43 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good Prison Memoir -- Doesn't sensationalize, May 12, 2002
This review is from: You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish (Hardcover)
I'm a prosecuting attorney, and I teach an undergraduate class about the Corrections System. I have read many books purporting to describe the "prison experience." Lerner's book is one of the best I have ever read. It doesn't sensationalize the experience, nor does it try to idealize it. Lerner shows prison life to be what it is: boring, tedious and one surrounded with pathetic losers. The book itself becomes tedious in the last 1/4 when Lerner explains how he ended up killing the man that led to his sentence of incarceration. His justification for the killing is a bit too self-serving. I have no sympathy for an alcoholic who decides to go on a road trip to Las Vegas with a guy he met at an AA meeting who he knows to be a lying, violent methamphetamine addict, and who he ends up having to kill in (admittedly) self-defense. Compared to the lame "The Hothouse" this book is a winner. Interesting factoid: Lerner's cubicle at Pacific Bell Telephone was once adjacent to that of Scott Adams, the creator of "Dilbert." This explains a lot.
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38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I am down wid dis, dawg!, December 10, 2002
This review is from: You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish (Hardcover)
This is a sad, funny and diabolically authentic memoir about his life in prison (and how he got there) by a natural born, sideways-talkin' wordsmith writing with skill, verve and a kind of disarming warmth replete with a lot of "out of the side of his neck" irony. Lerner, a one-time nice Jewish boy from New York finds himself the cell mate of Kansas, a six-foot-six, three-hundred pound "Nazi Low Rider" with a swastika tattooed on his neck, a prison con who can bench press something like four-hundred pounds, a guy who controls the inner prison culture and enterprises with an iron fist. What's a fish to do? Lerner uses corporate skills, honed during 19 years at Ma Bell, to make friends and influence people. A nice irony throughout is the way Lerner compares the culture of the corporate structure with that of the prison, finding them similar except for the terminology. Lerner manages to weave corporate gobbledygook about "market repositioning" and the "pursuance of outside opportunities" into the prison narrative. He sees that the rake the "Yard Rats" and the "skinhead Phone Posse" charge the fish for using the public phone as "the same economic principle we employed at the phone company by charging customers for both access...and usage." (p. 152)
As far as the structure of this book goes I believe it was originally written in a straight-forward manner beginning with the earliest events and ending with the latest. But somewhere during development it was decided to begin in the middle as Lerner enters prison. This was an effective and tantalizing change for two significant reasons. One, the utter shock of being immediately immersed into convict culture carries the narrative practically by itself, and Two, we are enticed to read on to the end wondering just how such a person as "O.G." Lerner ever got himself to manslaughter in the first place.
Lerner's ear for the language of the convicts is something close to amazing. His absorption of their largely primitive and tribal culture is so complete that as the book ends we see him as one of them in action, inclination and loyalty as he bangs on his cell and yells out on command his blood curdling cat's meow to the disconcertion of the attack dogs of the "Dirt" (that's "Disciplinary Intervention and Response Team, and they ain't nothin' nice") and to the joy of his fellow "dawgs."
But Lerner's story is fascinating in itself. He is an alcoholic and a drug imbiber who after being attacked by "the monster" (as he calls his drug-addled, "Soldier of Fortune"-reading "friend" Dwayne Hassleman) fights back and through righteous rage and superior adrenaline flow manages to subdue and then kill his adversary. The Monster is such a degenerate beast of stupidity and animalistic hate and rage that we strongly identify with Lerner and are entirely pleased that Dwayne is no longer with us.
However, this is to accept Lerner's version of the crime which is not a twit removed from self-defense, a version that the jury apparently did not entirely accept. But as I used to tell my students, the one thing that all autobiographers have in common is that somewhere along the way they bend the truth to their advantage. This is just human nature, some of it unconscious, some of it intentional. It is amazingly difficult to tell the whole, unvarnished truth about ourselves. No matter how honestly our desire to confess all, when driven to autobiography or memoir, we will ever so slightly misrepresent the strict letter of the truth.
But no matter. What counts is that the overall story be told in a vivid and convincing manner allowing us to take the fine points of blame or behavior on advisement, as it were, secure in the impression that, as Huck Finn observed about Mark Twain, "he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."
We can see, however, by reading between the lines that Lerner (although I believe he too told mainly the truth) is more compromised that he lets on. His continued association with the dangerous and crazy Dwayne, who threatens murder and mayhem while alluding jealously to Lerner's "precious little girlie family" (p. 354), suggests not so much forgiveness, loneliness and a big heart, but perhaps something closer to the fact that Dwayne as a drug dealer has "store," the kind of store Lerner thought he needed to get from one day to the next. We can also see that Lerner becomes not only a "righteous, stand-up con" but a pretty tough guy despite the fact that his nickname "O.G." stands as much for "Old Guy" as it does for "original gangsta" (see pages 49-50). The fact that he wins just about all his battles, physical and otherwise, and never rats anybody out, and is true to his code throughout, may suggest some selective memory device at work.
But again Lerner's ability to spin the tale and make it as vivid as new-found terror allows us to give him his self-image and hope that he will at long last kick the booze and the drugs and be the kind of father that his two girls can look up to. This book is a step in the right direction. Lerner has a brilliant gift for character, narrative and dialogue that will surely make this tome recommended reading at writers' workshops while being the kind of book professional writers can admire.
Incidentally, the title "You Got Nothing Coming" is the witch-cold, hopeless phrase used on convicts as a kind of sadistic way of saying "no" to whatever the request is, as in "you ain't got NOTHIN' comin', dawg--ever."
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
We Are Definitely Not In Kansas Anymore!, March 30, 2002
This review is from: You Got Nothing Coming: Notes From a Prison Fish (Hardcover)
Jimmy Lerner takes us on journey to a dark place beyond the imaginations of most of us. This true account of prison is nothing like what we see in the movies, read in books, or even watch the HBO show, OZ. It is infinitely worse. Gangs, Nazis, teenaged crank addicts that kill their families, relentlessly sadistic guards, and, for comic relief, charaters like Scud, who have a talent for propelling a snot missiles from their nose into the chow hall soup cannister.
The author pulls us into his tiny cell with him, this 8 x 6 concrete and steel box that he is forced to share with Kansas, the Nazi skinhead gang leader. Kansas can't read his neo-Nazi literature because he is illiterate. No problem. Mr. Lerner, a former Corporate executive and a Jew (which he wisely keeps to himself) reads it to him. And even explains it. Lerner even manages to win the confidence and friendship of this maniac and this makes for a fascinating and hilarious sub-plot.
The satirical accounts of our 12-Step culture and his skewering of Alcoholics Anonymous are both politically incorrect and delightfully accurate. I only hope the author survives to provide us with a sequel!!
This is without a doubt one of the best books I have ever read!!
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