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Becky
Writing in prison, and writing to prisoners: the inmate who became the literary darling
by Becky - October 3, 2007 - 6:36 PM

dI suppose you can’t really fault Norman Mailer for being seduced by Jack Henry Abbott. After all, he had already courted Gary Gilmore (complete aside–how wild was it when Mailer & his son appeared on Gilmore Girls?!), who had been acquainted with Abbott in prison. And then of course there’s Mailer’s whole romance/own problem with violence (i.e. the stabbing-his-wife-incident in 1960–she didn’t press charges, but she did eventually publish a book about it).

Their correspondence deepened, and Mailer eventually helped Abbott secure parole. Mailer and his new disciple (perhaps a surrogate for Gilmore; the ktwo never met) became fast friends in New York–Mailer made the callss to help Abbott publish his memoir, In the Belly of the Beast, and the two “did” literary New York–and even appeared on “Good Morning America” together. On July 18, 1981–just one day before the New York Times published a sterling review of his book–Abbott fatally stabbed a 22 year-old waiter in an East Village cafe. He fled town, and when he was apprehended and brought to trial in 1982 he found himself with some celebrity supporters: Susan Sarandon (her son is named after Abbott), Jerzy Kosinski, and Christopher Walken (though, in typical Walken-ese, he told the NY Post: “I often go to court to watch people’s emotions”).

I’m wondering, though: how many of you have corresponded with prison inmates? My father is involved in prison ministry, I’ve taught at a prison, but I’ve never maintained a written dialogue with anyone serving time & I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has…

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Comments (8)

  1. While I have never been in prison, I know several people who have. I have been told one motivator for getting people to write to them is personal saftey. Some sadistic guards “fucque” with people with no outside contacts. The prisoners have no recourse, con’s word against guard’s word.

    posted by gus on 10-3-2007 at 8:15 pm

  2. ok, so maybe i should know more about this, but susan sarandon named her child after a murderer? that makes her sound insane.

    here’s a fun fact: you left the ’s’ out of “beast” in your story.

    maybe i’ll write a convict and see what happens!

    posted by dave on 10-3-2007 at 11:39 pm

  3. There’s a typo in this post: the title of Abbott’s memoir is written as “The Belly of the Beat” above.

    posted by TGecko on 10-3-2007 at 11:42 pm

  4. Several years ago I briefly corresponded with a prison inmate. He’d gotten my address from some very old pen-pal list. His tale was humorous – he was serving 15 years merely for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. (Really, that’s what he told me.) I didn’t correspond with him long enough for him to start requesting provocative photos or anything; by the third letter he was asking for postage stamps and other things, and I jsut stopped writing.

    posted by Jill on 10-3-2007 at 11:50 pm

  5. I have a box of letters between me and an inmate in a Federal prison. It seemed they had it a lot better than the stereotypical inmate. More just of a boring routine than anything… I still wouldn’t want to go though.

    posted by Renee on 10-3-2007 at 11:54 pm

  6. One of my best friends had to spend 11 months in state prison. I went to visit him every week and we wrote letters back and forth the entire time. I have them in chronological order in a book that I am planning on giving him next year when his probation is finally up. Its really tough in there and its not so easy to see one of your good friends in that kind of situation. If I hadn’t visited he said he probably would’ve gone crazy since no one else bothered to make the drive to see him except me and his dad.

    posted by Marta on 10-4-2007 at 8:22 am

  7. beast, yes–something in me just didn’t want to spell it out i guess! and susan, well, she’s definitely not afraid of being incendiary. and as for her attendance at the trial, she was very tight with mailer at the time & that was her impetus for going.

    posted by Becky on 10-4-2007 at 2:40 pm

  8. I wrote to one who was a friend of a friend for support… but since we didn’t actually know each other that well, after 3-4 exchanged letters, he didn’t write back (probably because I wouldn’t provide pictures of myself, provocative or not).

    posted by Sarah in CA on 2-7-2009 at 2:47 pm

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