Jack Henry Abbott

Jack Henry Abbot's In the Belly of the Beast is an unusual literary document. The book is comprised of letters sent originally to the novelist and chauvinist Norman Mailer, in an effort to give Mailer some corroborative detail for his non-fiction book about death-row inmate Gary Gilmore; Mailer, who described Abbott as a "phenomenon" for his articulate prose, then led a push to have Abbott paroled from prison. It is clear that Mailer hoped to do what Jean-Paul Sartre had done in France some four decades before, on behalf of the writer and convicted criminal Jean Genet: yet Mailer's attempt at a public role would backfire badly, when Abbott killed a restaurant worker in lower Manhattan on the day before the New York Times published its favorable review of In the Belly of the Beast. I would like to examine Abbott's work, and Mailer's advocacy of Abbott,...
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