In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison

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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jan 2, 1991 - Biography & Autobiography - 192 pages
A visionary book in the repertoire of prison literature. When Normal Mailer was writing The Executioner's Song, he received a letter from Jack Henry Abbott, a convict, in which Abbott offered to educate him in the realities of life in a maximum security prison. This book organizes Abbott's by now classic letters to Mailer, which evoke his infernal vision of the prison nightmare.

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Contents

STATERAISED CONVICT
3
VARIETIES OF PUNISHMENT
23
THE HOLE SOLITARY CONFINEMENT
43
Copyright

10 other sections not shown

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About the author (1991)

Born in Michigan in 1944, Jack Henry Abbott spent most of his childhood in foster care and his teen years in various detention centers. While serving a long sentence for killing a fellow inmate, he wrote to Norman Mailer and offered to write a truthful depiction of life in prison. Mailer agreed, and with his help Abbott published In the Belly of the Beast. Abbott died in prison in 2002.

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