In the July 6 Arts & Living section, Sean Rowe provides a top ten list of books for and by the incarerated. Here is the list with his annotations:
Books in Stir
Ten Tomes to Take to Jail
By Sean Rowe
Jail is tailor-made for serious reading. Be warned, though: Most don’t allow you to bring your own books; reading material must be mailed from a publisher or bookstore. Also: hardbacks are often against the rules, so you should buy paperbacks instead. The strictest wardens permit only “religious materials,” but in a pinch you can claim any of the following without fibbing too much. Each book, by the way, was penned by an incarcerated author.
1. “Best Short Stories of O. Henry” – This North Carolina native (real name William Sydney Porter) swore he was innocent but did three years in a federal penitentiary for embezzlement. He wrote some of his best yarns behind bars and is credited with defining the short story as a literary art form -- plus he coined the phrase “banana republic” while on the lam in Honduras in 1896.
2. “The Prince,” Niccolò Machiavelli – A crafty poet, playwright and political advisor, Machiavelli was a leading figure of the Italian Renaissance. Arrested in 1513 at the instigation of the ruling Medici family, Machiavelli was tortured “by the rope,” i.e., by having his hands tied behind his back and his body hoisted with a pulley, dislocating his shoulders. He denied all charges of treason and was finally released, living out his days in exile and poverty near his beloved Florence. His how-to manual for princes and CEO’s became a permanent hit.
3. “The Consolation of Philosophy,” Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius -- This Roman consul was arrested by King HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodoric_the_Great" \o "Theodoric the Great" Theodoric the Great, who suspected him of conspiring with the HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_Empire" \o "Byzantine Empire" Byzantine Empire. He was stripped of his title and imprisoned in Pavia, where he wrote his final work in A.D. 524 while awaiting execution. In it he teaches acceptance of hardship and detachment from misfortune.
4. The Writings of Saint Paul – Paul never actually met Jesus, but his thirteen acts and epistles make him the second-most-prolific writer of the New Testament (after Luke). He dictated much of the work while in prison awaiting trial on charges of heresy – first in Jerusalem, then in Caesarea and finally in Rome. Paul suffered whipping, stoning and exile, and may have died by execution.
5. “De Profundis,” Oscar Wilde – Wilde’s flamboyant sexual shenanigans were too much even for Victorian London’s dissolute upper crust. He was given two years at hard labor following a love affair with a young nobleman and conviction on charges of “gross indecency.” Emerging from prison a broken man, Wilde spent his last years in Paris and died in 1895. “De Profundis” means “from the depths” and refers to Psalm 130; it’s a 50,000-word love letter Wilde wrote to his former paramour while serving time in Reading Gaol. He was never permitted to mail it.
6. “Don Quixote,” Miguel de Cervantes – Like a lot of writers, Cervantes had trouble balancing his checkbook. The Prince of Wits did time in debtor’s prison at least twice (1597 and 1602) before his magnum opus hit the best-seller list. Though he didn’t actually write “Don Quixote” behind bars, Cervantes claims he got the idea for it while sitting in a jail cell in La Mancha. Jail must have been a cakewalk for Cervantes; earlier in life he’d been captured by pirates and spent five years as a slave in Algeria before his family paid his ransom. He tried to escape on four occasions.
7. “The Thief’s Journal,” Jean Genet – The son of a French prostitute, Genet spent much of his life in orphanages, foster homes, reform schools and prison, with a brief stint in the French Foreign Legion, from which he was dishonorably discharged. In 1949, he was threatened with a life sentence after ten convictions, but Pablo Picasso and Jean-Paul Sartre petitioned the president on his behalf. He would never return to jail. “The Thief’s Journal” was published the same year.
8. “120 Days of Sodom,” Marquis de Sade – Sade’s crimes were so crazy and numerous it would be difficult to list them all. A philosopher of extreme freedom, he spent half his life in prisons and mental institutions, the other half drinking blood and holding orgies at his castle. This is his violent and pornographic masterwork, written first in the Bastille, then destroyed, then rewritten in the Charenton insane asylum. Sade survived multiple death sentences to live to the age of 74 and die at home.
9. “In the Belly of the Beast,” Jack Henry Abbott – Abbot was serving time for bank robbery, forgery and manslaughter when he wrote what is arguably the greatest prison memoir of all time. Author Norman Mailer helped him find a publisher and led a campaign to get him paroled. Six weeks later Abbott stabbed a guy to death outside a restaurant. He was convicted of manslaughter for a second time and returned to prison, where he committed suicide in 2002.
10. Cantos of Ezra Pound – One of our greatest expatriate poets was also a virulent anti-Semite and Axis propagandist during World War II. He was arrested by the American occupation army in Italy and spent 25 days in an open cage, where he appeared to suffer a nervous breakdown. On the other hand, he wrote the Pisan Cantos at the same time, and it later won the first Bollingen Prize awarded by the Library of Congress. Pound was returned to the United States to face the death penalty for treason, but he was found incompetent to stand trial. He spent twelve years as an inmate at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C. before returning to Italy, where he lived out his days in exile, dying at the ripe old age of 87.
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