Introduction to In the Belly of the Beast: Difference between revisions

Sometime in the middle of working on ''[[The Executioner's Song|The Executioner’s Song]]'', a note came from [[w:Morton L. Janklow|Morton Janklow]], the literary agent. He was sending on a letter that had been addressed to him for forwarding to me. He assumed it was because our names had appeared together in a story in ''People'' magazine. In any event, the communication was by a convict named Jack H. Abbott, and Janklow felt there was something unusual in the fellow’s letter. After I read it, I knew why he thought so.

An author will receive as many as several hundred letters a year from strangers. Usually they want something: will you read their work, or listen to a lifestory and write it? This letter, on the contrary, offered instruction. Abbott had seen a newspaper account that stated I was doing a book on [[w:Gary Gilmore (criminal)|Gary Gilmore]] and violence in America. He wanted to warn me, Abbott said, that very few people knew much about violence in prisons. No author he had ever read on the subject seemed to have a clue. It was his belief that men who had been in prison as much as five years still knew next to nothing on the subject. It probably took a decade behind bars for any real perception on the matter to permeate your psychology and your flesh. If I were interested, he felt he could clarify some aspects of Gilmore’s life as a convict.