident." He "justified" murdering the waiter/actor by saying "He had no future as an actor--chances are he would have gone into another line of work." Abbot had told the victim's wife in court that her husband's life was "not worth a dime." If you do read this book and somehow find yourself sympathizing with Abbot, I implore you to read WITHOUT CONSCIENCE, THE DISTURBING WORLD OF PSYCHOPATH'S AMONG US by Robert D. Hare (where I got the above quotes of Abbott's). It will reveal to you what psychopaths like Abbott are really like. It may even help you escape, unscathed, psychopaths you run into in the future. (Psychopaths number 2%-3%of the population, so chances are you will run into one sometime.)

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.

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."

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.

Jack Abbott provides his own individual insights into the criminal justice system he has encountered using personal accounts and evaluations based on his self-guided education. He gives an extraordinary window of vision into a world that those of us on the "outside" will never know. Considering that popular opinion deduces all those incarcerated are of low intelligence and have no desire for academic enlightenment, he forms a new image of at least a percentage of the imprisoned population.
A wide array of subject matter is covered far past the basic account of "a day in the life of an inmate". The rationale of the inmate hierarchy is displayed from the inside with a totality that would take years of research and interview compilation to establish. Solitary confinement, or The Hole, warrants an entire chapter, which is fitting considering the author claims to have spent almost fifteen years of his sentences there. There is no room for doubt left concerning the feelings Jack Abbott has for his jailers and the establishment they represent. He clearly expresses throughout his writings that the corrections system exists to oppress the unfortunate and underprivileged.
This book is an invaluable learning tool for the criminology student, if it can be taken for what it is - a product of an individual who has not had the benefit of common social interaction and compassionate guidance. Not all criminals have been "state raised" or abused by the system. Each issue approached in the book must be weighed against the frame of mind and obvious bias held by the inmate. Although Mr. Abbott has had the benefit of reading great ideas, he has not had the chance to apply those ideas or witness the application in a working society.
Mr. Mailer writes in the introduction that Abbott's letters are "remarkable." I understand that the stories related in the correspondence are depictions of extraordinary events, but I believe that in reading letters from incarcerated individuals it is important to remember from where the letters come. One would not read a letter from a death-row inmate with the same frame of mind as reading a letter from a psychiatric patient although the content may have salient similarities.
For types of social scientists other than criminologists, "The Belly of the Beast" is also a notable source of observations that could never be ethically gathered by social scientists in an experimental situation. To study a subject who has been incarcerated for the overwhelming majority of his life in itself is a great opportunity, but many other aspects of deprivation and human psyche left to its own devices are deep wells of analytical possibilities with Jack Abbott as well. His life patterns could be used to look at questions such as the importance of family interaction or personal relationships with the opposite sex in human development.
I was also very interested in the way Jack Abbott communicates the philosophical and political ideas he has studied without professional guidance. Almost any college student will agree that the professor's, or other professional's, direction regarding certain subjects is invaluable. Abbott admits that he has never heard certain words he has read actually spoken aloud and therefore cannot choose how they should be pronounced. This is an unbelievably intense concept to grasp considering most of us learn to speak most words by imitating others.
Although previous scholars had no proven work to build upon, in this era with tons of data and theory, it seems implausible that a person could write from prison with such confidence in himself on these academic subjects. I'll admit I had to read some passages over several times to connect the philosophical thought or quote with the contemporary idea that Mr. Abbott was trying to convey. Many times as I would begin to follow a concept, I would trip headlong over a non sequitur. Knowing that the letters had been edited for publication, I had to wonder what I was missing.
Even with a very strong passion for what he believes, Mr. Abbott can be very confusing. He rants about racism and making another human being inferior, yet calls correction officers pigs. He likens criminals to a dog by discussing the idea that an animal can learn to do what it's told by punishment by deprivation or infliction of pain. He further explains that if the animal cannot learn that punishment will result in deprivation or pain, that it must be destroyed. These statements do seem to support his views on reform of the criminal justice system.
He goes on to say that a person must have a certain degree of wealth to stay out of jail. A poor man will go to jail for committing a crime, basically at the mercy of the system. Yet the point seems unclear. To argue for the better treatment of prisoners while equating them with animals creates a very ineffective line of reasoning for the reader. There is no rational proposal for prevention of criminal behavior. The main theme states that police will look you up for no apparent reason and once incarcerated, you are forever condemned to remain in the system.
In order to get the fullest effect from the reading of this book, I also scoured the Internet for what others might have to say. I think that one user on Amazon.com was absolutely correct by stating, it "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." Although I did read the book and feel I am the better for it, I can easily see where non-students may get lost in the propaganda of the book. It is a wonderful tool to spark debate and stimulate the mind.

This is by far one of the most profound and insightful pieces of literature I have ever read. While Jack Henry Abbott may have had very little formal education (he had been incarcerated since the age of 12), his ability to so clearly articulate the kind of ideas I have only heard touched upon by scholars in graduate school not only proved that he was a brilliant autodidact but a great writer. Though In the Belly of the Beast drew much praise from literary critics upon its publication, it was largely dismissed after Abbott killed a man in a fight six weeks after his release from prison. After reading this book, however, one can understand that the murder, while certainly unfortunate, only gives further credence to the author. One of the themes in Belly of the Beast is how the American criminal justice system--fraught with injustice, corruption, torture, and paranoia--helps perpetuate crime and violence. Abbott, like so many of the other prisoners, entered the criminal justice system as a petty offender and came out a murderer. Abbott emphasized this common occurrence in his letters to Norman Mailer; yet so many tried to debunk his book only after he committed an act that so startlingly illustrated the truth of his argument.

Jack Henry Abbott was a rare example of an American scholar with a truly critical and analytical disposition. He was enlightened enough to discover what so many others do not understand, and bold enough to explore what so many others choose to ignore. Like all great thinkers he intellectually freed himself from the institutionalized paradigms of his society (perhaps this was the only freedom that could not be taken away from him). And, unfortunately, like so many great thinkers he was oppressed, vilified, and ultimately destroyed by the society whose failings he had so profoundly exposed. Thus, In the Belly of the Beast not only attests to the greatness of Abbott, but to the culpability his country must bear in its criminalization and destruction of another one of its most valuable citizens.