"Jerome Loving tells the story of a famous mistake in law and literature with great authority. He juxtaposes a serial criminal, Jack Henry Abbott, and one of our most renowned writers, Norman Mailer, in a tragic dance of affirmation and denial. Among other things, this book is a devastating portrayal of our prison system."
Robert A. Ferguson, George Edward Woodberry Professor of Law, Literature, and Criticism, Columbia University, and author of Inferno: An Anatomy of American Punishment
"Here are three impulsive, self-absorbed menone a lionized cultural giant, the other two doomed from birth and hardened in prison to become remorseless killers. Somehow a major book, The Executioner's Song, results from their unlikely intersection. These are the makings of Jerome Loving's sad, ironic tale, at once an indictment of American incarceration and a reminder, if we needed one, that literary talent is no guarantee of respect for the lives of others." Frederick Crews, author of Follies of the Wise and Freud: The Making of an Illusion (forthcoming)
"A story of American incarceration, cross-stitched with the friendship between a larger-than-life author and his state-raised convict apprentice. Luminous, unflinching, and unforgettable." Wai Chee Dimock, Professor of English and American Studies, Yale University
"Part literary criticism, part social commentary, and part true crime story, this riveting book chronicles Abbott’s existence as a 'state-raised convict' who, as he recounted in his debut book, In the Belly of the Beast, spent most of his life in the dehumanizing prison system. Abbott won his petition for parole thanks in part to Mailer’s support, but not long after his release, Abbott murdered Richard Adan, a restaurant manager and aspiring playwright, and was caught and returned to prison. Loving’s gripping book offers a page-turning case study of the disturbing character of the American prison system and the fascinating compulsion that can drive writers to seek literary celebrity." Publishers Weekly
"Loving hits all the notes he’s supposed to hit while carving out a slice of literary history, generously quoting from unpublished letters: He sets up Mailer’s fascination with criminality and his failures of empathy, and questions whether Mailer took enough responsibility when his artistic ideals clashed with real-life consequences. Loving also uses the episode to try to illustrate larger failings of the criminal justice system, an issue that fits awkwardly around the contours of a smaller-scale, if still ethically complicated, tale of the ruined remnants of 1950s literary culture. Jack and Norman is a book that makes one wonder why it took so long for someone to write a full-length treatment of the whole mess." New Republic
"A sympathetic telling of the life and death of an infamous convict and the ill-fated intervention of a famed writer." Kirkus Reviews
01/01/2017
In 1981, murderer Jack Henry Abbott won parole from prison thanks, in large part, to the advocacy of novelist Norman Mailer. A short time later, Abbott was back in prison, convicted of another murder. Abbott had just published a book of his letters from prison, In the Belly of the Beast, which Mailer had championed. Their relationship is explored in great detail by Loving (English, Texas A&M Univ.). Abbott began writing to Mailer during the time that the author was working on his book about convicted killer Gary Gilmore, The Executioner's Song. Loving demonstrates how Abbott's letters provided Mailer with an inside look at prison life which became crucial to his understanding of Gilmore's situation. There is a lot packed into this short study: background on Mailer's literary career and personal life; biographical sketches of Abbott and Gilmore; and the critical reception for The Executioner's Song and In the Belly of the Beast. Most compelling is Loving's account of Abbott's difficult adjustment to freedom on New York City's Lower East Side. Loving tends to be a little repetitive, and his digressions are distracting, but this is a worthy addition to Mailer scholarship. VERDICT Anyone interested in Mailer's writings will appreciate this work.—Thomas Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA
2016-12-04
In 1979, Norman Mailer published The Executioner's Song, a novel that narrated the life and death of Gary Gilmore, a notorious killer executed in 1977. Loving (English/Texas A&M Univ.; Confederate Bushwhacker: Mark Twain in the Shadow of the Civil War, 2013, etc.) offers the back story of Mailer's fraught relationship with the murderer whose story was eerily similar to that of Gilmore. At the end of his mighty book, Mailer acknowledged the "exceptional letters" from Jack Henry Abbott "that delineate the code, the morals, the anguish, the philosophy, the pitfalls, the pride, and the search for inviolability of hard-line convicts." Abbott, who said he knew Gilmore, was also a coldblooded murderer imprisoned since adolescence, reared by a punishing government. Both prisoners raged against regulation, controlling "pigs," fellow cons, and sniveling do-gooders. Gilmore had some artistic talent, and Abbott had uncanny literary skill, founded on sophisticated reading, including Baudelaire, Kierkegaard, Rimbaud, and Marx. Abbott surely sensed an ally in Mailer, who had famously stabbed his own wife. The convict's letters cemented a relationship with the celebrated author, and Mailer was an important voice in gaining Abbott's parole. Eventually, Abbott released his musings in the form of In the Belly of the Beast (1981), which became a bestseller. The morning before a positive review appeared in the New York Times, he stabbed to death a blameless waiter. He was soon captured and found guilty of manslaughter. His defense was "prison paranoia"—i.e., he was trained by the state to kill. Mailer pleaded for a brief sentence because of the killer's writerly talent, but Abbott died in prison, perhaps by his own hand. In his forthright, if sporadic report, which could have used a chronology, Loving relies on research and the available correspondence between the famed writer and the clever convict, and he reveals the odd nexus of literature and penology, the meeting of art and criminality. A sympathetic telling of the life and death of an infamous convict and the ill-fated intervention of a famed writer.