Book summary

In and out of correctional institutions since the age of nine, Jack Henry Abbott killed a man to be sent to prison and killed another once he was inside. He also began to read widely and appreciate history and poetry, and so when he heard Norman Mailer was working on a book about executed murderer Gary Gilmore, Abbott started to send Mailer letters describing the realities of prison violence. These letters--musings on morality, vignettes on the gulag life of the prisoner, descriptions of the cruel mechanisms of incarceration, and radical ruminations on Marxism--eventually became IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST, an angry, fascinating, poetic, and disturbing book reminiscent of the writing of Jean Genet. Hailed as a literary talent, and with the support of Mailer, Abbott was eventually granted parole from prison. Six weeks after his release, he would stab a man to death in an argument over the use of a restroom. Two days later, The New York Times ran a glowing review of IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST.

Media reviews

"Intellectuals of the upper middle class are vulnerable to romanticizing 'criminal elements' because of course they are unacquainted with them, and we tend to romanticize things that are strange to us. No doubt the myserious phenomenon of 'liberal guilt' is operant. To me, 'In the Belly of the Beast' was more a literary book than an authentic book--it showed he'd read a lot of Genet and other writers."