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In the middle of writing The Executioner's
Norman
Mailer received a letter from a named Jack H. Abbott who wanted to warn him that very few people knew much about violence in prisons and who offered to clarify some aspects of Gary Gilmore's life. Mailer began to correspond Song,
federal prisoner
made
with Abbott, and
a startling literary dis-
covery: the convict's direct, intense prose
decidedly powerful; his
letters
was
were extraor-
dinary for their clarity, vividness and
ferocity.
Half Irish, half Chinese, Jack Abbott was born January 21, 1944, in Oscoda, Michigan. He spent his childhood in foster homes throughout the Midwest. At the age of twelve he was committed to a juvenile penal institution—the Utah State Industrial School for
Boys— for
"failure
adjust
to
homes," and was released
five
to
years
foster
later.
At
eighteen he was convicted of "issuing a check against
insufficient
carcerated in the
Utah
sentence of up to
and
was
in-
State Penitentiary
on a
funds,"
five years.
By
the age of
twenty-nine Abbott had killed an inmate and
wounded another escaped from
in a fight
Maximum
behind bars; had
Security;
had com-
mitted bank robbery as a fugitive; and had served time in such federal penitentiaries as
Leavenworth, Atlanta and Marion. Since the age of twelve Jack Abbott has been free a total of only nine and a half months; he has served a total of more than fourteen years in solitary confinement. In the Belly of the Beast brings together Ab-
and arranged background as a
bott's letters to Mailer, edited
according
to:
Abbott's
"state-raised" convict; the bizarre forms of
punishment practiced
in
American
prisons;
experience of long-term solitary confinement; the uses and abuses of sex and the
(continued on back flap)
I
i 'i 1
OF
«i
BELLY yrm'\
m THE BELLY OF THE BEAST Letters from Prison
JACK HENRY ABBOTT With an Introduction by Norman Mailer
Random House
£k
New
York
Copyright© 1981 by Jack Henry Abbott under International and Pan-American
All rights reserved
Copyright Conventions. Published
in
the United States by
Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Abbott, Jack Henry, 1944In the belly of the beast.
1.
Abbott, Jack Henry, 1944-
United States
— Biography.
ISBN
2.
Prisons
365'.44'0924
in
4
States.
[B]
80-6038
AACR2
0-394-51858-6
Manufactured
Prisoners-
— United
Title.
I.
HV9468.A22A37
3.
the United States of America
6
8
9
7
5
3
—
ACKNOWLEDGMENT. The
preparation and arrangement of the letters in this book
—
letters to Norman Mailer are the work of my Random House, Erroll McDonald. I am grateful to him. My sister saw me through everything described in this book, and has kept something alive in me that would otherwise have perished long ago. I am grateful to her.
fragmented
editor at
To Carl Panzram, William ("Whitey") Hurst, "Gypsy" Adams, La Count Bly, Sam Melville, George fackson, "Curly" McFee, George ("Sugar Bear") Lovell, Gary Gilmore
—
that they
may
rest in
peace
INTRODUCTION
sometime
the middle of working on The Executioner's
in
came from Morton Janklow, the
Song, a note
He was
sending on a letter that had been addressed to him for
forwarding to me.
He assumed
appeared together
in a story in
it
was because our names had
People magazine. In any event,
the communication was by a convict
and Janklow letter.
An
literary agent.
After
I
author
named
Jack H. Abbott,
there was something unusual in the fellow's
felt
knew why he thought so. receive as many as several hundred
read
will
it,
I
letters a
want something: will you read their work, or listen to a life-story and write it? This letter, on the contrary, offered instruction. Abbott had seen a newspaper account that stated I was doing a book on Gary Gilmore and violence in America. He wanted to warn me, Abbott said, that year from strangers. Usually they
very few people
knew much about
violence in prisons.
No
author he had ever read on the subject seemed to have a clue. It
was
his belief that
five years still
men who had been
knew next
to nothing
in prison as
on the
much
as
subject. It probably
took a decade behind bars for any real perception on the matter to
permeate your psychology and your
ested,
he
felt
he could
clarify
some
were
inter-
aspects of Gilmore's
life as
flesh.
If
I
a convict.
There are unhappy paradoxes to being successful as a For one thing, you don't have much opportunity to read good books (it's too demoralizing when you're at sea on your own work) and you also come to dread letter-writing. writer.
Perhaps ten times a year, a couple of days are
up on
mail,
and
there's little pleasure in
it.
You
lost
catching
are spending
INTRODUCTION
x
time that could have been given to more dedicated writing, and there are so many letters to answer! Few writers encourage correspondents.
My
reply to a good, thoughtful, even
generous communication from someone
I
do not know
is
often short and apologetic.
Abbott's letter, however, was intense, direct, unadorned, and detached an unusual combination. So I took him up. When you got down to it, I did not know much about violence in prisons, and I told him so and offered to read carefully what he had to say. A long letter came back. It was remarkable. I answered it, and another came. It was just as remarkable. I don't think two weeks went by before I was in the middle of a thoroughgoing correspondence. I felt all the awe one knows before a phenomenon. Abbott had his own voice. I had heard no other like it. At his best, when he knew exactly what he was writing about, he had an eye for the continuation of his thought that was like the line a racing-car driver takes around a turn. He wrote like a devil, which is to say (since none of us might recognize the truth if an angel told us) that he had a way of making you exclaim to yourself as you read, "Yes, he's right. My God, yes, it's true." Needless to say, what was true was also bottomless to contemplate. Reading Abbott's letters did not encourage sweet dreams. Hell was now clear to behold. It was Maximum
—
Security in a large penitentiary.
Now,
I
was not the most innocent of tourists on trips into I had, as I say, been working on The Execu-
these quarters. tioner's Song,
literature
and
also provided
which apart from
collateral reading in prison
trips to interview convicts
me
with Gilmore's
letters to
and wardens had Nicole in the
six
months between his incarceration and his death. Those letters had their own penetration into the depths and horrors of prison life. Gilmore had his literary talents, and they were far from nonexistent. Still, he could not supply me with what Abbott offered. Gilmore, seen as a writer, rather than as a murderer, was a romantic and a mystic ultimately, he saw
—
incarceration as a species of karma.
No
matter
how he might
Introduction
hate
he
it,
also
viewed
xi
had
as the given. Life
it
its
lights
and
shadows. Prison was the foul smell of the dark places, and
maybe he had earned
That was the grim find no happiness
his sojourn there.
now
equation. Gilmore believed he would this side of death.
Out
came an
of Abbott's letters, however,
radical, a potential leader, a
human
elevated
man
relations in a better world that revolution
could forge. His mind, at
its
wanted to speak from He was not interested
happiest,
his philosophical height across to yours. in
intellectual, a
obsessed with a vision of more
the particular, as Gilmore was, but only in the relevance of
the particular to the abstract. Prison, whatever
was not
a
dream whose
roots
would lead you
its
nightmares,
to eternity, but
an infernal machine of destruction, a design for the Dispose-All anus of a prodigiously diseased society.
The two men
could not be more different. Gilmore, while
always on the lookout to escape,
romantic solution
still
saw death
as a species of
—he and Nicole could be together on
the
other side; Abbott, in contrast, might be ready by his convict's
code to face death death.
It
in
any passing encounter, but he loathed
was the ultimate
society could visit
Nonetheless, and
Abbott, he
is
the
injustice, the final obscenity that
on him. it
first
is
one of those
to point out:
Gilmore and
prison that held
.
.
me and
bemuses you went into any
ironies that
".
if
asked for
prisoners with certain backgrounds, both in
all
of the
and out of
prison,
backgrounds that include observed and suspected behavior,
names, and
my
and name
you
will get a set of files, a list of
will
always be handed you along with Gilmore's ..."
file
morphology is close. Both were juveboth were incarcerated for most of their ado-
Yes. Superficially, the nile delinquents,
lescence in state-supported institutions in his early letters,
equal to relatives
both
men knew
—
as
Abbott explained
knew in the juvenile home were when you met them again in the pen and the kids you
very
spent eighteen of the
—
little
last
of liberty.
At
thirty-six,
twenty-two years of his
Gilmore had and
life in jail;
Abbott, while younger, had, proportionately, spent more. First
INTRODUCTION
xii
imprisoned at twelve, he was out once for nine months, then imprisoned again at the age of eighteen for cashing a check with insufficient funds.
He was
given a
—
maximum
of five years.
As he tells us in this work it is no ordinary description of murder he then killed a fellow convict and was given an indeterminate sentence up to nineteen years. He has been in
—
jail
when he escaped from Utah State Prison and was on the lam
ever since but for a six-week period
Maximum
Security in
He
America and Canada.
in
being the only
There are
a
man
has the high convict honors of
to escape from
few other
Max
similarities
in that penitentiary.
between Gilmore and
Abbott. Foremost, they are both convicts. They are by their logic the elite of a prison population, part of the convict estab-
lishment as seen by the convicts, not by the authority to say, they are hard-core.
They
see themselves as
—
that
men who
is
set
the code for this city-state, this prison, that is occupied by a warden and his security officers. Beneath that overarching au-
own
thority, convicts build their
tween themselves
as
is
ills
and
afflictions of
that not only the worst of the
the best
—
that
is,
deal be-
trials,
they
and from
it
the prison system.
It
a paradox at the core of penology,
derives the thousand is
They
on the code.
instruct the young, they pass
There
establishment.
contending forces, they hold
young are sent
to prison, but
the proudest, the bravest, the most daring,
the most enterprising, and the most undefeated of the poor. There starts the horror. The fundamental premise of incarceration which Abbott demonstrates to us, over and over, is that prison
is
equipped to grind down criminals who are cowards
into social submission, but can only break the spirit of brave
men who
are criminals, or anneal
than the
steel that encloses
society
(it is
very difficult
them
until they are harder
you can conceive of a these days) that is more concerned them.
If
with the creative potential of violent young
men
than with the
threat they pose to the suburbs, then a few solutions for future
may be there. Somewhere between the French Foreign Legion and some prodigious extension of Outward Bound may
prisons
lie
the answer, at least for
all
those juvenile delinquents
who
Introduction
xiii
—
drawn to crime as a positive experience because it is more more meaningful, more mysterious, more transcendental, more religious than any other experience they have known. For them, there is a conceivable dialogue. The authority can say: "Are you tough? Then show us you have the balls are
exciting,
to climb that rock wall."
hang-glide
—
Or
down
travel
dare your death in any
people into death. Whereas for
way
all
the rapids in a kayak,
that doesn't drag other
those petty criminals
who
are not fundamentally attached to such existential tests of
whom
courage and violence, for prison
is
crime
the wrong business,
is
They can move with
not a problem.
small friction
from minimum security to prisons-without-walls to halfway houses. For them, a two-year sentence can even be a highschool education. But the social practice of mixing these two
kinds of criminals together
become punks and
timid
when bold and
is
a disaster,
an explosion.
snitches, the brave turn cruel.
in
For
timid people are obliged to live together, cour-
age turns to brutality and timidity to treachery.
between
The
a brave
man and
A
marriage
woman may be exceeded union of a brave woman and
a fearful
matrimonial misery only by a
man. Prison systems perpetuate such relations. Abbott doesn't let us forget why. I cannot think, offhand, of any American writer who has detailed for us in equal ongoing a fearful
analysis
how prison
is
designed to gut and corrupt the timid, and
break or brutalize the brave. a brave
work
human being common
for the
soul out of
We
to surrender his or her bravery can ever
good.
It violates
the universal stuff of the
which great civilizations are built.
do not
lying horror
however,
live,
prison problems.
body
No system of punishment that asks
Even
may be
to
that
in a
world that
assume we do,
we
drenched
all
is
tries to solve its
Utopian.
The
under-
inhabit the swollen tissues of
bad conscience, so bad indeed that the laugh of the hyena reverberates from every TV set, and is in danger of becoming our true national anthem. We a
are
all
us to
politic that
is
so guilty at the
become more
in
way we have allowed the world around
ugly and tasteless every year that
der to terror and steep ourselves in
it.
we
surren-
The mugger becomes
the
INTRODUCTION
xiv
Golgotha and the middle
size of
class retires into walled cities
with armed guards. Here, the prisons have wall-to-wall carpet-
and the guards address the inmates as "Sir," and bow. But they are prisons. The measure of the progressive imprisonment of all society is to be found at the base in the state of the penitentiaries themselves. The bad conscience of society comes to focus in the burning lens of the penitentiary. That is why we do not speak of improving the prisons which is to say, taking them through some mighty transmogrifications but only of fortifying law and order. But that is no more feasible than the dream of remission in the cancer patient. To read this book is to live in the land of true and harsh perception we won't get law and order without a revolution in the prison ing,
—
—
—
—
system.
Let
me
take
it,
however, from another tack. At one point
these letters Abbott speaks of
how he
in
obtained his education
by reading books brought to him by his sister from a friendly bookstore outside. For five and a half years in Maximum Security he read, with an intensity he has carried over into his style, such authors as Niels Bohr and Hertz and Hegel, Russell and Whitehead, Carnap and Quine. Crucial to it all was Marx. We have the phenomenon of a juvenile delinquent brought up in
reform schools
when he
who stabs another prisoner to death,
can, reads books in
Maximum
takes drugs
Security for five years
he can hardly stand, and then, like Marx, tries to perceive the world with his mind and come back with a comprehensive until
vision of society.
The boldness
of the juvenile delinquent grows
Only by the must be like to live alone with so great a hunger and acquire the meat and bones of culture without the soup. Abbott looks to understand the world, he would dominate the world with his mind, yet in all his adult life he has spent six weeks in the world. He knows prison like the ferryman knows the crossing to Hades. But the world Abbott knows only through books. He is the noble equivalent of Jerzy Kosinskfs debased observer, Chauncey Gardner, who learns about the world through a TV set. Yet, what a into the audacity of the self-made intellectual.
tender retort of the heart can
we imagine what
it
xv
Introduction
prodigious meal Abbott has taken
in.
He
has torn the meat of
culture with his fingers, he has crushed the bones with his
So he has
teeth.
a
mind
like
no other
I
own
have encountered.
It
speaks from the nineteenth century as clearly as from the
There are moments when the voice that enters your Marx and Lenin untouched by
twentieth.
mind
is
the clear descendant of
any intervention of history. Indeed, Abbott,
who
is
half Irish
and half Chinese, even bears a small but definite resemblance to Lenin, and the tone of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov rises out of
some of these That offers
pages.
No
a certainty.
one who reads
agree with every one of Abbott's ideas.
one hand, he
is
It is
the pursuit of happiness. "
tice
He
insanity
Freedom and
even writes: "It has been
perhaps the only
is
behind
work
the
bars.
(if
"life,
oxygen to
my experience
that injus-
not merely the greatest) cause of
You'd be surprised
We know
and
liberty,
justice are
to learn
what
a little
old-fashioned oppression can do to anyone." Hear! Hear!
the devil's voice.
will
On
the livid survivor of the ultra-revolutionary
credo of the Declaration of Independence, Abbott.
this
impossible.
it is
true as soon as
we hear
It is
it.
Of
Abbott is also a Communist. What kind, I'm not clear. seems to hold to Mao, and to Stalin both, but vaguely. It
course,
He
is more clear that his real sympathies are with the Third World, with Cuba, Africa, and Arab revolutionaries. How long he would survive in a Communist country I don't know. It is obvious we would not agree on how long. We have written back and forth on this a little, but not a great deal. I no longer have the taste for polemic that he enjoys. Moreover, I have not
spent
my
life in jail.
I
can afford the sophisticated despair of
finding Russia altogether as abominable as
but then,
I
America and more,
have had the experience of meeting delegations of
Russian bureaucrats and they look
like prison
guards in prison
am free, so can afford the perception. But if had my young life in jail, and discovered the officers of my own land were my enemies, would find it very hard not to suits.
I
I
I
spent
I
believe that the officers of another land might be illumined by a
higher philosophy.
INTRODUCTION
xvi
and add that I am much more impressed by the measure of Abbott's writings on prison than by his overall analyses of foreign affairs and revolution. One is for me the meat and bones the other is the soup he has not had. Yet I
say this,
literary
—
do not sneer. He has forged his revolutionary ideas out of the pain and damage done to his flesh and nerves by a life in prison. I
It is
possible that
as much a revolutionary or more Or an altogether different kind of
he would be
after ten years of freedom.
hope we have the opportunity to find out. As I am writing these words, it looks like Abbott will be released on parole this summer. It is certainly the time for him to get out. There is a point past which any prisoner can get nothing more from prison, not even the preservation of his will, and Abbott, I think, has reached these years. Whereas, if he gets out, we man.
I
may yet have a new writer of the largest stature among us, for he has forged himself in a cauldron and still has half of the world to discover. There
is
greatness in young writers, that it
we
are right, but this
never,
when we speak
more than one chance
one chance
in
Abbott
reaffirms the very idea of literature itself as a
sion that will survive
all
obstacles.
I
love Jack
is
of possible
in a
hundred
so vivid that
human
Abbott
expres-
for surviv-
ing and for having learned to write as well as he does.
Norman Mailer March 1981
CONTENTS Introduction by
Norman Mailer
Foreword
xix
State-Raised Convict Varieties of
The
Punishment
23
65
Gods and Drugs Sides:
43
54
Prison Staff
The Inmates
Choosing
3
Hole: Solitary Confinement
The
ix
87
Communists and Marxism
American Violence/American
Justice:
The Legal System
Capital Punishment and Gary Gilmore
Racism
in
America and Behind Bars Foreign Affairs
Freedom 7
94
155 163
124 135
1
07
—
FOREWORD criticizing bourgeois economic laws based on the relationship
between Robinsoe Crusoe and
his servant Friday
—laws
still
taught to schoolchildren as routinely as the story of Jesus Christ
—Engels
writes in Anti-Diihring:
Herr Duhring developed
He
law.
argument in the field of morality and one man, and he said: "One man what is in effect the same, out of all
his
started originally with
conceived as being alone,
or,
man
connection with other men, can have no obligations; for such a
there can be no question of what he ought, but only what he wants
But what
to do!
is
this
man, conceived
obligations, but the fateful, primordial
he
without
is
commit any? ". .Adam .
sin
is
a second
simply because there
destined to
suddenly appears
—
not,
Adam. And
it
fall
being alone and without
Adam no
is
instantly
an Eve with rippling
Adam
where
in paradise,
him
possibility for
into sin. Alongside this
true,
is
as
Jew
Adam
to
there
tresses,
but
acquires obligations and
breaks them. Instead of treating his brother as having equal rights and clasping
makes
him
to his breast,
a slave of
Further on, Engels
Semetic
and
a
tribal legend,
woman
Duhring
will
to
be
original sin with
he subjects him to
his
domination, he
him."
says: "All
abandon the left
we can
say
according to which state of
is
that
it is
we
prefer the old a
man
to
Herr
worthwhile for
innocence
.
.
.
and that
the uncontested glory of having constructed his
two men."
I.e.,
the original sin
=
social intercourse.
N TIIK OF THE
BKLi; 1IEAJ
3W
STATE-RAISED CONVICT
I
—
ve wanted somehow to convey to you the sensations the of what it is to be seri-
atmospheric pressure, you might say
—
American prison. That sentence does not adequately say what I mean. I've wanted to convey to you what it means to be in prison after a childhood spent in penal institutions. To be in prison so long, it's difficult to remember exactly what you did to get there. So long, your fantasies of the free world are no longer easily distinguishable from what you "know" the free world is really like. So long, that being free is exactly identical to a free man's dreams of heaven. To die and go to the free world That part of me which wanders through my mind and never sees or feels actual objects, but which lives in and moves through my passions and my emotions, experiences this world ously a long-term prisoner in an
.
as a horrible nightmare.
dreams. that
is
The one
I'm talking
that appears in
that journeys within
my
.
now about
my
both the subject and object of
The one
.
dreams all
life,
as
the
me
in
my
me. The one
those surreal symbols.
within me, on what
St.
— IN
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
John of the Cross viewed
When
with things
still
undone
experience of this
.
it is
.
nighttime quest for fulfillment.
as a
they talk of ghosts of the dead
they approximate
in life,
me
to try to escape.
out escape routes wherever
I
am
place to rest and be safe.
I
find
was
had been
my subjective
Too
for so
My
many
years now,
my
brain seek
eyes,
way another prisrefuge or a warm, quiet
often for
my
liking those eyes
me.
escaped one time. In 1971 I
the night
sent, the
oner's eyes, brain, seek friendliness,
and brains
in
life.
have been desperate to escape
I
routine for
weeks.
who wander
in a hotel
room
in
I
was
in the free
Montreal, Canada.
world for I
was
six
asleep.
I began waking in the had simply been dreaming of prison. When I was in prison, I must have pushed all fear aside until not fearing was habitual. But that part of me I call my subjective side did feel that fear every minute of every day. Now the loathing and stark terror suppressed within me were coming to the surface in dreams. One morning I woke up and was plunged into psychological shock. I had forgotten I was free, I had escaped. I could not grasp where I was. I was in a nice bedroom with fancy furnishings. A window was open and the sunlight was shining in. There were no bars. The walls were papered in rich designs. My bed was large and comfortable. So much more. I must have sat there in bed reeling from shock and numbness for an hour while it all gradually came back to me that I had escaped. So we can all hold up like good soldiers and harden ourselves in prison. But if you do that for too long, you lose yourself. Because there is something helpless and weak and innocent something like an infant deep inside us all that really suffers in ways we would never permit an insect to suffer. That is how prison is tearing me up inside. It hurts every day. Every day takes me further from my life. And I am not even I
a fugitive about three weeks.
night in a sweat from bad dreams.
—
I
State-Raised Convict
how my
conscious of I
cannot stop I
dissolution
coming about. Therefore,
is
it.
don't ever talk of these feelings.
write this.
When
I
find
now
glass
reflection,
hatred at such times.
crowd of
in a I
such
feel
these years
I
When
have
a confrontation.
in the corridor
it's all
I
I
feel
shame and
Paranoid.
I
can't help this anger. All
can control
it. I
have to intentionally gauge
I
and happen
can do to refrain from attack. I
it.
as
I'm forced by circumstances to be
such hatred,
felt
them
to look in a mirror.
get angry on impulse.
I
prisoners,
hostility,
window
much time
thinking of
and angering
painful
it
walk past a
my
to see
I
never spent
I
thinking of them. In fact, I'm only I
5
conversation to cover up the anger
I
feel,
never seek
my
voice in
the chaos and pain
beneath the surface of what we commonly recognize as
just
Paranoia
reality.
is
not the reason for
an
illness
my
sentences to reform school and prison.
I
contracted in institutions.
It is
the effect, not the cause.
It is
How
would you
like to
be forced
the days of your
all
life
to
beside a stinking, stupid wino every morning at breakfast?
sit
Or for some loud fool in his infinite moment able to say (slur) "Gimme a just look into his sleazy eyes
front of .
life,
.
.
God and
Imagine
a
ignorance to be at any cigarette,
and want
to
kill
I
everyone.
thousand more such daily intrusions
in
your
every hour and minute of every day, and you can grasp the
source of this paranoia, this anger that could
any
man!" And
his ass there in
moment
if I
consume me
lost control.
LIES It
does not matter what
The eyes have it. The mind's legislative Is
is
said
and done
faculty
unconcerned with appearances and words
Nothing
is
over and done with.
Nothing.
Not even your
malice.
at
— IN
6
—
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
Especially your malice.
So do not apologize to me. have walked stooped beneath your heart,
I
That cold-blooded crown That holds the glinting jewel
Of
contradiction in your eyes.
think that
I
I
skull
And
them
crush
gouge them
shall
From your
my
in
fist
—Give you
a dog to see with Give you eyes that pant and salivate, Eyes that creep on all fours Eyes that cringe at the sound of my voice;
Lie to
me
Tell
life is
—When
all
me
then.
good to you
your memories are
distilled
Into the transformed image, the Idea,
Of
a
To
dig out your eyes.
mechanical hand reaching Lie to Lie to Lie to
This
is
a
poem
I
me me me
wrote
then.
then, Dog-eyes. then.
in the
arms of the prison muse
Paranoia here in the hole.
To be to
capable of writing something so mentally deranged
be able to write nothing
tion to life I
wrote
—
it
is
this
caged prisoners like there
I
else that expresses
my
social reac-
very perplexing to me.
morning amid the in single cells
—
infernal racket of a
hundred
racket of threats, race-talking
was no tomorrow.
was born January 21, 1944, on a military base in Oscoda, I was in and out of foster homes almost from the
Michigan.
7
State-Raised Convict
moment
my birth. My
of
formal education:
the sixth grade. At age nine
Utah State about
I
never completed
began serving long
At age twelve
juvenile detention quarters.
I
Industrial School for Boys.
stints in
was sent to the
I
was "paroled" once
I
then returned there. At age eighteen
sixty days,
months
released as an adult. Five or six
Utah State Penitentiary
for the
later
I
was sent to the
crime of "issuing
went
for
was
I
a
check
with an indeterminate
against insufficient funds."
I
sentence of up to
About three years later, having one inmate and wounded another
five years.
never been released, in a fight in
in
killed
I
the center
hall.
was
I
tried for the capital offense
under the old convict statute that requires either mandatory death
if
malice aforethought
three to twenty years.
determinate term"
what
is
found, or a sentence of from
is
received the latter sentence.
I
justifies
sets a
minimum and
a
stay in prison.
maximum
my
At age twenty-six
case.
I
A
as-
wrong
escaped for about
weeks.
six I I
in
The law
—the underlying
sumption being that no one serves the maximum. assumption
"in-
the concept of parole. Your
good behavior determines how long you merely
An
am
at this
moment
thirty-seven years old. Since age twelve
have been free the sum
served
many terms
total of
nine and a half months.
in solitary. In only three
over ten years there.
I
would estimate that
I
terms
I
I
have
have served
have served a good
fourteen or fifteen years in solitary.
The
have ever committed
was bank robbery during
the time
It
was
I
was a
It
the state was
ings that
It
stood about
Army back
still
had served
with two wings.
was constructed by the U.S. a territory. It
was one of several build-
as disciplinary barracks for the military.
These barracks had long ago passed into the hands and were part of a juvenile penal institution. In the
I
fugitive.
a big red-brick building
four stories high.
when
in free society
only serious crime
of the state
basement of the big red-brick building were rows of
IN
8
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
confinement
solitary
The basement was
cells.
entered from
outside the building only. I am about twelve or thirteen years old. It is winter. I am marching in a long double-file of boys. We are marching to the mess hall. There is a guard watching as we march toward him. There is a guard walking behind us as we march.
My testes shrink and the blood ache. My heart pounding and is
is I
rushing and
am
my eyes
burn,
trying hard to breath
slowly, to control myself. at the guards: in front and behind the line. beyond are plowed and covered with an icy blanket of snow. I do not know how far beyond those fields my freedom lies. Suddenly my confederate at the front of the line whirls and slugs the boy behind him. The front guard, like an attack dog, is on them both beating them into submission. Seconds later the guard at the back rushes forward, brushing me as he passes. I break away from the line, and run for my life. I stretch my legs as far as I can, and as quickly as I can, but the legs of a boy four feet six inches tall cannot stretch very far. The fields are before me, a still flatland of ice and snow, and the huge clods of frozen, plowed earth are to me formidable I
keep glancing
The
fields
—
obstacles. I
The
sky
is
"You! Stop!"
I
The
baby-blue, almost white.
when immediately know
haven't covered
fifty
yards
I
air is clear.
hear the pursuit begin: will
I
be caught, but
I
continue to run. I do not feel the blow of his fist. I'm in midair for a moment, and then I'm rolling in frozen clods of soil. I am pulled to my feet; one of my arms is twisted behind my back; my lungs are
burning with the cold
air;
my
trying to steel myself for the
The
nostrils are flared.
punishment
to
I
am
already
come.
line, flanked by do not respect them,
other inmates stand in a long straight
guards, and
I
because they
am will
dragged past them. not run
—
will
not try to escape.
too short to keep up with the guard,
my arm
twisted high up behind
humiliated.
I
try
I
my
who
is
back, so
hard to be dignified.
My legs
effortlessly I
are
holding
stumble along,
9
State-Raised Convict
basement of the red-brick building, and in good time. A snowflake hits my eye
see the door to the
I
we
are approaching
it
and melts. It is beginning, softly, to snow. At the top of the stairs to the basement, against a high black-steel door.
am
I
stand beside
I
it
flung
down
at attention as
the guard takes out a huge ring of keys and bangs on the door.
We are seen
The door yawns open and an
through a window.
old guard appears, gazing at
me
maliciously.
We enter. We are standing at the top of a
number
of
concrete steps that descend to the floor of the basement.
thrown down the
and
stairs,
my
bleeding and
is
I
lie
wide I
am
on the floor, waiting. My nose from blows to my skull.
ears are ringing
"Get up!" Immediately
am knocked down
I
again.
"Strip!" stand, shakily,
I
my
but
hair,
I
and shed
my clothing.
His hands are pulling
dare not move.
'Turn around!" I
turn.
"Bend I bend I
over!" over.
He
inspects
my
anus and
watch, anxiously, hoping with
me there. He orders me
We The
all
my
is
passage
is
narrow;
it is
might he does not hurt
only four or
body warmth
feel
I
He unlocks
He closes and locks the door, and he walks down the dark passageway.
In the
cell,
there
mesh-steel screen. existing
is
It
windowpanes
five feet
wide and
is
can smell nervous sweat
in the air.
said.
a barred is
level
it. I I
enter.
can hear his steps
window with an
ancient, heavy
are caked with decades of
peer, running free again in
Nothing
with the ground outside. soil,
The
and the
Through the broken ones my mind across the fields.
screen prevents cleaning them.
A
and
to follow him.
We stop at one of the doors. as
private parts,
enter a passageway between rows of heavy steel doors.
dimly lighted. As soon as we enter,
and
my
I
sheet of thick plywood, on iron legs bolted to the floor,
is
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
IN
70
my bed. An
old-fashioned toilet bowl
A
a sink with cold running water.
in the corner, beside
is
dim
burns
light
in a dull
yellow glow behind the thick iron screening attached to the wall.
The
—
names and dates some of the They were scratched into the wall.
walls are covered with
dates go back twenty years.
There are ragged hearts pierced with arrows and pachuco crosses everywhere. Everywhere are the words: "mom," "love," "god" the walls sweat and are clammy and cold.
—
Because
am
I
allowed only
my
undershorts,
I
move about
to
keep warm.
When my
light
was turned out
at night,
would weep
I
uncontrollably. Sixty days in solitary was a long, long time in
those days for me.
When
the guard's key would hit the lock on
signal the serving of a "meal,"
if I
were not standing
tion in the far corner of the cell, facing
me
attack I
a
it,
door to at atten-
the guard would
with a ring of keys on a heavy chain.
was fed one-third of
one day
my
week
a regular
was taken from
I
meal three times a day. Only
my cell and ordered
to
shower
while the guard stood in the shower-room doorway and timed
me
for three minutes.
Locked
in
our
we could not see one another, and if we we were beaten. We tapped the they heard our taps, we were beaten
cells,
were caught shouting out messages, but entire
row of
if
cells,
cell-to-cell,
—
one child
at a time.
served five years in the big red-brick building, and alto-
I
two or three in solitary confinement. When I walked was considered an adult, subject to adult laws.
gether, out,
I
served so long because
I
and
tried to escape over
I
could not adjust to the institution
twenty times.
I
had been there for the homes."
juvenile "crime" of "failure to adjust to foster
.
.
.He who
age after he
—
is
learns over
is
state-raised
—reared by the
taken from what the state
and over and
all
state
calls a
the days of his
from an early
"broken home" life
that people
— State-Raised Convict
in society
can do anything to him and not be punished by the
Do anything
law.
11
to
him with the
full
force of the state behind
them.
As mess
a child, hall.
and one
he must march
He can own
in lock-step to his
pair of shoes.
People
in society
him. Everyone
come
in society
to
him through the
he comes
capacity employed by the state. society.
meals in a huge
only three shirts and two pair of trousers
He
in
He
state
contact with
and is
in
injure
some
learns to avoid people in
evades them at every step.
America someone who is state-raised can be dog by anyone, who has no "criminal record," with full impunity. I do not exaggerate this at all. It is a fact so ordinary in the minds of state-raised prisoners that it is a matter of common sense. If a prisoner were to show a In any state in
shot
down and
killed like a
skeptical attitude toward things of this nature, the rest of us would conclude that he is losing his mind. He is questioning what is self-evident to us: a practical fact of life.
.My mind keeps turning toward one
main aspects of prison that separates ordinary prisoners who, at some point in their lives, serve a few years and get out never to return or if they do, it is for another short period and never again and the convict who is "state-raised," i.e., the prisoner who grows up from boyhood to manhood in penal institutions. I have referred to it as a form of instability (mental, emotional, etc.). There is no doubt (let us say there is little doubt) that this instability is caused by a lifetime of incarceration. Long stretches of, say, from ages ten to seventeen or eighteen, and then from seventeen or eighteen to ages thirty and forty. You hear a lot about "arrested adolescence" nowadays, and I believe this concept touches the nub of the instability in .
.
of the
prisoners like myself.
Every society gives
men and women,
its
men and women
of adults.
Men
the prerogatives of
are given their dues. After a
certain age you are regarded as a
man by
society.
You
are
— THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
IN
12
referred to as "sir";
no one
interferes in your affairs, slaps your
hands or ignores you. Society you.
You
shown
are
is
and serves judgment is tem-
solicitous in general
respect. Gradually your
pered because gradually you see that
it
has real effects;
it
impinges on the society, the world. Your experience mellows
move about anywhere, You can pursue any object of love, pleasure, danger, profit, etc. You are taught by the very terms of your social existence, by the objects that come and go from your intentions, the nature of your own emotions and you your emotions because you are free to
work and play
at anything.
—
learn about yourself, your tastes, your strengths nesses. It is
school,
You,
in
not so for the state-raised convict. As a boy in reform
he
is
punished for being a
punished for trying to be a
He is
and weak-
other words, mature emotionally.
man
little
boy. In prison, he
is
in the sense described above.
treated as an adolescent in prison. Just as an adolescent
is
denied the keys to the family car for any disobedience, any
mischief,
I
am
subjected to the hole for any disobedience, any
mischief.
I
will
go to the hole
a packet of sugar.
I
is
for
murder
as well as for stealing
out of the hole in either case, and different.
My
solely to avoid leaving evidence that will leave
me
the length of time object
will get
I
serve for either offense
is
no
open to prosecution out there in the world beyond these walls where a semblance of democracy is practiced. Prison regimes have prisoners making extreme decisions regarding moderate questions, decisions that only choice of either-or.
No
contradiction
is
fit
the logical
allowed openly. You are
not allowed to change. You are only allowed to submit; "agree-
ment" does not exist (it implies equality). You are the rebellious who must obey and submit to the judgment of
adolescent
"grownups'*
A
prisoner
"tyrants" they are called
who
is
when we speak of men.
not state-raised tolerates the situation
because of his social maturity prior to incarceration.
He knows
things are different outside prison. But the state-raised convict
has no conception of any difference.
hence, maturity. His judgment tions are impulsive, raw,
is
He
lacks experience and,
untempered,
unmellowed.
rash; his
emo-
IS
State-Raised Convict
—
—
whole spectrum of them that I know of only through words, through reading and my immature imagination. I can imagine I feel those emotions (know,
There are emotions
what they
therefore,
am
a
are),
but / do
barely a precocious child.
This thing
I
My
At age
hides from everyone
else.
The
There
high esteem
is
is
is
the hidden,
something
else.
It is
the
(moral, ethical,
the mantle of pride, integrity, honor.
we
I
foul underbelly everyone
—which concerns judgment, reason
cultural). It
thirty-seven
passions are those of a boy.
related above about emotions
dark side of state-raised convicts.
other half
not.
naturally have for violence, force. It
It is is
the
what
makes us effective, men whose judgment impinges on others, on the world: Dangerous killers who act alone and without emotion, who act with calculation and principles, to avenge themselves, establish and defend their principles with acts of murder that usually evade prosecution by law: this is the stateraised convicts' conception of manhood, in the highest sense. The model we emulate is a fanatically defiant and alienated individual who cannot imagine what forgiveness is, or mercy or tolerance, because he has no experience of such values. His emotions do not know what such values are, but he imagines
them
as so
many "weaknesses"
precisely because the unprinci-
pled offender appears to escape punishment through such
"weaknesses" on the part of society.
But if you behave like a man (a man such as yourself) you doomed; you are feared and hated. You are "crazy" by the
are
standards of the authorities
—by
their prejudices against pris-
on-behavior.
—
Can you imagine how I feel to be treated as a little boy and man? And when I was a little boy, I was treated as a man and can you imagine what that does to a boy? (I keep not as a
—
waiting for the years to give that has evaded So.
A
me in
a sense of
humor, but so
far
completely.)
guard frowns at
work?" Or: "Tuck
me
your
me and
says:
shirttail!"
Do
"Why this
are you not at and do that. The
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
IN
14
way
a little
boy
spoken
is
to.
This
two
deal with not for a year or
And when
so far, eighteen years.
something
is
—nor even I
I
have had to
ten years
explode, then
myself by behaving like a contrite and unruly
—but
for,
have burnt
I
little
boy. So
I
have, in order to avoid that deeper humiliation, developed a
method
man
whole situation
of reversing the
chastising the
and not
little
boy. (Poor kid!)
terms of years
just in
cannot adjust to daily
I
been
years this has
true.
I
—and
become the
I
has cost
It
me
dearly,
in prison or in the hole.
life in
prison.
For almost twenty
have never gone a month
in prison
without incurring disciplinary action for violating "rules." Not in all these years.
Does
mean
this
must die
I
Does
in prison?
this
mean
I
cannot "adjust" to society outside prison?
The government not like prison.
it is I
answers yes I
— but
feel that
if
I
I
remember
would be back
I
within months.
in prison I
care about myself and
cannot adjust to freedom. Even in prison
and
ever did adjust to prison,
could by that alone never adjust to society.
Now,
society,
—because
to
me
I
cannot
if it
prison
is
let
it
happen that
means spending my
I
life
nothing but mutiny and
revolt.
.
.
.A round peg will not
me
they'll ever let
upon
my
fit
into a square
out of prison so long as
plate steel,
and
—
for
in those days
my
don't think
depends
my
cell
were made of
boiler-
would kick them all day every day, hollering, no apparent reason. I was so choked with rage
I
(about sixteen or seventeen years ago),
hardly talk, even
throw
I
release
"good adjustment to prison."
In the beginning the walls of
screaming
slot.
my
tray as
when
I
could
was calm: I stuttered badly. I used to casually as you would toss a balled-up scrap I
of paper in a trash can
IS
Convict
State- Raised
—but would do
it
with a tray
of food
full
at the face of a guard.
That
is
what
man who
by a
Hell,
if
mean by
I
a response to the prison experience
does not belong there.
never went to prison,
I
would have committed. I'm not don't belong in prison that
who knows what
at all saying that
for
punishment
—and
happen
I
to have gotten
men who
with most
like that
I I
should not have been sent there.
I
Theoretically, no one should belong in prison!
it is
"evil"
because
I
was sent there
it. I
do not think
are sent to prison. Everyone
hurts in prison, but not like that. still
I
cannot
corner and
when
am
talk to a guard,
giving
him the
have to address a guard
I
not unless
orders.
I
have his
I
still
stutter
ass in a
sometimes
—address him without breaking
can cuss one out very eloquently or insult him, but
rules.
I
that's
when
I've
broken
a rule or don't care
if I
do break one.
strange to contemplate: people with a stuttering defect in
It is
society can usually sing without stuttering; well,
without stuttering
It's
.
.
I
can cuss
.
impossible. I'm the kind of fool who, facing Caesar
his starving lions,
need only
scot-free but instead
Caesar
—knowing
full
all
away
cannot suppress saying "fuck you" to well the consequences.
/ refuse to be martyred;
and whine
retract a statement to walk
and
the way to
What
is
more,
don't accept the consequences,
I
my
death.
A
death,
it
seems, that
I
chose. If
I
It's
I
could please Caesar,
would,
I
a fucked-up world, but
have never accepted that
I
I
it's all I
gladly would. got.
did this to myself.
been successfully indoctrinated with that only reason
I
have been
belief.
I
have never
That
is
the
in prison this long.
Indoctrination begins the
moment someone
is
arrested. It
IN
16
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
becomes more thorough every step of the way, from the moment of arrest to incarceration. In prison, it finds its most profound expression.
Every minute suffering
is
you are forced to believe that your
for years
a result of your
"ill
behavior,'' that
it is
You
are indoctrinated to blindly accept anything
But
if
can
I
I
did
it
to myself. If
having violated a prison rule
example, shown insolence to a pig
.
evil
to you.
—
I
am thrown
—
for having,
can only believe
I
I
upon myself through indoctrination. .1 might have become indoctrinated were it not for the and ignorant quality of the men who are employed in
brought .
done
to the floor, only by indoctrination
be brought to believe
in the prison hole for
for
me
a guard knocks
self-inflicted.
this
prisons.
A
prisoner
resist,
is
taught that what
never contradict.
and accept
pigs
making
I
is
prisoner
guilt for things
have had guards
I
A
required of is
him
to never
is
taught to plead with the
he never
did.
have never seen before report
me
for
and arguing with them. I have been taken before disciplinary committees of guards for things I have never done, things they all knew I never did. And I have been threats
ordered to the hole for things they knew
My prison record has in
it
I
never did.
more violence reported by guards
than that of any of the 25,000 federal prisoners behind bars today,
and
I
am
not guilty of nine-tenths of the charges. Yet
at all I can do about it. were beaten to death tomorrow, my record would go before the coroner's jury before anyone who had the power to investigate and my "past record of violence" would vindi-
there If
is
nothing
I
—
—
cate
my
murderers. In fact, the prison regime can
atrocity against
me, and
my
The government shows court on a
civil suit
will acquit
that record to judges
against the prison or
on
commit any them. if
I
get into
a petition for writ
—
a
man
relishes any opportunity to prejudice himself against
pris-
of habeas corpus. It
who
"record"
is
designed to prejudice the judge
oners. .
.
.Responsibility?
I
am
not responsible for what the govern-
17
State-Raised Convict
ment
—
system of
its
justice, its prisons
—has done
to
me.
I
did
not do this to myself.
This
Why?
not easy to say;
is
Because
it is
not an easy point of view to hold.
has cost me, so
it
imprisonment. This
I
hold
is
far,
almost two decades of
the greater responsibility:
I
did
not do this to myself.
do not share
I
in
the sins of this guilty country;
together"!
"all in this
Who
we
are not
America today would dare take I and countless
in
the responsibility for himself and others that
other prisoners like
know you
me
have taken?
mean enough to think I'm trying to my own "corrupt self." Indeed I am not. I have only tried to indicate the opposite: that I demand responsibility for myself. And in so doing, I have come to .
.1
.
aren't
shift the responsibility for
understand the reasons for
it all.
I
myself can handle
it
quite
well. I
do not have the confidence of
wish to better myself
is
a sleepwalker,
and
so
my
in a spiritual sense a very conscious
wish.
The lives
Existentialists say they take
and the world upon
all
responsibility for their
their shoulders.
Who can
fault that?
at how "cruel" it is! (This is very funny And then, when the "chips are down" (Sartre's expression), Sartre, who has never gambled but is
The world
is
amazed
to think about!) favorite
enamored
of the terminology of a kind of daring that doesn't
involve getting his ass skinned, "martyrs" himself.
same kind
It is
the
anyone takes upon himself by submitting to your bad opinion of him by hanging his head and agreeing with all the accusations and then, when he has done of responsibility
—
that, forlornly tells
price of tea
cause he
To
is
you he
went up,
is
sorry
etc., etc.
truly at fault
and
is
it
He
rained
last night, sorry
the
won't defend himself, be-
too pathetic to be punished.
say you are not responsible for the
life
of
someone you
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
IN
18
killed in self-defense,
not responsible for the circumstances
that brought you to prison (and kept you there for two decades)
—
to say
that in the face of your accusers, accusers
all
justify their
really responsible for
you
reject the accusations,
.
It is
be
—and nothing
for
for.
exercise the ability to think. I'm at age ten
also
to
you are held responsible further
only lately discovered that at age thirty
.I've
is
your words and deeds. Because every time
things you are not responsible
.
who
mistreatment of you by those accusations,
more
could stop
restless
me
I
began to
now than
I
was
then.
funny that some of us must not only get our bearings
but must also know
all
the details of the world before
we
Only now do I feel I know enough to live, but it is not funny that what I have learned may demand that I throw that life away from me. venture out into
.
.
I
it.
once served
Security,
and
anyone but
When
I
five
and
a half years in a cell in
for a period of over
two years
I
Maximum
did not speak to
my sister when she came to visit me twice a month. entered Maximum Security, was about five feet, I
nine inches
tall.
I
When
did not have a beard and did not
know
basic
emerged I could not walk without collapsing; I had a full beard and was six feet tall. I had a rudimentary understanding of mathematical theory and symbolic logic and had studied in all the theoretical sciences. I had read all but a very few of the world's classics, from prehistoric times up to this day. My vision was perfect when I was locked up; when arithmetic.
I
got out,
my
I
vision required glasses.
My
good fortune resided in the fact that at that prison, a prisoner was allowed to receive books directly from a bookstore so long as those books were not pornographic in any way. {Playboy magazine was punishable contraband in prison then.) Over the years, my sister had books sent to me from a single
—
bookstore, and the people
who owned it searched out titles they
19
State-Raised Convict
did not have in stock, free of extra charge, to send to me.
That
is
my
where
education began.
has not ended to this
It
day.
.
.
I
.There are not
many books
of philosophical importance
have not read. But knowledge comes from experience, and
books only help understand experience.
my
thorities: in
It
has been not only
personal observation but the experience of
the most dangerous prisoners
the "physical" sense
—
—and and
are "readers
In Maximum Security, my books and my balls and
I
I
prison au-
all
mean
that also
writers."
served years barefooted, with only
punishment set of white standard (five sizes too large) coveralls. Novels and dictionaries. And then philosophy, until it came out of my eyes and ears and finally, on occasion, my mouth: nine-tenths of my vocabulary I have never heard spoken. I remember the words "college" and "rhetoric." Small incidents of embarrassment when I discovered I had been pronouncing them wrong all my life. The word "guru" also and "a priori." I fell into all the sciences at one time or another so naive in my grasp that I grasped a
—
—
things only
—
someone
Bohr had. With me,
like
I
cannot learn
practical things until I've studied the subject in the purest
theoretical form.
I
about calculus until
on the
subject.
physics
is
I
studied Hertz and
A child's
—
of
all
I
first
people
things
— Hegel
primer would mystify me. Theoretical
simple to me, but applied physics leaves
with a gross feeling. Russell,
did not really understand the
me
can understand symbolic logic
Whitehead, Carnap, Quine,
etc.
—
stunned
— Frege,
—better then
school-
boy arithmetic. It all found expression and came together in the most elegant sense in the findings of Marx. And that is
—
which the world you and I live in conceals from us. It took great effort and imagination on my part to seek out and obtain truly great advancements in our
a world of science
and
culture that the world suppress.
literature
we
live in in
the
West
tries so
hard to
Having contacted that world and communicated
a degree, to that
degree
I
have become
free.
to
IN
20
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
Books are dangerous where there time for
injustice.
is
been suband prejudice and the worst forms of discrimination because of the title of books I read. (Even a book with the word Plato on the cover can get you in trouble.) I've served
just requesting books. I've
jected to frame-ups
No
federal penitentiary (and there are only six top-level
peniteniaries; the rest are ordinary prisons) has a prison library.
The
we "misuse" our knowledge
authorities say
allowed to
if
educate ourselves according to our natural impulses. They say
we
make bombs, guns, from the information they impart. They say
use the Britannica encyclopedias to
acids, etc., etc.,
Marx
to us about our condition
lies
and makes us immoral and
craven and desperate.
That so
i.e.,
on the
why
is
we
they
now have "education programs"
learn only
what they want
fact that I've never
been
in prison,
us to learn. I pride myself
school
in a prison
You stumbled across the biggest sore-spot in the prison system when you asked why books are such touchy subjects to prison regimes. You have a problem understanding this be-
New
cause you are free and living in
men know enamored sue
it
of, or
—they
are
on the road to
deterioration you can imagine.
not unlike a taste of heroin "taste" that addicts you
all
for your
if
they ever
even curious about, a single idea rebellion.
lion" the bloodiest violence, the
They go
York. But oppressed
the value of books, because
mind
—
A
—
a
you'd
in prison
I
become
—and
mean by
pur-
"rebel-
most ruthless murder and taste of freedom in prison is taste that obsesses you:
kill
for
today
it
a
in a literal sense.
—where
before,
it
was
The stakes are much, much greater The most dangerous convicts in American prison hisare behind bars today. They kill quicker, more efficiently,
physical suffering.
today. tory
are
more
way.
I
liable to die for beliefs
— more
sophisticated in every
think you keep thinking of prison in terms of a mili-
tary barracks.
more with
There
is
no comparison.
It
compares much
a gladiator prison ("school") in ancient
ing the suppression of slaves and Christians.
We
Rome
dur-
are naturally
pitted against each other by degrees of stoicism (a kind of "class" system) through prison manipulation.
— State-Raised Convict
21
The books we have we hold almost by literally.
force of arms
We have no legal rights as prisoners,
only as citizens.
The only "rights" we have are those left to their "discretion." So we assert our rights the only way we can. It is a compromise, and in the end I greatly fear we as prisoners will lose but the
—
be
loss will
society's loss.
We are only a few steps removed from
comes you. Yes, it is frightening, but more frightening to me is the plain fact that society has dropped its guard and placed too much society. After us,
government.
trust in
That
is
why
write you. Because
I
am
I
very concerned about
these matters.
.
continue striving to learn to write. But
will
.1
.
swim on
learning to difficult for
me
It is as if
it.
land.
to take
I
were
it
I'll
much
learn as
as
I
it
is
like
can. It
is
seriously or to feel comfortable about
an audience listening to
sitting in
fine
gentlemen and scholars deliver speeches and discourses on
Then one
things of reverence to me.
of
them suddenly
across the numberless audience directly at
your turn, Jack.
Come up
me and
looks
says: "It's
here and say something."
—
imagine my embarrassment and my two emotions that create a kind of mixed confusion I do not know the word for. Gratitude is close. As I said, I'll try. isn't difficult to
It
delight:
.
to
.
Jam not an intellectual
me I
because
told
you long ago that
I
know no
even you (but you have come the a pathetic fact), has ever
better man.
what I
at
my thoughts are primarily
a predicate to action.
I
all. I
one.
I
am
you
at the
No
and that
held out a hand to help
doing
my
have to work with, which
told
to you.
No
other way.
closest,
beginning
I
is
best on
one, not
in itself
me
to
my own and
be
is
a
with
meager.
was, you might say, not likable
never tried to prettify anything.
I
never tried to appeal
IN
22 I've never
to you.
ence of
kept a diary, but the closest
My life
like that.
I
not a "saga" and
is
do not
life
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
pressed an interest in to the fullest of I
my
it. I
came was my
resent your using the term
meant
But to
accommodate
that interest
abilities.
never preached to you, nor tried to convert you.
would not allow futility of
debate
that. Besides, in
letters
I am caught in an expericommon dissertation. You ex-
feel "heroic."
not the subject of
I
I
I
such matters.
My respect
know more than most
the
VARIETIES
OF PUNISHMENT
A
ll torture aims at taking things out of you by
No
one has the
Abbott. Not I
my
force.
Abbott away from Jack what is being done to me. my needs and desires. And
right to take Jack soul.
Yet that
have become a stranger to
is
without meaning to sound conceited or to brag,
I
can hon-
I cannot imagine anyone with more moral stamina, more psychological endurance and more will power than I myself have. I have measured these things and I know. I
estly say
have seen ally,
seen
render
to the routine of prison, and I have much, much longer than others. So it is not am "weak" in those areas, but rather it demonstrates
resisted
that
I
men around me through the years fall apart morthem go mad in subtle ways and seen them sur-
their it
will
all
the immensity of the power, the greatness of the forces that are brought to bear to
change men, even though no
one (not the wardens or the pigs or the government) can control that power, that force, in such a
way
as to
change
a
IN
24
man
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
become what we consider a fair Man," i.e., the good citizen.
to
version
of
"Rehabilitated
.
.
.A great
number
to twenty years have
coming
of practices in prisons these last fifteen
been
legally abolished as cruel
to these "civilized times"
and unbe-
alleged that
is
it
we
live
in.
Some of us who have
prisoners
—not many; there only — product are
never been free
left
a
few of us
of prison condi-
are a
tions that are today recognized as "unconstitutional," indeed,
criminal.
What
we supposed
are
The same
us.
prisons.
pigs
Do they
This
is
—
or their stripe
"like"
wants ever to see
No
to do?
me
one has yet apologized to
—
preside over these
still
me? You would think
so;
none of them
free again.
part of the indoctrination.
am
I
supposed to be glad
they abolished methodical torture instruments in prison! Glad they "abolished" horsewhipping, corporeal punishment,
star-
vation.
But even
me?
I
if I
did feel "appreciation," what good would
it
do
have long ago been taken light-years away from any
ameliorating effect which punishment that aims at rehabilitation can possibly achieve.
It is called affirmative action. It is
to develop programs tices suffered I
can
easily
government is
and
policies
by minorities
in
will
I
a
at correcting past injus-
understand the justice of
illegal
been given
aimed
our society.
not apply
it
to
completely understood that
which are
applied by the government
men I
this doctrine
like
—but the
me, even though
and have never once from that time
chance to walk
free
it
survived prison conditions
from
to this
prison.
have gained a reputation among prison authorities that
extends from the time those
illegal
conditions existed, that
Varieties of
25
Punishment
stretches to this very day unbroken.
simply resisted those
I
conditions that today are "officially" abolished time, the law was not
.
.
.My
on
my
side.
me I
than anything else
suffered
prison.
I
in
my
at the
today.
knew any form
spiritual effect
childhood. for years
when
of suffering
more
from claustrophobia
never
it is
acquaintance with punitive long-term solitary
first
confinement had a more adverse and profound
on
—but
Any more than
I
first
went
horrible in
to
my
life.
The
air in
your
cell vanishes.
You
are smothering.
Your eyes
bulge out; you clutch at your throat; you scream like a banshee.
Your arms
flail
the
air in
your
You
cell.
reel
about the
cell,
falling.
Then you
The walls press you from all directions with an invisible force. You struggle to push it back. The oxygen makes you giddy with anxiety. You become hollow and empty. There is a vacuum in the pit of your stomach. You suffer cramps.
retch.
You are dying. Dying a hard death. One that lingers and
toys
with you.
The faces of The gate slides
guards, angry, are at the gate of your
The guards come into your
open.
that, the guards
attack you.
On
cell.
top of
all
and beat you to the
cell
floor.
Your mattress is thrown out. Your bedsheets are doubled. One end is run through a hole under the steel bunk that hangs from your cell wall. The other end is pulled through a hole at the opposite end of your bunk. Your ankles are handcuffed and so are your hands. The sheet runs through them and you are left hanging from a spit by your feet and your hands. Your back is suspended several inches above the
floor.
You
are smothering.
You
are being crushed to
death.
They
leave you like that
That
is
all
night.
how, over and over again,
I
was "cured" of the
IN
26
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
malady called claustrophobia.
took at least three or four
It
years.
I
was twenty or twenty-one years old when
the prison to an old county tried for killing I
jail
where
I
I
was taken from
was to be booked and
another prisoner in combat.
tried to escape
from the
jail.
The jailers reopened a cell that
had not been used in twenty-five years and placed me in it under prison discipline a starvation diet of a bowl of broth and a hard biscuit once a day. It was a blackout cell. I was given
—
mat and the door was closed on me. There sink-and-toilet combined in the corner, and other
a canvas sleeping
was an iron
than that, there was nothing except about two inches of dust on the floor. It was in total darkness. Not a crack of light entered that cell anywhere and I searched, in the days that followed, for such a crack along every inch of the door and the walls. The darkness was so absolute it was like being in ink.
—
There was an ingenious apparatus on the door. It was cylinand was hand-operated from outside the cell. The jailer would place the bowl and the biscuit on a platform in the cylindrical apparatus. Then he would bang the door twice with his keys and I could hear the mechanism creak. I would crawl to the door, feeling my way up to the apparatus. When my hands came into contact with the food, I would carefully take it out and consume it. Then I would return the bowl to the platform in the apparatus and he would revolve it so that it drical
returned to him outside the door.
was fed without a glimmer of light. Darkness muffles sound. The only sound I ever heard outside of my own movements and mutterings was the bang of the In this entire process,
I
—
—
keys and the creaking of the apparatus once a day.
The
only light
was before
When It is
saw was when
I
closed
my
eyes.
Then
there
me a vivid burst of brilliance, of color, like fireworks. my eyes it would vanish.
opened one thing I
I
to volunteer for an experiment
and intention-
consent to be plunged into darkness
ally
thing for
to
it
be forced on you,
My eyes hungered
if
from
me when
on
another
in light, in
showers of white
a fountain.
stirred in the cell, dust rose to
I
Insects crawled
is
be taken from you.
way someone's dry They became so sensitive if I
for saliva.
touched them; they exploded
Whenever
like this. It
for light to
for light, for color, the
mouth may hunger sparks shooting as
27
Punishment
Varieties of
I
my
was lying down and
nostrils.
became
I
a ball of tension. I
counted twenty-three days by the meals. Then once
thirsty, it
and
my
in
felt
right
my way to the sink. hand. closed my
felt
I
eyes for a
I
shower of red and blue rained on me.
With my
night darkness. sink.
I
pressed
cup under
it
my
hand
judged
I
lips
and
it
tilted
it
I
Then
rose,
I
grasped
moment and
a
to mid-
the button on the
trickle of water.
full.
I
opened them
felt for
I
and could hear the
until
it
carefully to
left
the cup and
I
I
held
raised the
my cup
back to drink.
many insects run up my face, and into my hair. I flung down the cup and brought my hands to my face in an electric reaction and my eyes closed and the fireworks went off again. I heard someone screaming far away and it was me. I fell against the wall, and as if it were a catapult, was hurled across the cell to the opposite wall. Back and forth I reeled, from the felt
I
the legs, the bodies of
my
over
eyes
door to the walls, screaming. Insane.
When
I
regained consciousness,
been removed from the blackout
I
was
cell.
in a regular cell.
Every inch of
I
had
my body
filth and my hair was completely matted. do not think blackout cells are in use in many prisons and
was black with I
today
jails
.
.
.
.
.
.They are
still
in use
today and they are not used for
"medical reasons." They are used for punishment. They are called strip-cells
times
and
—sometimes
There
is
no
for
I
have been thrown in strip-cells many months on end. This is prison justice.
facility for
running water
in
such a
cell.
The
— IN
28
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
minds that design these punishment cells chill me when I consider them. The idea behind this one is that a prisoner in a strip-cell must "request" water from a guard. I don't think it would tax your imagination to see that a prisoner diabolic
is
reduced to begging for water. It is a big square concrete box.
The
cell
has nothing on the
walls except for a single solid-steel door at the entrance. ceiling
is
The
vaulted about fifteen feet above the floor and there
lit, day and night. no way to discern the days in the cell except by counting the times you are served your food through a slot in the door. How do you connect this with what you have done to be placed there? The floor inclines from the walls inward to the center of the cell. It inclines gradually, like the bottom of a sink. A toilet bowl is more accurate. Then, in the center of the floor, there is a hole about two inches in diameter. It is flush with the concrete floor as flush as a hole on a golf course. At first its
is
a bare lightbulb that stays
In fact, there
is
—
purpose mystifies you. Stains of urine
and
fecal
matter radiate outward from the
The
hole to within a foot or so from the walls.
stench
is
ever-present.
There is no bed-rack or bunk. There is nothing but the smell of shit and piss, and the glare of the light out of reach which is never extinguished.
—
The
light
is
present even
trates the eyelids
when you
and enters your
white glow, so that you cannot in
close your eyes. It pene-
visual sensations in a grayish-
rest
your eyes.
It
throbs always
your mind. Usually you are given nothing to wear but a pair of under-
shorts,
and
if
you are lucky, you
will receive a sleeping
mat and
a bedsheet.
At
first
you move gingerly about the
wastes of prisoners
time
in the first
against a wall floor
which
cell
because of the body
who preceded you. You spend much
of your
long days squatting with your back defensively
—squatting on the
radiates
from the
outskirts of the filth
hole. Staring into
it.
on the were
If it
29
Punishment
Varieties of
desolation you were facing as you stare off in your
cell, it
would
probably inspire you in some small way. Poets have sung songs of scenes of desolation.
But what faces you
is
a cesspool
world of murk and slime;
a subterranean world of things that squirm and slide through piss. There is the and nervous sweat of bodies foreign to yours, so closing your eyes gives no relief. If you are in that cell for weeks that add up to months, you do not ignore all this and live "with it"; you enter it and
noxious sewage, piles of shit and vomit and smell of
unwashed
become
a part of
I
is
feet
it.
never suffered from
enough moisture
thirst.
in the
No one there does,
really.
food to hold that back. But
There I
have
mouth that I could not swallow, I could not talk, for weeks. You "ask" for water like this: "Wa? Wa?" This is the strip-cell. Not only do these cells still exist in every state in this country, even the architects of modern prison facilities include them in new institutions. been so dry
in the
Any sane man may wonder: What grievous crime would a man have to commit to be thus treated? The answer: In prison, anything at all. Any indiscretion. A contraband book. A murder.
A
purloined sandwich. This does not even square with the
savage's conception of justice:
.
.
An
eye for an eye.
.There was once a form of prison discipline called the
starvation diet. just barely
You were thrown
enough
in
the hole and fed once a day
minimum nourishment to exist the way the average man
to give you the
exist: to exist in the hole,
not to
does.
This was
still
being done only ten years ago.
gave you bread and water once a day
—
calculated by that strange brand of physicians
only as technicians of pain was ten days of off for at least
Some places maximum
but the
this.
I
can think of
Then you came
twenty-four hours of regular three meals served
you over that twenty-four-hour period. Then you were placed back on another ten-day stint of starvation
—
that
is, if
you had
IN
30
misbehaved
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
in the hole.
Otherwise, after ten days you were
let
out of the hole. All told,
I
served, in three years, the
starvation diet
That was when
I
sum
of one year on the
entered prison as a child
first
of eighteen.
The
longest stretch
I
ever pulled was about seventy consecu-
tive days.
At
maximum you
this prison, the
could obtain in a sentence
to the hole under starvation conditions
was twenty-nine
Usually the sentence never exceeded fourteen days
—
days.
or
two
weeks. That was for an average misdemeanor, a minor infraction of rules. I
my
went there once face.
My
for spitting
was taken there under tain's
back
at a pig
a twenty-nine-day sanction
spit in I
by the cap-
committee.
State custom permitted us these items
under starvation conditions 1)
who had
sentences were always the most severe, and so
in
when we were
living
No
other
the hole:
one Christian Bible or one Book of Mormon.
reading matter or religious matter allowed; 2)
one
set of
white coveralls
(the gun-tower guards
made
had orders
of white canvas material
to shoot
the yard in this disciplinary garb;
it
anyone they saw on
identified
you the way a
shaved head identified kids at the Industrial School for Boys
who were
rebellious);
3) one sleeping mat and a bedsheet. Nothing more. You could receive neither your mail nor any visits. This included legal mail from the courts as well as mail from your lawyer no lawyer could even visit you during this period of discipline. When your time was over, you were handed your back mail in a heap. I had been there for about two weeks, and one evening, just as the guard was exiting after making his rounds to count us, someone shouted: 'Tuck you!" The pig called down the range: "Okay, Abbott! That's another report!" Then he left. The inmate volunteered to confess he did it to save me from
—
Punishment
Varieties of
31
more time on starvation. In those days prisoners backed each and an injury to one was an injury to us all. I cited this code and told him I had to ride it out. other,
The
next day the guards escorted
me
to the captain's disci-
committee and I was sentenced nine-day stint, to be served after the one plinary
to another twentyI
was then halfway
through.
A little later on, it
I
my Bible in the toilet and wrapped from my bedsheet to form a hefty
soaked
tightly with strips of cloth
bludgeon. This was done because the day before, rousted by pigs
who pretended
When
beaten up in the process. day,
I
lured
making
him up
I
they were searching the guard
to the bars of
my
cell
had been
my cell and
came by the next hit him with it,
and
a gash across his forehead.
When
I
was taken before the captain's committee,
I
was
given another twenty-nine-day stint back-to-back with the
other two sanctions.
He
passed the
me and and bounced it
written on across the table to it
carefully into a ball
slip of I
paper the order was
picked
it
wadded
up,
off his chest.
was given yet another twenty-nine-day sanction. That
I
made
four of
After
my
them
first
had stint was I
meals (twenty-four hours).
to
do
over, I
—roughly I
was not taken
total of six
months.
It
off for three
caused a ruckus and received an-
other twenty-nine-day sanction and then,
A
four months.
finally,
another.
was, in fact, the death penalty.
I
was going to die if I remained on the starvation diet that long for sure. Every prisoner and guard knew this. The inmate who shouted 'Tuck you" to the pig was out of the hole and on the yard, but
he went to the captain and told him
shouted the obscenity at the guard and not save me. .
.
It
I,
it
was he who
in
an effort to
did no good.
.Have you ever experienced forced starvation?
even close to a diet or a
fast.
Those things
It is
not
are voluntarily
entertained.
When
the gate slides closed behind you in that
cell in
which
you are going to be subjected to methodical starvation, you face the fact that you have to survive the worst periods of
it
—the
last
days before
make down
You have
to preserve yourself, so you you must keep every motion you necessary minimum. You do the sanction lying
it is
cannot pace your in
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
IN
32
to a
over.
cell; in fact,
your bunk.
Most
convicts, then,
when they entered
conditions, always gave their
first
these starvation
man who
once-a-day to the
had been there the longest and needed it more. Likewise, his last day he gives his once-a-day to the one who needed it more. The greater need was calculated by days and was mechanical. You suffer psychologically at first, That is why overweight men complained more. But when it gets down to physical survival, the suffering
learned a
I
protein.
Mash
and swallow it
it
real.
secret in this period.
little
years old passed
is
it
the day's catch like a big pill.
all I
convict over sixty
feels strange to
a source of
together in a piece of bread
went beyond
was over, included every bug
weird glow and
A
on to me: cockroaches are
and before
this,
could catch.
I
gives you a
It
your metabolism
when you
begin to starve.
You may have one bowel movement but never more then two under starvation conditions. Your stomach shrinks up into a tight ball. This is what causes hunger pangs. When it has shrunken completely, the hunger pangs are no more. You are no longer hungry, although the rest of your body begins to take over the pain and extend it. Your limbs express hunger when your muscle tissue begins to dissolve.
The need
to feel.
becomes
to eat
It is a
a
strange kind of pain
need to devour,
like
an
animal. If
you bloat yourself on water, you only prolong the pain
your stomach and
it
in
the other expressions of
will multiply
suffering starvation. I
once caught myself considering the arm of a
became
excited the way,
I
guess, a carnivorous beast
excited to see his dinner on the hoof.
It
was
as
if I
pig, and becomes
could smell
his blood. I
had completed
strike.
The
sixty days
when
pigs filled the hole to
there was an inmate work
maximum
capacity with
Punishment
Varieties of
strikers.
33
was no longer suffering stomach hunger pangs and
I
my muscles were all but dissolved by then. had again not been given my twenty-four-hour respite. recall just quit consuming my once-a-day and gave it to I
I
I
and even threw it out it from me. I had entered indifference, almost euphoria. Yet, they say I roamed the strikers in solidarity.
my
of
the
cell
when they
I
Looking,
floor, picking.
saw the gate to
is
one day
I
had heard shouting and
I
on
insisted
I
imagine, for
my cell open
I
found
all
this
my
in a
scuffling vaguely
out
bugs. All
I
recall
slow drowsy haze. all
The
that day.
demand my
prisoners tried to take a hostage to starvation.
it
refused to accept
release
from
later.
make out the few
blurred faces bobbing toward me as I lay in my bunk. One of them carried me in his arms to the infirmary. I have flashes of memory of being carried up the main corridor. About a week later I awoke in a hospital cell with a tube
could barely
I
down my
nasal passage to
my
stomach and there was
of clear liquid suspended upside
my
that ran into
When
down with
a bottle
a tube attached
arm.
they couldn't handle you in segregation or the Grade
—and you had be way-out on the C Cellhouse the death row — the death one was with "C-300." cube was the "gas tank" —where you were (Maximum
Security confinement)
—you were thrown
to
third floor of
in a special cell
old
office of
(in
cell called
of boiler-plate steel
a
It
row):
a
solid-steel door. It
tear-
gassed and there was no ventilation. There, they once did not feed I
me
for a week.
was kept chained to the
"Normally," I
They gave me only
I
a glass of water a day.
floor for periods of
was unchained. Once
I
one
to
two weeks.
was kept there
a year.
did a six-month stretch there another time. I
was
in that cell the
day
J.
F.
Kennedy was
(death row was cheering; they had heard I
was there the day
to spit in
my
face
a pig with a
when
wooden
it
assassinated
on the news).
leg (a pig
who
used
the outer steel door was opened)
IN
34
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
opened the outer door and declared: "Your mother died last night!" and then he slammed the door in my face. This is
—
how
learned of her death.
I
No
one has ever done the time I did in C-300. Nor has anyone served as long as five years from January 1966 to March 1971 in Maximum Security as I have. I had to escape
—
—
to get out.
.
am on
.1
.
meal.
the Grade.
my
on the back wall of
You
son-of-a-bitch!" It
going to die!" There
my
pacing
cell after
the evening
cell. It is is
saying "I'm gonna
a string of obscenities.
is
kill
you!
You
saying "Jack! Jack Abbott!
No one can
are
hear
except me.
this I
am
I
hear a voice whispering loudly through the ventilator
I
go to the vent
for a
moment,
quick rage:
in
I'm thinking
it is
"Who
"Fuck you!
then:
It's
the prisoner in the
There
it!?"
is
me, Abbott! cell
on the
He comes
to his vent.
He
me
tells
me!"
It's
tier
mine, on the other side of the plumbing pipe-run.
by name.
silence
is
opposite call
I
him
he doesn't know
what I'm talking about. He withdraws.
The
voice returns.
ventilator. I
I
shout at
and obscenities.
No by,
He
will
I
shout that I'm going to get
I
other prisoner heard him.
me.
to
peer carefully through a crack in the
I
hand move. It is a pig. him and he whispers loudly back
see a
throw
He comes The
My fight;
make
has to
by
a
his
I
tell
—
me threats even. He leaves. to
them what the
rounds to count.
When
pig did
he comes
cup of water on him.
—grinning
evilly at
me.
I
douse him.
trap slams closed. cell
door
slides
they leave.
open. Guards pour onto the
They had been waiting
for
me
to
tier.
We
throw the
water.
The
next day
I
am
taken before the captain's committee and
given a twenty-nine-day sentence to the hole on starvation diet. I
tell
calling
the captain the pig had been threatening
me names
through
my
ventilator.
me and
Punishment
Varieties of
A
me
psychiatrist sees
lucinating.
I
am
35
He
in the hole.
grams of Thorazine three times a day. At that time I was barely nineteen years the
first
am
I
old.
I
hal-
milli-
was one of
prisoners in this country subjected to drug therapy in
Now
prison.
me
tells
placed on injections of two hundred
it is
common.
I could fight no more. (Five or six and wrestled me to the floor three times a day and injected Thorazine into me.) I suffered severe physical side effects. At that time, there was not much known about I
fought every time, until
guards entered the
cell
the side effect called the "Parkinson's reaction. "
doctor thought
This gave
.
.
I
me my
.This letter
prison. It
is
The
prison
was feigning. first
psychiatric record.
about the
is
have
instability "crazies"
how we who
about
suffer
from
in
this prison-cul-
tivated disease are dealt with.
X
told
me
he once saw Gilmore
transfixed, frozen
nerve-endings of his central nervous system. die any
more from
happen.
You do not
on the always
crucifixion; the authorities try not to let that
I've myself
hundred times and more drugs that are for some sinister reason
been crucified
by those institutional
a
called "tranquilizers."
They
are phenothiazine drugs,
and include
Mellaril,
Thora-
zine, Stelazine, Haldol.
Prolixin
is
the worst I've ever experienced.
One
injection
two weeks. Every two weeks you receive an injection. These drugs, in this family, do not calm or sedate the nerves. They attack. They attack from so deep inside you, you cannot lasts for
locate the source of the pain.
upon
The
drugs turn your nerves in
yourself. Against your will, your resistance, your resolve
are directed at your
own
tissues,
your
own
muscles, reflexes, etc.
These drugs are designed
to render you so totally involved with
yourself physically that
you can do
all
is
concentrate your entire
being on holding yourself together. (Tying your shoes, for example.)
You cannot
cease trembling.
IN
36
From tion"
—
all
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
of these drugs you can get the
"
Parkinson's reac-
a physical reaction identical to Parkinson's disease.
The
muscles of your jawbone go berserk, so that you bite the inside
mouth and your jaw
of your
and the pain
locks
throbs.
For
hours every day this will occur. Your spinal column stiffens so
move your head
that you can hardly
or your neck
and some-
bow and you cannot
times your back bends backward like a stand up.
The
pain grinds into your
fiber;
cannot read. You ache with have to walk, to pace.
And in
is
then as soon as you
opposite occurs to you: you must
up and down you go
your vision
so blurred you
restlessness, so that
sit
and
rest
you
feel
start pacing,
Back and
you the
forth,
pain you cannot locate; in such
wretched anxiety you are overwhelmed, because you cannot get relief
even
in breathing.
inside you to the point
Sometimes a groan or whimper rises comes out involuntarily and people
it
look at you curiously, so you suppress the noise as
belch
—
sound that
this
You can see it. arms as we walk
We are us;
we
is
wrung out
if it
were a
of your soul.
We walk stiff-backed and we don't swing our .
.
.
not crazy, so
are dangerous.
why do
We
fear
they do
it?
Because they fear
nothing they can do to
us,
not
even the drugs, the crucifixion.
No doubt there are those who need these drugs; do not get me wrong. do not pretend to be a doctor. Those who need I
who are
the drugs,
know
this,
It is like
by
it.
ill,
it
it
the way
for
this to a
man who
medical reasons and
It is painful, a
it
is
we do. They
little trick.
electroshock treatment: there are those
But administer
require
do not experience
the prison regime knows this
who benefit
healthy and does not
becomes
a
nightmare. Fifteen years ago
form of it
torture.
was used to
punish prisoners.
When
the captain and the pigs cannot discipline you, can-
not intimidate and therefore hurt and punish you, control you,
you are handed over to a "psychiatrist,"
who
doesn't even look
at you and who orders you placed on one of these drugs. You see, there is something wrong with your mind if you defy the
37
Punishment
Varieties of
worst "official" punishment a prison regime can legally dish up.
That
their logic.
is
me
this cycle over and over Over and over. A pig pushes me, I instinctively push back, sometimes slug him. That starts it. Eventually I end up stammering like an idiot and staggering about usually for six months to a year at a time on the drugs, until finally I'm taken off the drugs and turned loose with the "normal" prisoners in the main prison population. I
For years they have put
through
again: captain-doctor-broken-rule.
—
—
go along there until the next "incident" that leads to "discipline,"
and once more the cycle begins,
like a
my
crazy
carousel, a big "merry-go-round."
They know what they are doing, even if they never admit They will not even admit it to me. No one expects me to become a better man in prison. So why not say it: The purpose is to ruin me, ruin me completely. The purpose is to it
to anyone.
mark me,
to
my
stamp across
face the
mark
of this beast they
call prison. .
write with
I
.
my
blood because
I
have nothing
because these things are excessively painful to
else
recall. It
—and drains
me. .
.There
.
believe that.
is
a saying:
The
once or twice and
The
cut
first it is
is
first
cut
the deepest
is
You can spit in You can take something away
nothing.
nothing.
Do not my face
me and I can learn to live without it. But you cannot spit in my face every day for ten thousand days; you cannot take all that belongs to me, one thing at a that belongs to
time, until you have gotten voice,
my
hands,
my
heart.
down to reaching for my eyes, my You cannot do this and say it is
nothing. I
have been made oversensitive
made
to suffer sensations
have been chopped to pieces by tions;
and by drugs
lies
have had
my mind
I
flesh
has been
never had before.
I
a life of deprivation of sensa-
am now a piece of meat and that attack my nervous system.
by beatings so frequent
bone; by
— my very
and longings
I
I
turned into steel by the endless smelter of
time in confinement.
IN
38
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
have been twisted by
I
twisted by love
Once
I
.
.
justice the
way other men can be
.
was taken from the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary to
the Butner, North Carolina, Federal Correctional Institution for psychological
experimentation
—the
result of
being
falsely
accused of involvement in an almost-fatal knife assault on a prison guard.
At Butner,
I
was told almost immediately upon
unnamed informer among
that an that
I
my
arrival
the inmates had reported
was planning to escape.
I
was taken by about twenty guards and other employees into
a special psychological observation cell.
Butner was built from
the ground up with architectural concepts almost futuristic in design.
It is
extremely modern and could easily be a set for a
space-age movie.
The
psychological observation cell
designed glass
like a fish
tank (an aquarium)
was unbreakable.
human
was taken into was
I
—
except, of course, the
impossible to see or hear another
It is
being, or to be seen or heard by anyone but the prison
staff.
The a
floor
was concrete and
round grating over
One
it,
such as
on iron
steel slab sat
in the center in a
shower
was a drain, with stall.
legs bolted to the floor.
the "bed," and there was nothing else in the a rubber
mat on
it
cell.
This was
There was
about an inch thick.
I was forced to lie on the steel slab. Each of my ankles was chained to a corner of the bed-structure, and my wrists were chained over my head to the other two I
was stripped nude.
corners, so
was chained down
I
in a
complete spread-eagle
position.
There were
Army
a
few females on the
personnel). This was in 1976
In order to urinate
would hang
I
had
to twist
staff
(most were also U.S.
—the my
latter part.
torso so that
my
in a general direction over the side of the
penis
bed-
J
— Varieties of
structure,
drain
I
and the urine would
cross the floor
and go down the
described above.
was hand-fed
I
39
Punishment
each meal.
at
The day after I was chained down,
several guards entered the
and beat me with their fists all over my face, chest and stomach. I was choked manually and brought to the point almost of strangulation, and then they would remove their hands. My throat was blue with bruises caused this way. I was chained now I mean iron chains, not "leather recell
—
straints"
—
—
in this
manner
for ten days,
and
I
was attacked three
times in this period. Finally the "medical technician" observed that the nerves in
my
—the
and elbows. So about twenty guards came again. They unchained me and dressed me in nylon coveralls. As I was dressing I glanced in the window at my reflection and my face was black and both eyes swollen. I was covered with bruises. They put me in handcuffs and leg-irons and took me to the regular segregation section. There only one of my hands was kept chained to the iron crossbar at the head of the bed. I could stand. It was at that time that I began writing you, in the hole, with one hand chained to my bed. I was kept chained by one hand until I was rushed to the federal medical center in Missouri. My gall bladder was removed. I had gallstones, but the beatings had agitated the condition, and I learned that the tissue of my gall bladder had broken due to the jolts of the stones pressed against the organ.
.
arms were dying
.
areas
between
wrists
.The guards form a loose gauntlet from your
shower
stall.
You must
cell to
the
cross the floor, a distance of about thirty
every
They look at you as if you are not there, but are alert move you make. They register your facial expression
see
you are anything but meek, humble. Anything
yards.
if
their hackles,
and
their
mouths turn down
they ball up their hands into
You
are nude.
The
floor
is
fists
to to
else raises
at the corners
and
at their sides.
wet from the prisoners before you
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
IN
40
who
trailed
from the showers. There are
it
also spots of blood,
fresh.
You
stare at the floor.
drag your feet
when you
not too slowly. Your gait the
You must slump your shoulders and You must go slowly but must be timid. You must not slip on
—
take steps.
floor.
Fold your arms. Fold your arms behind your back. That the best way to assure
them you
are incapable of harm.
is
It is
one of the postures of the meekly insane. Try to make them laugh at you. Cringe; that should do
Do not
me you would
tell
be pounded to the
will
it.
not follow these instructions.
floor otherwise.
The
You
guards are hired
by the pound. They are Missouri rednecks from the Ozark regions. Alone with one or two, they are profoundly afraid of anyone. But
six
naked, can do.
or seven are afraid of nothing one prisoner, It
does not matter the least
dangerous the prisoner Everything
is
is.
Not
framed by a
into a vague fog.
Your mind
there
it
how
doesn't.
soft blur that radiates is
(or
a
outward
You
not working any longer.
have no questions, either for yourself or others. This
you are under the influence of
strong or
phenothiazene drug
is
because
—any one
combination) of ten or fifteen such drugs known by the
brand names. Mixed with terrorism,
They crasy. If testicles
all
it
equals living death.
accomplish the same, but each has
its little
idiosyn-
you have been on regular dosages of Mellaril, your if you can will not produce sperm. If you masturbate
somehow manage
— —you
to accomplish a fantasy erection
will
experience at orgasm every sensation of tension and ejaculation
you should experience, but with
this difference: absolutely
substance issues from the ejaculation
—no
fluid at
all, let
no
alone
semen. If
you do not know the cause of
you can
suffer
this, in
your drugged state
an anxiety, a terror not easy to describe.
It
feeds
your despair the fact that you have become sexually injured
somehow.
Do your
not
cell
tell
one of the two prison
door each morning.
who come by looms into view
psychiatrists
When
his face
Punishment
Varieties of
at the
window
man and
says
when he
of your door,
"How are you
this
41
smiles like a mechanical
morning?"
—
flee into yourself.
Smile cheerfully and blink your eyes when you say 'Tine, fine"
—
or he will double your dosage.
them,
can understand
I
They punish you
if
you bother
you report complications.
if
in prison
—only
how
in this
a man's mind can be turned to steel way can he be equal to the hardships
that surround him.
Ho
Uncle
wrote
this
poem
in prison:
Without the cold and desolation of winter There could not be the warmth and splendor of spring. Hardships have tempered and strengthened me,
And
turned
my mind
to steel
have never forgotten
I
this in
about thirteen or fourteen
years.
.When
I became poetic about a prisoner's mind turning meant to convey the idea of a will power "steeled" in trials and hardships so profound that the prisoner's mental resolution, his powers of "iron logic" have been enhanced and not weakened. An opposite effect of torture. I hardly meant the .
.
to steel,
I
own humanity. know how to live through anything they could
prisoner lost his I
up for me. I've been subjected been chained to the floor and
to strip-cells,
possibly dish
blackout
wall; I've lived
through the
beatings, of course; every drug science has invented to ify"
to
my behavior
me;
I
—
I
"mod-
have endured. Starvation was once natural
have no qualms about eating insects
my body
cells,
in
my cell or living
means survival. They've even armed in punishment cells with me to kill me, but I can control that. When they say "what doesn't destroy me makes me stronger," that is what they mean. But in
wastes
if it
psychopaths and put them
IN
42
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
a mistake to equate the results with being strong.
it's
extremely
flexible,
but I'm not strong. I'm weakened,
I'm
in fact.
I'm tenuous, shy, introspective, and suspicious of everyone. loud noise or a false in
me. But
very I
Vm
movement
not afraid
A
registers like a four-alarm fire
—and
that
is
strange, because
I
care
much about someday being set free and want to cry when I
think that Til never be free.
I've spent a lifetime with.
I
want
Someday
I
to cry for
will leave
my
brothers
them and never
return.
.
.
.And
after
it is all
done
to you, after you have
been robbed
completely of fear and nothing anyone can threaten you with
can constrain you
—what
point
is
served by keeping you in
prison? It is
no longer possible
to punish you.
ered unpunishable. Madness ing you in prison.
But
for
Or
is
old age.
some perverse reason
—
never been twisted into insanity. times
—have
in fact
I
I
do not know why
affair.
I
—
have come close to
entered insanity
was only an introductory I
You have been
rend-
the only possible point in keep-
—but
it
I
it
have
many
turns out that
it
always bounce back to sanity.
I can sense derangement most subtle expressions even in
have reached such a pass by now,
a long
men
way
off
—
I
can see
its
not considered insane.
were a pole of a magnet and insanity a like pole, this image would express the matter. I cannot be pulled by it, but If
I
I
know
it
by repulsion: by the force that repels
even conscious
it is
there.
me
before
I
am
THE HOLE: SOLITARY CONFINEMENT
TM
here
is
man
only one
in a cell in the hole for
it
to really
be "the hole." There are rows of cells on a tier, but in the hole the genuine hole no two prisoners are ever out of their cells
—
—
same time. There are always
at the
voices in the hole.
have seen wars take place take place in the hole.
I
in the hole.
have seen,
as a
It's I
a strange thing.
I
have seen sexual love
matter of
fact,
the most
impossible things happen under these conditions. Let us say a
kind of
movement
illustrate: to
that
is
not really
walk ten miles
in
movement
exists there.
To
an enclosed space of ten feet
is
not really movement. There are not ten miles of space, only time.
You do not go ten
words,
.
I
.
I
I
would have
miles.
To write about the hole, in other common places.
to explore such
have been dragged to the hole fighting back many times.
was once carried to the hole
in
Leavenworth by the security
H
IN
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
about
six feet
My
hands were cuffed behind me. A pig two inches who weighed about two hundred and
force (goon squad).
He was about forty-five, but he was had me face down on the concrete floor, punching and kicking me. It was exactly like a pack of dogs on me. The big one, the boss, ordered me to stand up. He motioned to the others to stand back and I swear to God, you won't believe this, he knocked my clothes off me with a few swipes of his hands. fifty
pounds was the
The
hard as a rock.
boss.
pigs
—
The
my
cloth tore
my
skin like knife cuts.
shoes (high tops) and knocked
All through this thing
and smiling.
I
I
tried to
keep
thought they were so
animals, which was true, but
the time they threw
me
I
them
hit the floor,
he
hit
my head by acting passive afraid of me it made them
couldn't calm them. That was
down
face
I
off (broke the laces).
in a
dungeon
cell.
They
me while one unhandcuffed me. The pig who knocked my clothes off was the last to leave the cell. heard them back out of the cell and rolled over onto my side. was stood on
I
I
I
hurting everywhere. Well, this pig,
emotional of them
who had seemed
the least
had his cock out and his face was wrinkled up in a grin and he kind of bounced up and down by bending his knees. He was pretending to jerk off. Then he zipped his fly and left the cell kind of chuckling.
.
.
.You
sit in
not merely your ety, others, the
all,
solitary
confinement stewing
in nothingness,
own nothingness but the nothingness of sociworld. The lethargy of months that add up to
years in a cell, alone, entwines itself about every "physical" activity of the living
body and
strangles
it
slowly to death, the
horrible decay of truly living death. You no longer do push-ups or other physical exercises in your small cell; you no longer pace the four steps back and forth across your cell. You no longer masturbate; you can call forth no vision of eroticism in any form, and your genitals, like the limbs of your body, function only to keep your body alive. Time descends in your cell like the lid of a coffin in which
The lie
and watch
neither
move nor
you
45
Hole: Solitary Confinement
as
it
it
When
slowly closes over you.
think in your
cell,
you are awash
you pure
in
nothingness.
confinement
Solitary
makeup
.
I
.My
.
in
prison can alter the ontological
of a stone.
years in solitary confinement altered
care to admit, even to myself. But
I
me more
than the
will try to relate
experience, because you're understanding, and what you do not
understand
only what you cannot because you have not
is
experienced the hole for years.
You
and that
listen
is all
that
counts. It is
me
hard for
to begin. Beginnings are like that for
me
now.
But something happens down there like It
cannot take place
know them. Not many all
they served
understand
half
is
know who have been
lying,
five years
why
They do not six or
I
their lives will tell
Everyone
hole.
time and space the way
in
we
ordinarily
prisoners have experienced this event.
most prisoners
fails:
on
the hole, something
in
an event, but this event can only occur over a span of years.
you they have served
and
I
It
never
in prison off five years in
and the
do not know why they must say
Why
in the hole.
five
years?
that particular duration occurs to
all
I
cannot
of them.
— nor even
1 '
say "I served four years or three years
seven years.
It is
always
five years.
dozen who have indeed served
I
do know perhaps a
five years or six years,
but
they are so few and so far between.
At any
rate, let
in a cell ten feet
six
and
return to the point. Let us say you are
long and seven feet wide. That means seventy
feet of floor space.
and
me
But your bunk
a half feet long.
Your
is
just
over three feet wide
iron toilet
and sink combina-
tion covers a floor space of at least three feet tallied,
on the
by two
feet. All
you have approximately forty-seven square feet of space floor.
It
works out to a pathway seven feet long and
IN
46
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
—
about three feet wide the excess is taken up by odd spaces between your commode and wall, between the foot of the bunk and the wall. If
were an animal housed
I
dimensions, the
Humane
arrested for cruelty.
in a
zoo in quarters of these
Society would have the zookeeper
It is illegal
to house an animal in such
confines.
But
am
I
not an animal, so
I
do not
insist
on such
rights.
My body communicates with the cell. We exchange temperand
atures walls.
I
I
try to
keep
it
clean, to
year or two, then let
first
and leavings on the floor and wash away my evidence, for the
smells
air currents,
it
go at
that.
have experienced everything possible to experience time
in a short
—
a
day or so
if
in a cell
I'm active, a week or two
if
I'm
sluggish. I
must
from that point on, the routine, the monotony
fight,
me
am
must do
and do it without losing my mind. So I read, read anything and everything. So I mutter to myself sometimes; sometimes recite that will bury
alive
if I
not careful.
I
that,
poetry. I
my
have
memories.
I
have the good ones, the bad ones, the
ones that are neither of these. So I
speeds, I
I
have myself.
my seven-by-three-feet pathway, and pace, at various depending on my mood. think. remember. think.
have
I
I
I
I
remember.
Memory it
with
it.
Finally
facts
arrested in the hole.
is
membered
thing, study
others,
and
it
under
it
I
think about each
in detail, over
headings
for
and
how
changes and begins to tear
joins
my
imagination.
Someone
over.
I
feel
I
itself
free
said being
is
re-
unite
about
from
mem-
ory. It travels
what ory
is
is,
the terrain of time in a pure way, unfettered by
reckless of
what was, what
will
become
not enriched by any further experience.
of
It is
it.
Mem-
deprived
memory, memory deprived of every movement but the isolated body traveling thousands of miles in the confines of
my
prison
cell.
— The
47
Hole: Solitary Confinement
My body plays with my mind; my mind plays with my body; the further
I
go into that terrain of time, into
my
memories,
—
more they enter my imagination. The imagination bringing this memory into that, and that into this, every posreplaces further exsible permutation and combination perience, which would, if not enhance it, at least leave it the
—
intact. I remember well, with such clarity, I am blinded by the memory. It is as if I had forgotten but it is that I remember
—
so well, too well:
Why am
Because I needed the money? Or was it on the counter? What was it a theft? Or was by the pond in the flowery dress who smiled at I here?
—
the palmprint that girl
it
me
.?
.
.
Where was
I?
Every memory has an element of pain or disappointment. scolds a
It
little
and
own
in its
way. These elements are nor-
mally overshadowed by a
familiarity
we
The
happily forget the
a quality
we can
live
rest.
we can there
rest:
is
with
live
no
rest
—but
with in comfort, a degree of quie-
tude.
In the hole after a while the painful elements begin to throw
out shoots and sprout like brittle weeds in the garden of ory
—
until finally, after so long, they
mem-
choke to death everything
else in the garden.
You flinty
are left with a wild wasteland of scrubby
stone and dusty
It is
soil.
They
call
it
weeds and
psyche-pain.
the same with ideals. Everyone has a few: a touch of
idealism, a
little
of passion.
As
life in
the hole, in the pure
terrain of time, continues, your passions are aroused less less
and
with the help of memories and more and more by your
ideals.
Love, Hate, Equality, Justice, Freedom, War, Peace,
Beauty, Truth
empty
—they
all
abstract gods that
obedience. Little Hitlers
eventually
become
Idols,
pure and
demand your fealty, your undying come from every precious feeling,
every innocent notion you ever entertained, every thought
about yourself, your people, the world
—
all
become
so
many
IN
48
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST each other, that stridently dictate to you
idols, oblivious to
in
the prison hole.
You cannot
them up with your days, your years, for they try God, how you try. The wasteland that is your memory now comes under the empty
are
fill
too.
—
But you
absolute dictatorship of idols too terrible to envision.
They
are the hard, driving winds that torture the tum-
bleweeds across the prairie desert of
memory
—the
crazy, hard
winds that whip up smaller chaotic columns of dust that twist a
few feet
in
the
air like little
tornadoes.
They are the scorching
suns that wither the scrubby vegetation and torture the
shimmers
in
waves of suffocating heat that
rises
air
that
from the dead,
hard stone. They are the cold, merciless nights of the desert that offer surcease only to the fanged serpents: the punishment unfolds.
Don't go near
Then
yourself.
You
the mirages in the wasteland.
are far from insan-
you are only living through an experience, an event. The
ity;
mirages are real reflections of that pure terrain of time.
how
They
far
you have journeyed into
are real.
They bring
the
now
out-of-place things back into the desert that was once the felicitous
garden of your memory. There a cherished
woman
and you approach, draw close to her, and you touch her and she caresses you and then she vanishes passes into existence
in a shimmer to become and are is
reveal the
caressing
so
masturbating that you have
than
it
appeared,
wall
the
in
the
—and
it
its
beautiful flower
radiant wings in a
the dusty weeds.
More suddenly
disappears to reveal a dark splotch on
fetid,
the dusty pebbles
quench
among
A
tenderly.
seen at a small distance and opens
promise of spring
to
man
musky
cell.
of the wasteland,
as you turn,
it
A
brook bubbles over
promising to quench,
disappears in a flush of the
toilet.
Anything you can experience
and calls
after
an indecent
interval,
the old, nice quality of a
in the hole,
you do to yourself,
each occasional experience
memory which
lies
re-
fallow be-
The
49
Hole: Solitary Confinement
A
neath the wasteland.
word
tone
in a sentence; a
or sound; a fleeting essence in a taste or odor; a
in a voice
momentary and These can
texture in a tactile sensation, or a combination of motion
form and color caught by the revive a
good thing. Real
tail
of your visual field.
things: these are the mirages in the
desert.
The
world
real
out of place in the hole, but the hole
is
nonetheless really there.
ward
in
human
It is
experience.
time that no longer moves
You can
is
for-
walk, placing one foot
before the other, across eternity in time. All the space you need is
six or
seven
feet.
The
hole furnishes only that provision: you
are living a demonstration of the theory of the infinite within
the
finite;
the dream within the
But the hole quite
real.
is
not the
In fact,
it is
stuff of
so real
it
reality.
dreams, of fantasies:
it is all
haunts you.
Experience occurs seldom and only
in extremes: vividly in-
tense or drably monotonous. Surreal paintings have tried to
capture
—with some
that are very real in
To you
it is
success, life in
know
might add
—the
relationships
not a dream.
It is
not a dream. Your words and thoughts can only
reflect this condition of
not
I
the prison hole.
their plight.
your sensations, your feelings; they do
Few
thoughts in the hole are conscious
of their true grounds.
You become silent, contemplative, because you have become inverted. Your sense perception, having taken in everything, including yourself, within the finite confines of the hole,
passes through the side,
monotony and now
the infinite, to haunt you with
hole, at that
moment, would
call
up from the other Those outside the dream but you inside rises
reality.
—
a
it
the hole are in reality, not a dream:
What am awaken
I?
Do
to find this
I exist? is all
a
What is it like to like? What is it like
Does
dream?
devil?
be dead?
taste
to
would happen should legs?
Am
filthy
concrete floor?
I
I shit
homosexual?
What
a
on the is
floor? it
like
God?
Am
does
toilet
my
butt?
put a finger up
What
Will I
the world exist? Is there
Or to
piss
I the
water
What down my
sleep
on
this
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
IN
SO
The mind
deprived of experience because of social sensory
deprivation in the hole conceives
its
be
intellectual faculty to
capable of putting to use a fictional apparatus in the brain.
somehow it can learn to move material things, to
It
will believe that
control this apparatus
and use
destroy or change or
to
it
create physically real things. Shorn of a gracious
God, the mind
surrenders to nothing, to Nothingness: // /
(Yes.
concentrated, could I melt or bend the bars of
Ommmm.)
Should I
scrap of dust on the floor? (Yes. it
move
The
my
cell?
move that move? (I saw
concentrate to
first try to
Ommmm.) Did it
just a hair.)
intelligence recedes,
cause knowledge outside world
it is
is
no more
a tool of learning
based on experience
deprived of knowing.
minds by telepathy;
it
—but
It tries
—
be-
a tool of the
to contact other
becomes the Ancestor. Words and
Numbers come to hold mystic significance: they were invented by some arcane magic older than man. The line between the word and the thing vanishes; the intervals of numbers in infinity collapse with infinity.
The mind now
crouches in fear and superstition before the
idols of the hole, terrified:
/ do not
want
to talk
of interest. I cannot
been kind
me. Everyone betrays me.
to
—
any more. There
is
nothing you can say
remember ever being happy.
No
No one has ever
one can possibly
You have not suffered what You call me names (homosexual). You do not understand. You mock me (screwball). This world is nothing. An illusion. Death is the release. But a kind of genius can come of this deprivation of sensation, of experience. It has been mistaken as naive intelligence, when in fact it is empty intelligence, pure intelligence. The understand
they are too ignorant.
I have endured.
composition of the mind disintegrated and it is
altered.
Its
previous cultivation
is
has greater access to the brain, the body:
Supersanity.
You have to start from the and work your way down. You must study mathematical
Learning top
it
is
is
turned inside out.
The
Hole: Solitary Confinement
SI
theory before simple arithmetic; theoretical physics before applied physics; anatomy, you might say, before you can walk.
You have
to study philosophy in depth before you can un-
the
derstand
language or
simplest in
assumed
differences
categorical
in
any simple commonplace moral or ethical
maxim. Indeed,
almost a rule that the more simple and com-
it is
monplace something
the more difficult to understand
is,
it.
You have come the full circle; experienced that single event down there in the prison hole. How long does it
that happens take? Years.
.
in
I
.They
.
would say
name on what I have The first few
put a
finally
sensory
solitary:
out,
felt
I
me, dazzled
struck
All colors dazzled feel,
its
its
I
me
texture.
with
A
steel.
The a
prisoners walking about,
beauty
piece of
and
going in different directions
When
let
never
they
the
things,
had.
me
their multitude of voices
—bewildered me. —but beneath
by
many
—
all
was slow
I
the
surface
raged. I
I
was
fascinated
and slack-jawed and confused I
I
dull prison-blue shirts
wood The movements of
me.
I
saw only three or four
only concrete and
could not orient myself.
I
suffered
times
deprivation.
served a couple of years like that,
drab colors.
more.
five years or
how wasted
can guess
am no
have become now by the fact that
longer disoriented by solitary confinement.
wormed
finally
I
its
way
into
my
heart:
I
It
has
cannot measure
my
deprivation any longer.
Let us say
I
can no longer measure
my
feelings.
I
can draw
the proportions mentally, however.
.
the
.
I
explained to you the other day that the
moods
of the body.
The mind
cell regulates
does not regulate
its
— IN
52
own
Mental depression,
condition.
only seems that there
it
for example,
mind caused by the body.
the
of
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST a state
In a cell in the hole
a separation of
is
is
mind and body
in fact, the body's condition (of deprivations of sensations;
experiences,
and
functions,
mind more than
of the
so
on)
moods
the
controls
any other situation
in
can think
I
of.
William James described
become
sad because
because
we
That
are sad.
when he said we we do not shed tears
this relationship
we shed
tears:
our original condition as living
is
beings.
A
long time ago in the hole,
was on the
floor lying
elbows propping I
me
when
my stomach
on
So
up.
I
I
first
entered prison,
writing a letter, with
I
my
was bent directly over the page
was writing on.
My mood a
was "normal" the hole.
prisoner in
writing,
spots
little
touched them with
non
—when
my
child. it
I
I mean the normal mood of remember I noticed, as I was
water appearing on
of
a finger
suddenly
was the
then.
—
I
first
and wondered
realized
and immediately
eyes,
bly. It
I
I
tears
the
were
paper.
I
phenome-
at the
falling
from
began to weep uncontrolla-
and only time
I
have wept since
I
was
a
do not know why now, nor did I know the cause of I must have been weeping over everything, all of
it.
.
.
.A
man
is
taken away from his experience of society, taken
away from the experience of
when he
A man
a living planet of living things,
sent to prison.
is is
taken away from other prisoners, from his experi-
ence of other people, when he
confinement
in
is
locked away in solitary
the hole.
Every step of the way removes him from experience and narrows
There
it is
down
to only the experience of himself.
a thing called
death and
we have all seen
it.
It
brings
The to
an end
a life,
Hole: Solitary Confinement
an individual living thing.
S3
When
life
ends, the
living thing ceases to experience.
The
concept of death
is
simple:
it is
when
a living thing
no
longer entertains experience.
So when
a
experience, he
man is
is
taken farther and farther away from
being taken to his death.
THE PRISON STAFF
TM
he
pigs in the state
judicial
system
ine a time
I
—
treat
.
I
federal prisons
so violently,
I
can't begin to
were weaker by a
hair,
especially in the
tell
you what they do
they would destroy me.
.You asked about the way violence
.
—
cannot possibly imag-
I
could ever have anything but the deepest, aching,
searing hatred for them. to me. If
and
me
is
inculcated in prison-
ers. I
have never come into bodily contact with another
being
in
human
almost twenty years except in combat; in acts of
struggle, of violence.
How
do otherwise? Contact sports are not have been in. .Can you envision what it is to be a victim of terrorism in the hole? At any moment the cell door can be flung open and guards can enter and beat you to the floor, even as you sleep. At any hour of any day. is it
possible to
allowed in any prison .
.
I
The
55
Prison Staff
In the so-called closed psychiatric wards of the federal medical center for prisoners
No
when
I
was there,
was done
it
routinely.
prisoner had to say a word or do anything to bring on the
terror.
The
guards do not speak to you.
faculty of reason.
I
You
are cattle, without the
have been pointed
in the direction of a
place across the floor or the exercise cage to get
me
and given
to walk there because the guards, in their
a
push
contempt,
not acknowledge that a prisoner can understand rea-
will
son. .
.The guards there at that time took
.
it
upon themselves
to prescribe injections of phenothiazene drugs as potent as
Prolixin
— and every one
not
you, but
kill
will
of these drugs
is
dangerous.
They
most certainly cripple you. They
will
in effect
lobotomize you.
was so constantly and
I
after a while
my
all-pervading that
attack and exit
arbitrarily attacked in
desire for physical relief
my
when cell,
my
cell there,
was so powerful and
the guards finally would leave off the I
would sometimes achieve an erection
out of despair and pain.
have
I
those conditions had to masturbate to relieve
in
myself, but not masturbate with any vision in
imagination.
The pure
my
mind,
my
physical act of caressing the penis after
numberless exposures to attack
is
enough.
It is
entirely a physi-
cal thing, entirely involuntary.
Were I
I
an ordinary
man
with ordinary misunderstandings,
could easily have misunderstood what was happening inside
me.
I
could have misunderstood to the point of becoming a
sexual masochist, or a sadist. this act of release
been twisted by
How many .
.
and
I
could very easily have confused
with a sexual act of love, could have easily
this thing.
prisoners have been?
.Prisoners are inculcated detailed, so
thorough and
by
acts of violence so constant
relentless, as to
develop a kind
of defensive automatic suspicion of everyone. This suspicion
has been called paranoic. It
stems more from the indoctrinated belief prisoners come
to have that every injury to
them, they bring upon themselves.
IN
56
They end up
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
doing, almost consciously, suicidal violence to
themselves, both mental and physical. .Free will: this
.
when
it
inflicted
the doctrine of the American judiciary
is
blame
insists prisoners are to
upon them by
for
whatever harm
is
prisons.
This legal insistence indoctrinates even the
minds
finest
in
this country.
And has
yet a prisoner has
less
no
to injure himself, so long as faculties
—
free will, or at least, let us say,
No man
than other men.
free will
especially
he
if
he
is
in
is
ever chooses
own
in possession of his
possession
of
"free
his
will." If
I
seize hold of a
him and want him
like
he
policeman
me
of the judiciary, sent
to
Ah,
blame yes!
He
has,
under the auspices
to leave
me
alone and
tell
I
I
do not
him
so,
is
an injury he sustains from me?
for
has no "free will"
the government!
who
to the prison hole because
That
is
—he
is
an impersonal tool of
the way this twisted logic of American
justice proceeds.
have never seen an indifferent
I
unconcerned
The
pigs,
pig.
have seen lazy and
I
but never an objective and indifferent
lazy ones are like
magnanimous kings who
carelessly over-
look "slights" and arbitrarily pass out "mercies," but
whim, suddenly everyone to
rise
up angry and take
it all
pig.
will, at a
back, relegating
hell.
Always, always every guard in prison
is
a tyrant,
and
prison-
ers are his subjects. Is
that the right of
.
.In
.
San Quentin
government founded by
—and many other
a gun-rail or in a gun-tower sees
he
will shoot
exercise yard,
you down with
he
will shoot
his
prisons
free
—
if
men?
a guard
on
you touch another prisoner,
rifle. If
he
sees
you run
in the
you down. In the process, "stray"
down other prisoners. If the guards come to your cell to search it and before they can enter your cell you make a move toward your toilet, you
bullets always strike
— The
be shot down
will
in
your
contraband down the
That
cell.
They
are "afraid" you will flush
toilet.
why San Quentin
is
57
Prison Staff
has the very best hospital for
traumatic medicine in America.
Army
come
doctors even
there
to learn.
Now, you to
.
me who
the fuck deserves to be subjected
.A prison warden or guard
.
prison
walk
who is
"arrogant." There
is
a
way
that's a challenge to a pig.
by,
supreme
pig a
any authority
—hates one thing worse than anything
a prisoner just
just tell
this as a matter of justice?*
all
insult just
A
in a
else,
jail
and
a convict
or
that's
can walk,
convict can give a
by standing and answering the pig
without saying or doing anything you can put your finger on.
way
them
There
is
fiance.
(They used to throw you
a
they called
of looking at
that they interpret as de-
in the hole for looking
wrong;
"eyeballing.")
it
haven't been on the main line (the yard) in any peniten-
I
tiary in
which
warden) and
The
have caught the attention of a pig (especially a
I
haven't been stripped and searched on the spot
violence between guard and prisoner
and you see with
I
a lot of prisoners
is
open, naked,
defending themselves
in fistfights
pigs.
have never seen one pig whip one inmate. Not even two
I
pigs can
whip an average
fistfighting pigs
—
I
mean
prisoner.
that
When
I
speak of a prisoner
literally: at least five
or six pigs
at a time.
.
.
.The pigs
so? Well,
you
tell
see:
the public they are at a disadvantage.
when they
How
are in a fight with a convict, they
say they can only apply "necessary force"; they cannot beat
him up
— because, you
prisoner
is
see, the
not so restrained.
law "forbids"
it.
Whereas
a
IN
58
Not once
in
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
the judicial history of this country has the "law"
forbade beating a prisoner in a fight beating
him
The law
How can anyone prove
only convicts witness
No which
one
I
mean
does forbid the methodical use of torture and cor-
poreal punishment.
when
—by "beating"
to death. Never.
in this
such practices
exist
it?
country can cite for
me
a single instance in
and unusual punishment
a prisoner's complaint of cruel
has ever at any time been affirmed as true either by the govern-
ment it
in general or the prison
regime
in particular.
Never has
happened.
Why does no one believe the word of a word of the prison authorities? I would like to know, because in every single instance in which a prisoner is lucky enough to air his complaint in a courtroom in one of those civil rights lawsuits he always has been vindicated. Always proven to have told the truth. Never, not a single time, has a prisoner been shown in court to have been lying in his complaints of cruel and unusual So
tell
me
this:
prisoner over the
—
—
punishment. I
who
think that this country has an excessive take pride
— openly
or secretly
—
number
of people
in the fact that their
government is so inhumane, so evil; take pride in the fact that their government so thoroughly crushes men they consider "enemies" ("public enemies"). And those who do not have this kind of pride in their government, only sneer at those who do. And do nothing more.
.An ex-cop was committed to prison. He had arrested someone I once knew. He was one of those typical belligerent pigs. I guess he was about thirty-five. Someone pulled up on him on the yard and told him what he knew of him. The cop begged him to keep it quiet. The man agreed. He set him up to get into debt with some prisoners I knew. When the cop ran out of money to pay them, he bought the debt. That meant he had purchased the cop. The cop was standing there big-eyed and .
.
The scared shitless
him and
when
it
59
Prison Staff
happened. Later the one who bought
several of his partners
were standing talking to
me
in
the corridor. The cop was walking by. The one he owed him over to us. He just looked at him and said, "I just sold your debt. You owe me nothing. You owe him." He indicated this man, who walked him all over the joint, making him get things called
on
credit
from
a
himself a few days
dozen different prisoners. The cop later.
killed
For some reason he wouldn't ask
lock-up protection. That's what they wanted
him
to do.
for
They
want to kill him. This pig was so typical a dirty pig, he could have passed for the Georgian highway patrolman in the car commercial. Outside he used brutality to force information from people. I think he got his dues. It is unusual to see an ex-cop in a real penitentiary. Why this one made it there, I still am baffled. Someone high must have been very angry at him! didn't
I doubt if there is today a single agency in the federal government that does not have its own little police force. Of course, this could be my "problem of perception." But I know the policeman mentality much, much better than that mentality is capable of knowing mine. They use the old filing-system trick. They collect and intentionally manufacture so much bullshit about the citizenry so much "top-secret" and "confidential" shit they actually
—
—
who
alarm those Bible-thumping, plastic-man politicians into office leading brass
before the rows of things,
tion
was
which,
if
files
bands and kissing
and stacks of
ass that
get
they shrink
dossiers of people
and
they were true, half of the American popula-
—
would be under indictment and if even a fraction of it they would be indicted. So it is suppressed from
false,
public view.
Policemen do not have to "worry" about not
elections.
That
is
how they get into office. They hire one another. They make
absolutely certain the job
is
so "complicated"
—with
checks and counterchecks, their codes and signals,
etc.
their
—no
— IN
60
one can do
it
but them. They do
all
the "investigating" of each
phony cover-ups, gagging
other: all the
.
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
—murders. my
.You said one of the weaknesses of
.
give anyone but prisoners character. If it is a
"weakness/'
it is
You
play
is
that
I
don't
are absolutely correct.
the weakness of a prisoner writing
about prison.
The
guards do not have anything but "cold" characters.
When they step out of being "cold characters," they inevitably become obscenities. And I could never portray them otherwise. Not in truth. I mean everyday empirical fact. Yours as well as mine.
That was the flaw in Cheever's book on prison. It is what me at bottom Cheever is extremely vain. To be so sure of the nature of the essential relationship between guards and their prisoners is pure foolishness. That is one of the things I tells
You never extended such tempting
like in you.
The People
real relations are disturbing to like
Cheever
like to tell
themselves guards and prisoners
The
have points of congeniality.
presumptions.
the calm social mind.
truly horrifying thing
is
that
they do not.
.
.
.Among
selves,
themselves, the guards are human.
relationship
is
not human.
subjective reflection
consciousness.
It is
is
it is
animalistic.
What
I
am
saying
is
say that evil exists
that the prisoner is
is
common
sharing a
—not
demonic.
in
I
It is
is
It is
the
life.
But
not humanistic;
closer to
humanity
deprived by the guard. That
is
the prisoner, but in the guard.
Intentions play none but an illusory
His society
in reflection
that
than the guard: because he
evil.
Only
common consciousness? we belong to a common species of is
not the consciousness of society.
this
I
animal.
—do they acknowledge
What
consciousness that
why
Among them-
the prisoners are human. Yet between these two the
role.
don't care
In if
fact,
he
the guard
likes
is
the same
The food
61
Prison Staff
—
do or the same music or whatever: this is the illusory Animals can enjoy the same music or food
I
role intentions play.
we do. Our
actions define us.
Among
themselves, these pigs are evil to the point of bore-
them among themselves;
dom.
I've seen
They
are extremely venal. Extremely devoid of any trace of
I've
heard their
talk.
spirituality.
Their dullness approaches the mentally defective.
It is fascist
The
an irony, but
very symbol of injustice.
it is
not: prisoners
they are. Neither does society in general.
way .
.
of
.It is
be
state does. It
arbitrary
—
—
for a prisoner to hurt or kill a
guard to hurt or
kill
a prisoner.
are severe to a hellish degree.
(if
to
be what
life.
ing quality
It
The
to
power over prisoners. They embrace it as That is the source of their evil. much more difficult and therefore it has a moraliz-
them
gives
a
would seem
It
do not make guards
has been
my
guard than for a
The consequences
A
to a prisoner
guard gets a medal for
experience that injustice
is
it!
perhaps the only
not merely the greatest) cause of insanity behind bars. You'd
be surprised to learn what
a little old-fashioned oppression
can
do to anyone. Here is how the average man views it: He finds exceptions, and instead of acknowledging that these exceptions prove the rule, he substitutes the extremes, one for the other, and tells himself the exception is evil and not the rule: that guards are like anyone else at bottom, in spite of the brutal, evil few. It is
not true. Formal, temporal war
reflects a is
deeper historical truth.
such a thing as a relentless
requires eradication society: the
All
And
enemy
(i.e.,
the
phenomenon)
that truth in
human
is
that there
society that
and cannot ever be reconciled with human
policeman mentality.
human
societies in history
throughout the world have
recognized this in the primitive (religious) consciousness of
man's inhumanity to man.
Do you "sense" a common humanity in someone like Hitler? Or Himmler?
If so,
you are deluding yourself. They are not
— IN
62
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
men" behind
"family
They
the scenes.
are not "ordinary peo-
ple" in any aspect of their existence with others. Theirs was a
A
revolution of policemen.
That
revolution of the government.
a hard truth to bear.
is
When Marx capital, this
says the capitalist
is
what he understands.
is
the living incarnation of
We
are
hold the opposite view: the State.
The
am
I
human
ultimate citizen
is
—
and that
it
will
citizen of the
the Policeman.
not saying this state of society
what we do and like Hegel
The idealists official human is a
our thoughts reflect our actions.
has always been with
affairs
always be with
human society. now fully
Evil emerged with the beginning of History and has
—
emerged into view. You can look at it, touch it speak to it. It belongs to us to wipe it out. All religions reflect that struggle with
evil.
All this content lies
munist revolutionary. task
is
beneath the conscious intent of a com-
It is
not foremost in his mind because his
not perceived as religious
—but economic,
political.
He
has not the luxury, the time, to delve into the religious meaning
now.
But
in prison so long,
I,
have found the time. This
movement
the communist
is
why
has been haphazardly compared
with a religious movement.
.
in
.
.If
I
wrote of a guard's
domination of
women and
"home
life," it
children. Their
would be
a study
women and
chil-
dren do not love them; they worship them.
The
only time they appear
at their throats.
The
human
instant you
is
when you have
remove
it,
they
fall
a knife
back into
animality. Obscenity.
You side"
think
—but
They obey
just see
I
as
I
when there is They obey it in
violence.
animals.
A
"one side" of them? They have
said, only
prisoner does not.
a
"good
a knife at their throats: their hearts, as
do
all
The
63
Prison Staff
A prisoner rebels even with the knife at his throat at this time he
today.
He
This
is
That
why
is
the essence of being a prisoner
It is
cannot be subdued. Only murdered. true in spite of himself.
is
Those who less
a prisoner.
are neither guards nor prisoners are neverthe-
There
oppressed or oppressors.
either
"mixture" of these two terms. There
is
not a
true
always a principled
is
contradiction.
There
a "gray area" inhabited
is
industrial societies. It
that will spread
is
like
by most people
in
European
the dry foliage that surrounds a
and consume
it.
Everything
in the
fire
world
is
no matter our wishes. and kick in your door, that "gray area" of your existence will be no more. You will join
committed
When
in
to the flame,
they
come
in their jackboots
our struggles in spite of yourself.
The
"gray area" deludes
itself.
resolve itself peacefully, or that
You may
call it "laziness"
and "apathy."
as usual"
a whirlwind,
to
will.
it
not
real.
—
others have called
you were caught
You would know
whole countryside
tear the
it is
in
it
"business
the eye of
perhaps you could look out for miles across a
peaceful countryside.
that
If
Tells itself the conflict can
Someone
apart.
the whirlwind would
Know
for certain.
may be
in the countryside
Know
oblivious
it.
That
is
how
I
know
a great conflagration
And
tear the
whole world
and not
fool ourselves that they are
apart.
is
time to
it is
coming that
fight our
will
enemies
not "really" enemies.
It is
time to join the conflagration to make certain our enemies do not prevail.
The
industrial countries will enter
an off-on switch. But
They
all
it
with the emergency of
the other countries in the world are
and the fire is growing. It will consume the world. There is no point in pretending our lifetimes will not in the end culminate in a world revolution. That is the way I see it. That is how I look at tomorrow.
already in
it.
are burning
IN
64 I
wish
it
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
were otherwise, but nothing would convince
me
it
isn't.
.
.
.There are wardens and prison guards in
the very notion that tion
Call
A
I
should forgive them
my life
is
for
whom
insane. Retribu-
is
a great part of the subjective condition for revolution.
it
vengence
if
you want.
warden, a President Nixon, a Fiihrer Hitler
one of
us.
History
could never
the revolution
They must
demands
live side
this,
not
just
the
human
by side with such monsters
—on equal
pay. Because
terms.
we
That
is
will
never be
heart.
—the day
We
after
asking for too much.
are not machines.
Because we are not machines, we cannot wait long enough for the so-called
*
'economic development of the objective con-
ditions" or "withering
There
will
away" of the bourgeoisie.
be a "day
after the revolution."
ni i
wwalking into
new Maximum Security units is exactly room lined with animal cages. Any prisoner
the
walking into a
like
has a
full
view of any other prisoner
is
in his cell.
arguments and threats hollered
All day there are place. It
inmates
not too different,
really,
all
over the
than the "monkey houses"
or the zoo. If
one of the prisoners wants
insults
and threats
silencing him.
at
to,
he can taunt you with
any time, and you have no chance of
So you have to be careful not to get one of
these punks running his
mouth
at
you
(for
weeks on end
sometimes). So you have to be friendly and "converse" with
him about any fucked-up
subject he wants.
shout the loudest over the longest period this situation. in
which
a
It
is
the only situation
scurrying coward can
I
It is who can who dominates
have knowledge of
impose himself
directly
upon other men.
The
vileness of such
men
is
in
no other case
so exposed to
IN
66
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
There are not that many such men, but they dominate relations between men in cages.
view.
All day, from breakfast to suppertime about four or five
broken up by guards, and each death-row opened onto the tier one at a time. At that time you can shower, sweep out your cell and pace the tier in front of the cells of others. Jonathan is demanding as a child. He will reach into your cell and shake you awake to talk excitedly about the Lone Ranger show, or some such. Nothing you can say to him will get him off your back. Next Thomas comes out. He hangs around your cell, smiling "meaningfully" and watching alternately your lower body and your eyes. He'll bring you his cigarettes and candy just to open a conversation. He'll o'clock, the time
prisoner's door
is
is
ask you real nice to put your cock out through the bars to him.
He won't be
put
off.
He'll
hound
can do but try to ignore him.
you, and there
You
can't grab
is
nothing you
him and
rattle his
you can't reach anyone. Stephen isn't like that; he is introverted. Joseph paces and bumps into everything. You try
teeth;
to read,
and
The
hours.
The
find you've
noise level
all
been reading the same paragraph high.
for
can't think or concentrate. is
this:
you
will yourself
day through most of the disturbances. After each
meal you curl up,
pull the blankets over you, put your pillow
over your ears and sleep. three years
You
you come to adjusting
closest
to sleep
is
I
It's
a
drugged
sleep.
Once
for
about
slept like that sixteen hours a day.
When the lights go out you lie there, and relief comes only between midnight and breakfast. You stay up all night enjoying the tremendous relief. The noise which literally vibrates your brain
is
gone.
The
distractions disappear.
not in front of your
dawn,
cell.
You
The
freaks' faces are
are with yourself again. Until
at least.
But you can't read, you can't write. You can't listen to a radio. All you hear is the pigs making their rounds. You hear keys, chains, the dogs they bring in on the count. You hear the sleeping sounds of the prisoners. Every night there is at least
The Inmates
67
one screaming out in his sleep. You pass the night thinking, remembering your life. You go back to your earliest memories, your first childhood memory, and advance to today. You've masturbated yourself to the point of
months
total sexual uninterest
You fantasize a lot. You you know can never exist.
(years?) ago.
future, a future
That's no way to
alone
exist, let
live.
think of your
You're exhausted from
when dawn and breakfast come. You eat and fall The gate to your cell bangs open before you know it.
thinking, asleep.
You You is
stagger out of bed, go through the motions of showering. fall
into
served.
bed
You
again.
pick at
it,
No
sooner are you asleep than lunch
half asleep.
You
finally tell
the others
away from your cell front and not to speak to you. You threaten to throw a cup of urine on them, knowing you are taking a chance they'll do the same to you. If you're lucky, they'll keep their intrusions on you to a minimum. But you can't stop them completely. The tension wraps in
no uncertain terms
around your brain
itself
To into
to stay
live in
"peace"
like a steel vise.
such circumstances can change you
in
one of those damned
men who
will
do anything to
live,
to exist biologically. It is
only a matter of time,
if
you love
life
too
much
or fear
much, before you become a thing, no longer a man. You can end up scurrying about like a rodent, lending yourself to every conceivable low, evil, degrading act anyone tells you to do either pigs or prisoners. There is a boundary in each man. He can eat crow and violence too
—
brown-nose to an extent.
He
can shuck the
become a good "actor." But when a man goes beyond the
last essential
alters his ontology, so to speak. It's like starts a landslide
no one can
stop.
you've betrayed yourself.
be
free of violence so terribly,
after
you
start across that
order you around. You'd alive yourself. You'll
let
wallow
you
for a while,
boundary,
it
the small pebble that
You can
You want
lo,
man
betray the pigs until,
to survive so badly, to
will literally
do anything
boundary. You'll allow anyone to your ma, wife, kids die in
just to stay
the gutter of man's soul to
live.
IN
68
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
You'll suck every cock in the cell house to "get along." is
There
nothing you won't do.
Most
Those who do never committing it to survive
convicts don't cross that line.
You accept
return again.
violence,
morally as well as biologically. You're not a "psycho," a
That doesn't mean you won't acts of violence. It
hard to bring yourself to these
is
acts,
but
what you must do, even though you are scared stiff and sick to your
you take a deep breath, look
and you do
killer.
you won't do mind-boggling
kill,
it
intelligently at
stomach.
.
.Myself and
.
was one of
my
fellow prisoners lived a hard code, but
survival. Survival of dignity
and
we would truly be broken completely. The only thing a convict respects strength.
man
any
That
is all it
takes to
kill
only for his ability to
a
sanity. If
in
man.
another
it
we
didn't,
is
moral
don't fear or respect
I
harm another, and no convict
does.
But
many broken men.
in prison there are
wince when a pig walks by. stuttering so
bad they can't
I've seen them them break down to seen them go from day
I've seen
talk. I've
to day existing entirely with only the need, fulfilled daily, of
constant oral copulation. These are the ones so demeaned and
broken by the violence of things, there
do short
is
nothing they won't
of any act involving violence. If they
violence, they
would not have
lost their
were unafraid of
humanity.
bottom to best the man, the pig. To do what he can to get his time done and get out of prison. There are some things he can't do and still be a man (a convict). At that point, he rebels. He has no .
.
.The "working code" of a convict
is
at
"revolutionary ideology," true. But eventually he'll run into
me
in the hole
and
I'll
tell
him
things that will clear this
confusion and give his rebellion a cause. over the country now.
It's
a
new breed
It's
happening
of convict.
all
And when
69
The Inmates
he rebels alone, yard
if
I
the hole,
or in
see I
him
brothers under the skin. His fight highest price for helping
my
is
him and he
later
We
in.
fight.
If
pay the
I
cops out,
are
it
doesn't
done right and I have no bad feelings for got no one but each other, and I learned that a long
bother me. him.
on the
fighting a squad of pigs
never hesitate to dive
will
We
I've
time ago.
.
.
.The murder of a pig
in prison
is
worse by
assassination of the President of the U.S.A.
have the hope of walking the prison yard.
and ever walks
a prison yard again.
He
is
At
No
far
than the
least
then you
one
kills a
guard
never released from
the hole.
had
I
a friend
we
He murdered
called Striker.
Murdered him
front of everyone.
right in the
a
guard in
main run
in the
big cell house.
A
lot of things
he had been
conspired to bring
in prison for
only forty years of age.
him
to that. First of
all,
twenty-three solid years. But he was
The day
previous his mother had died;
had, as they say, "expired" quietly in her sleep of old age.
was
all
he had
He was main run
a
left
It
outside prison.
poor poker player.
in the cell
He
was playing poker
house with several others.
in the
A new
pig
walked past and stopped and ordered them to break up the
game. Poker
is
against the rules, but the pigs let
as they see that all the as
no "weak" inmates are
did not
know
it
go on
poker players are "regulars," sitting at the table.
i.e.,
as long as long
The new guard
this.
had been drinking pruno, and when he does this he always without fail becomes belligerent. He argued with the pig, but the pig insisted and threatened to throw him in the Striker
hole. Striker tried to recruit the other players to
keep on play-
ing to defy the pig, but since he was the only loser, they quit playing.
Someone kill
the pig?
he was so angry, why not just was half-joking when he told Striker this, but
told Striker that since
He
IN
70
Striker grabbed at
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST it
and vowed that he would
kill
the pig
except that he had no knife.
The his hair
prisoner,
more
to get rid of Striker, to get
more than anything, gave him
about fourteen inches
in length,
him out
of
was
overall
double-edged and a
lethal-
a knife. It
looking thing.
The
pig was standing in the run with another pig in the
midst of teeming inmates going to and beside the pig and
fro.
hung about ten inches
Striker pulled
up
of that knife into his
and gutted him. The other pig spun around to face Striker and was hit in the stomach several times as he ran backward to get away. Then Striker turned back to the other pig and stabbed him again with long deep thrusts in the chest area. The pig was now flat on his back, bleeding like a fountain. Everyone stood in arrested movements, watching. Striker knew what he had done and he looked about him wildly for help, and then he was seen to smile. He went to his knees and began belly
speaking to the dying pig.
He sunk the knife into the "How do you like that?" as he
middle of
his chest
and
said,
twisted the knife from side to
Then he pulled it out and began sawing off the pig's head. By then there were about fifty guards on the scene, and so Striker did as he was told and dropped the knife and walked off, with them escorting him to the hole. They were all in a side.
worse state of shock than Striker even. Striker received a life sentence
hole at another
Maximum
and was transferred
to the
Security penitentiary.
Shortly thereafter, in the middle of the night, he was found
There are stories that the guards lynched him, but Striker told me he would have to kill himself, and if he could have cried, he would have when he told me that. Because I agreed with him. Mercy is sometimes the hardest thing in the world because real mercy requires an act of personal atonement. He was thoughtless enough to have done it: killed a pig in such a way that he had to be caught at it. There was another act of mercy I was party to once. There was a convict, about fifty-five years old, named X. He had a hanged
in his cell.
The Inmates
and the
series of heart attacks,
paralyzed except for one eyelid.
71
him
last stroke left
He was
serving a
life
totally
sentence.
was with someone when he went to the infirmary to
I
his friend
I
did
himself in prison.
he wanted him,
if
and then
him,
attention on them.
was frozen
It
we
like stone, like a
death
stood watching X's eyes. Finally
X
attention from I
my
riveted
I
looked at X's face.
my
as his friend, to kill
a
the misery of not being able to care for
mask. For a long time pulled
visit
once
to flick his eyelid
for no.
Then he asked X to put him out of I
X
They communicated like that for not pay much attention to what transpired.
and twice
for yes
while.
X. At that time he asked
I
and glanced away momentarily,
looked back.
Then it flicked back open again, and I watched carefully, in great suspense, for the other flick of the eyelid which would mean no. I did not know if that was the second flick of his eyelid, or the first. In any case, it was the His eye was closed.
last.
He
just stared, as always, at
the ceiling, as
were a big
if it
screen that held the projection of scenes from Hell.
we
did wink his eye again, and
He
left.
usually talks a lot, but after that
something to say because
bed and smothered was the
gist of his
X
I
said
nothing to
somehow
got turned over in his
to death with his face in his pillow.
the eyes, looked at
"Yes." Is
And
killed
Since then,
I
and then. There
X
he
if
me
killed
That
at
it
me
took.
hard
with icy eyes, and in a cold voice said
it.
tied
somehow
recall seeing is
risk
X, and he looked
He walked away. man who handed Striker
that was
the fate of the
man who
man.
death report.
even asked him once
in
never
he only spoke when he had
His friend killed him out of mercy in spite of the I
He this
those two
something
the knife and the
to that of Striker's
in their
men
and X's?
at a distance
now
bearing that indicates a
conscious effort not to ever vacillate, not to ever have doubts
about what they do.
Some
not easy for a
It is
people say this
is
man
to
kill
his brother.
being "unreasonable," but they
to understand that the past
is
fail
never dead, never over and done
IN
72
What
with. is
not
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
happens
static, fixed.
in the past
Human
is
reality
the future, and so the past is
like that.
The
and out
decisions in a personal history slide in
events and
of perspective,
on new meanings, just as the person does. For this very reason, there is no absolute personal good or evil. They sometimes pause and stand next to me, and always take
they are looking everywhere but at
happening, Jack?"
Only
in greeting.
after saying this
their eyes at mine.
Eye
me when
'
Maybe once
do they turn to eye,
they say 'What's
I
every year or
their face to
am
so.
me and level
studied carefully.
Then
they soften and put the look of a friend in their eyes and say,
with genuine concern: "Is everything
all
right?"
Sometimes I just nod or I say "Yeah." Then they look away and they walk off again. It is as if they were just checking to see if, or how much, the past has changed since they were there last. I try not to change too much.
no "camaraderie" among prisoners as a whole is a system, a network of ties between all the tips (prison cliques) in the prisons, and it's this that resembles "comradeship" in general. Most prisoners fear almost every other prisoner around them. .
.
.There
is
any more; there
.
.As long as I've been in the penitentiary
.
the
all
You
fistfights I've
(jails
seen can almost be counted on one hand.
never see violence in the open and
it's
always with a knife
or a piece of pipe (lately, here they use gasoline
enemy and
are different)
—dousing the
igniting him). This, of course, refers only to the
violence of prisoner against prisoner.
form of art which partakes of the elements of the auto-da-fe and the drama. Barbarian civilization invented it first as a way to make of punishment a specta.
.
.It is,
tor's sport
as a spectacle, a
and
it
developed
its
fullest expression in
the gladiator
The Inmates
Then
games.
the emergence of the
down and could have no room So, you see, the bullfight
does not even see
he
doing.
is
way
A
it
as
an
art form,
and he
will
demands
bullring
be
great control.
the bull to bring out
The
situation
is
its
The
it is
loses;
it is
not a bullfight
It is
—
when he
it is
situation in the
must torment and heighten them.
easier for a bullfighter to
brave bull than a cowardly bull. If the bull
ors himself
more:
is
the bull will
bullfighter
fighting qualities
such that
but there
maimed. The
killed or
almost the
drama.
risks his life to kill,
he does not acquit himself with honor, he
prevail
such
in society for
it
barbarities.
by no means a sport. The matador way, unless he is confused as to what
a professional actor pursues
man
nation-states broke
civil
is
bullfighter pursues
In a bullfight a if
this
it
73
a slaughter,
is
kill
a
cowardly, then
and the matador dishon-
stoops to the role of a butcher.
not a sport because
it
brings into play esthetic, sublime
which move men to contemplate moral elements of way drama does in theatre. The bullfighter retains, from the historical origins of bullfighting, a gladiatorial aspect but what normal man would pursue such a thing!? The answer is this: men from qualities
the spectacle, the
—
men; men
near-penniless social classes; powerless bullfighting
is
for
whom
a path to social attainments otherwise unattain-
able.
The
qualities that are
respect
(at
heightened
—these matador
in
combat with an
qualities is
brought out
in the bull
—
bravery,
bottom, honor), intelligence (animal cunning
and more are emulated by the human male. So the
in a sense fighting
intelligent adversary),
another
man
to the death. It
is
a surrogate gladiator conflict.
A
great matador
is
like
an ingenious maestro
who can
bring
out excellence in the most inexperienced of musicians by sheer dint of the talent he sees in them.
When
the matador brings the bull to
its
highest grandeur,
the animal becomes ideally ennobled, and in a truth bull
—because
ideally at that juncture the
become equal
— the matador
pierces
its
moment
of
matador and the heart.
— IN
74
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
It is no accident that convicts speak of penal institutions for young men as gladiator schools. In such places, circumstances teach men how to kill one another. They are taught the way the bull is taught through torment When a bull is brought to the bullring, he is brought directly from the fields of a ranch. He has no prior experience of the
—
cape, of the play of a matador, nor even of a corral.
It is a totally
alien experience.
Every phase of the matador, he
a bullfight
is
sharp spears (pics)
is
a test. Before the bull confronts
met with peons, and he whirls on them and are imbedded in his neck muscles. He does
and hide; he ignores the pain, if he is brave, and attacks. Then men on horseback surround him and torment him, and he charges at them, again and again. His rage is blind. If he is a good bull, he has passed all the tests. The banderilleros, the men on horseback, withdraw and the matador beckons from the center of the ring. With his manner and his cape he draws the bull out into the center of the ring, and the bull is manipulated until his rage not
flee
has reached such a peak that
it
is
transformed into glory
enlightened by the figure of the matador.
The
farther
becomes;
he
is
his confusion
the
driven, is
more
he
self-contained
transformed by the combat into a
kind of intelligence crowned with valor.
What
an experience for the
bull!
It
must be of greater he could never
intensity than a religious experience. After this,
return to the herd from which he was taken.
again live as he did before.
He would
He
could never
carry within him,
all
his
days, the arena, the bullring. If
—he
he wins
—and the chances
will face bullfighters until
Convicts
who have been
are almost nil that
one
kills
he
will
win
him.
trained in gladiator schools acquit
themselves with the honor of the tormented
—with the honor
with which the bull behaves in the bullring.
The
only real difference
is
that the bull sinks into the dust
a fragrant
stands.
shower of roses that
float
down
to
—
Olef amid him from the
of the bullring in a sea of voices chanting 'Bravo!
The Inmates
The
75
shame amid contemptuous and
prisoner dies in
scorn-
ing men.
Sometimes
a prisoner
who happens
tional
The
dream
of the typical warden.
big prisoners
been led
who
be physically big
to
is
That is the tradihierarchy he can control.
encouraged to run the other prisoners'
A
lives.
believe this are usually fools
who have
sheep to the slaughter) to believe that because
(like
they can overpower with their hands the average man, every-
one
will
the
little
throws a wrench into
all
of this
and
affect a prisoner a prisoner
outer, that govern ordinary
is
The
skinny kid with a knife or some other weapon.
restraints, inner
To
What
obey them.
men do
not
bent on protecting himself. it is
an
hand-to-hand with
insult to grapple
someone ever strikes him with his hand (another kill him with a knife. If he doesn't, he will be fistfighting with him every day. He might be killed. anyone.
If
he has to
prisoner),
we
In prison respect.
are
all
polite to each other: formal in our
We are serving years.
If
I
have a verbal disagreement
with someone, and I'm in the wrong, sincerely.
But
he knows
it, I
to
me,
kill
what
I
if
I'm
have to see his
have to see him day
leads to killing
the violence in prison
can't have
my
apologies are given
and some asshole is wrong and face every day. If he threatened
in the right
him over is
someone with
a
in,
day out for
seemingly
years.
trivial
geared for murder, nothing ill
feelings for
This
is
matter. All else.
You
you walking around.
He
could drop a knife in you any day.
You
learn to "smile"
friendliness.
to conceal
it,
You have
him
into position.
So when you are raging inside
To
disarm him with
at anyone,
you learn
to smile or feign cowardice.
to
move
into total activity from a totally inactive
posture to sink a knife in as close to his heart as possible. this that also unsettles a
man's mind
intimate weapon. Very personal.
you are not
one
It
someone
steals
knife
is
an
mind because
killing someMoral self-defense. something from your cell. You
killing in physical self-defense.
in order to live respectably in prison.
Let's say
A
in prison.
unsettles the
It is
You're
IN
76
catch
him
cold.
loud with you.
with him.
If
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
Maybe he
What
stole a carton of cigarettes.
you must do next
is
he took your property, there
to
is
become
no
telling
He
gets
friendly
what he
may try to take next. It's possible that he would even try to fuck you if you let him steal from you. In prison society you are expected to put a knife in him. You might have to walk the yard with him for a week to take him off guard, to get him alone to
kill
him.
Here
is
how
it
You
is:
are both alone in his
cell.
You've
slipped out a knife (eight- to ten-inch blade, double-edged).
You're holding is
it
beside your leg so he can't see
it.
smiling and chattering away about something.
The enemy You see his
He thinks you're his
fool; he trusts you. between the second and third button on his shirt. As you calmly talk and smile, you move your left foot to the side to step across his right-side body length. A light pivot toward him with your right shoulder and the world turns upside down: you have sunk the knife to its hilt into the middle of his chest. Slowly he begins to struggle for his life. As he sinks, you have to kill him fast or get caught. He will say "Why?" Or "No!" Nothing else. You can feel his life trembling through the knife in your hand. It almost overcomes
eyes: green-blue, liquid.
You
see the spot.
It's
a target
you, the gentleness of the feeling at the center of a coarse act
pumped the knife in several times without it. You go to the floor with him to finish him. It is like cutting hot butter, no resistance at all. They always whisper one thing at the end: "Please." You get the odd of murder. You've
even being aware of
is not imploring you not to harm him, but to do he says your name, it softens your resolve. You go into a mechanical stupor of sorts. Things register in slow motion because all of your senses are drawn to a new height. You leave him in the blood, staring with dead eyes. You strip in your cell and destroy your clothing, flushing it down the toilet. You throw the knife away. You jump under the showers. Your
impression he it
right. If
clarity returns.
could.
Most
There
but whenever you see laugh.
You
no doubt you did the only thing you know you did it. No one questions, one, he may embrace you, pat your back, is
of the regulars
just
downed
a rat everyone hates. In the big prisons,
The Inmates
77
such murders are not even investigated at I
all.
In
,
when
was there, between thirty and forty bodies were found
stabbed to death. There was only one conviction, and even then,
was because the
it
killer
turned himself
in
and pleaded
guilty to ten years.
I'm not a professional writer, so things without sounding like a callous
it
is
hard to write these
punk with
a faulty imagi-
and hold him
nation.
But you want to stop
in
so tight
you can force
his life
back into him and save him. But
you can't turn around
in the
middle of
violence, this time in favor of act
—the same
.
I
.
it is
only that,
life,
the unreason of
that tries to stop you in the
which brought you
force
It's
it.
it
to this act.
I was there! But I have seen it enough times common. He could have protected himself. Not have seen him move and I know he could have defended himself. The one stabbing him was a
you
tell
know
to
the middle of
I
successfully
coward.
He had only been his right shoulder.
your arms!"
arms
slashed
But
—not deeply—
He
shouted a command: "Drop him bewildered and dropped his him his chest; actually filled his
his assailant
—and he looked
to his sides.
and
across the belly
at
offered
lungs, almost like a sigh of relief, pushing his chest out. Totally
undefended. gave .
.
them all
The man wasted no time
taking his heart.
He did not even try to flee for it to him. He all but said: "Here is my life, .1 have seen men stand as though frozen and
man
the
kill
strain
him.
and
try to fight their
way out
of their
his
take I
own
He
life:
let
He
it!"
have seen passivity,
the while they are being cut down. All this just to be able
to confront
and overcome the violence which
is
already taking
their lives.
When
they
always too
late.
about them, to
finally
They
do
(if
they do) begin to fight back,
are mortally
wounded. They begin
try to appraise their attacker
—but
it is
to
too
it is
flail
late.
I'm not speaking of the shock of surprise. I'm not speaking of a
moment's
hesitation.
their death at the
I
am
saying they accept too easily
hands of another. God,
it
sometimes even
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
IN
78
becomes
a conscious acceptance, at
some point
with themselves to overcome their
.
own
in their struggle
passivity.
.You can become so consumed with impotent hatred, so
.
enraged at someone or something
you must mastur-
in prison,
bate to the violence taking place in your mind, because
cannot contain a
you may
little,
days in a
You
.
somehow,
it
you
—
by speaking out, loudly and end your screaming, raging froth from which there is no return. world berserk.
.You relate the notion that violence
sexuality. It .. .It is
for a
if
you loosen the grip on yourself
start
will leave this
.
if
is
an absurdity, but
I
an absurd contradiction
man
is
associated with
agree to an extent.
in (at least)
American
society
to see the sexual penetration of his wife (or female
companion)
as a consecration
and expression of love
—and
then to see this same act of penetration, but of another male, as just the opposite: a desecration
contempt.
It is
so profoundly
One of
the
and expression of the deepest
because of this contradiction that sexuality
wed first
is
to violence.
things that takes place in a prison riot
is
this:
guards are sexually dominated, usually sodomized. I'm not pre-
tending
I
do not "understand"
several points that this
sexual aggression
fit
is
this;
we
all
do.
"natural" and that
all
I
disagree on
overt acts of
the concept of violence, because violence
There are those who entertain such acts out of love. But what is clear is that when a man sodomizes another to express his contempt, it demonstrates only his contempt for woman, not man. The normal attitude among men in society is that it is a great shame and dishonor to have experienced what it feels like to be a woman. I think such a radical attitude is
destructive.
reflects strong feelings in
.
.
.1
was sent to prison
was executed: arrogance.
the matter.
for the
same reason Caryl Chessman
The Inmates
The
judge sentenced
79
me to the main penitentiary for the me raped by prisoners and reduced
express purpose of having to a
homosexual
—
this "version"
being a punk. There was
no other reason. At that time, there was not even
absolutely
a pretense of rehabilitation or a caseworker staff in prison.
The
prison was entirely presided over by old-school prison guards.
There were no "rehabilitation" programs. I was even told by the pigs who transported me to the prison that I was being sent there to be reduced to a punk, to be shorn of my manhood. They had felt I would be less arrogant once I had been turned into a cocksucker. If I was afraid, I was never aware of it. It is certain that I was consumed with rage, the anger of deep insult. I arrived in that emotional and mental condition. You could say I was
my place. New prisoners were placed in quarantine for about six weeks.
paranoid: bloodthirsty to establish
Quarantine was called reform school slipped
fish-tier.
me
a
Someone
boning knife
knew from the when I arrived on I
fish-tier.
The with
prisoner
first
fuck me,
my
I
drew
my
—
a
middle-aged convict
knife on.
knife at his throat,
I
forced
him
—who
tried to
to his knees,
made him perform
fellatio
on
and
my
flaccid penis in front of three of his partners.
the way
If you are a man, you must either on anyone who propositions you with threats of force. It is the custom among young prisoners. In so doing, it becomes known to all that you are a man, regardless
This
kill
is
it is
done.
or turn the tables
of your youth.
had been trained from a youth spent in gladiator school was inevitable then that a youth in an adult penitentiary at some point will have to attack and kill, or else he most certainly will become a punk even though it may not be well known he is a punk. If he cannot protect himself, someone else I
for this. It
—
will.
Before prisoners I
I was twenty-one years old I had killed one of the and wounded another. I never did get out of prison.
was never
To
a punk.
the authorities, there
is
nothing seriously wrong with
IN
80
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
anyone getting raped in excites them; they enjoy In prison,
if I
take a punk, she
a chattel slave. It directly.
He
is
is
cleans
the contrary, the idea
is
mine.
He
is
like a slave,
the custom that no one addresses her
my
my
cell,
clothing and runs errands for
—
him to do, he must do exactly the way perceived in some marriages even today. But I can sell
me. Anything a wife
On
prison. it.
I
tell
her or lend her out or give her away at any time. Another prisoner can take her from
.
.
me
.The majority of prisoners
ninety percent
—
if
he can dominate me.
have known
I
hesitate to call this
—
as
own
like
sex.
I
"homosexual" because American society
recognizes only the passive homosexual
the female role
—something
express sexual interest in their
—the one who
being a "homosexual." So
it is
plays
really the
same outside as in prison, but open in prison. So you can see already how this distorts a lot of meanings and can fuel a lot of violence, both physical and psychological. Because no prisoner really respects a homosexual, and yet as I said almost all have these desires themselves. It is the same
—
—
as in the society of
Also, in
all
men
outside prison.
the penitentiaries
I
have been transferred
to, in
each one there were only at most half a dozen "known" homosexuals
among
Only once
men
prisoners.
or twice in
my
life
have
I
seen in any prison two
demonstrate sexual affection by kissing or otherwise
touching each other. The open homosexual plays the role of a woman and is usually the wife of a prisoner respected on the yard. He gives her the security and protection he would a woman outside prison. But to be a punk is surpassed in con-
tempt only by being
a snitch. Prison regimes respect these
relationships. In reality they
encourage them.
When a bull is selected from the herds that occupy the fields of a ranch for the bullring, care
must be taken
to observe
how
The Inmates
81
relates to other bulls in the herd.
he
A
who
bull
displays
confusion around other bulls at homosexual tendencies in himself
is
already defeated by males, by other bulls.
in spite
He
ance.
He
passive,
is
of exhibiting the greatest outward masculine appearis
not
just
unsure of himself, his heart
is
subjugated
by the male.
men,
In
warfare
—
this
is
the prime reason that in regular positional
European warfare
particularly, classical
discovered to be homosexual
exempt from conscription
Gerard
fell
—
—the
soldier
executed. Homosexuals are
is
at least
from the
to his knees before the bars of
battlefield.
my
and he
cell
pleaded with me, pleaded tearfully and with an anguished brow: "I can't stand
it!
Put
in
it
my
mouth! Please,
please,
please ..."
He
had, in the
last
and, for the most part, had been rebuffed.
tier
accommodated him fellatio I
few months, been to every
through the bars of the
was surprised, not
as
if
A
at
commit
from boredom
cells.
what he was doing
—when
to himself but that
become weary,
I I
on the
few had
in these supplications of his to
he had even called upon me.
—
cell
am
actually drowsy
personally confronted with
such things. Gerard was not a cocksucker, no matter what he
thought of himself. I
must have shook
me.
know
I
my
head slowly
that at the point
where
take complete control of him,
command him
I
all
the while he implored
his frenzy threatened to
became
impatient.
I
had
to
to stand up, to get off his knees.
"Get away from me! Go on! Leave!" He became sober and went away. I knew him years ago; knew him when he was whole, when he was strong and dignified. I look at him now and I search for that man I knew so long ago. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of the old Gerard and it is I
as
told him:
if
he were hoodwinking,
saying: I'm just seeing
what
will
IN
82
happen
do
if I
stay loyal to
this;
once
I'm only fooling everyone, to see
who
will
me.
Gerard had a itself
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
sly
humor
sense of
But he
in a while.
is
before
and
it still
shows
not joking, not trying to fool
anyone.
And
it
was not
that long ago that he was the Gerard
all
I
knew. Just a few years ago; no more than five. He is not insane, nor has his resistance to the prison regime ever flagged. It
he
almost seems as
will
he
if
is
us back as quickly as he will the pigs.
madman who
is
Yet that look
not insane, but I
it is
I
is
understand
try to
this
difficult.
catch in his eyes, the look
evidence of deception,
They
now, although
rebelling against us
not attack any of us unless in self-defense. He'll fight
I
could take as
me
something that makes
shudder.
say they see tombstones in his eyes.
In his writings Nietzsche speaks of the "glance of eternity,''
but
I
never paid
much
attention to the phrase, as
if it
were one
of his magnificent poetic flights.
When
I
see Gerard's face,
it
jogs
my memories and
that
phrase always bubbles up: the glance of eternity.
Free
will
—the
will to personal
boundaries of either
men
or
God
power that recognizes no
—
is
shrouded with death.
Anyone could kill Gerard in retaliation and everyone else would protect his killer. Guard or prisoner. He is one of those people who tempt everything evil in men, and yet by human measure he is honest and his intent is never to harm. It is as if the veil that protects us all from ourselves as well as one another had been pulled aside for Gerard so that he
—
—
could see the actuality of everything.
He
cannot be deceived;
you can hide no feeling or thought from him.
He
understands
reality.
—
That is why he will someday be murdered and he knows he cannot escape it. I do not know how this change in him came about. It must have been gradual. I only know I noticed one day that he had gone to pieces. He used to clown around quite a bit. As I said, one of the things that marked him was his ability to laugh at everything; more often than not, himself.
The Inmates
He had been him
placed
83
and out of the
so often in
on the pay-him-no-mind
Can you imagine half a lifetime You are stopped by guards anywhere
list
I
hole, the guards
spoke to you about.
of prison regimentation?
any time and searched. Your cell is searched almost daily and any little odd-or-end you happen to have, anything that is neither issued to all inmates nor explicitly allowed in a pathetic list of half a dozen items, is confiscated, and if it is in any way an object that could threaten security, you are thrown in the hole for it. You are stopped and questioned about the reasons for your presence in any area outside your cell. There are a million such things of at
—
nature you are subject to daily.
this
Then
suddenly, one day,
of the guards can see you.
it is
as
if
you were
a ghost.
None
You walk anywhere, and not
only
do the guards not stop you, no one sees you. I saw Gerard actually climb the inside perimeter fence and sit atop the rolls of concertina wire and wave to the guards in the gun-towers.
He
sat there for a half-hour
finally a
and no one bothered him,
until
couple of guards walked up to the fence and very
and absurdly asked him to please come back down. He did, and they left him wandering around in confusion.
politely finally
They never threw him
men who
believe
I
more
in the hole.
take things seriously
seriously than anything else
—
—take themselves
are the only ones
who
sur-
vive the pay-him-no-mind list. I have always grown dangerous and been taken off the list, although it has been tried with me
many
times.
.There have been times
when
have begun the process and they pass the word. They place you on the pay-him-no-mind list. You are allowed to roam the prison and do and say anything you care to and .
.
of dissolution.
The
the guards overlook
Only
if
pigs can sense
it;
ignore you as
I
it
if
you were not even there.
you commit an act of violence do they pounce and drag
you to the hole.
The
idea
is
to
watch you and hope that
in
your state you
will
cause the other prisoners to dislike you, with the idea that one
IN
84
may
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
—
you or that you go on so long you lapse into that lumbering insanity which results from the derangement of your kill
prison-senses. Prison
You can do
is
abstracted from your sensuous existence.
what you want. The place
or say
handed over
is
to you, in essence.
used to stagger sometimes into the mess hall barefooted
I
except for rubber shower-flops and none of the guards stopped
would walk around the prisoner queues and roam around behind the serving counters, picking up whatever I wanted to eat. The pigs would stand off, looking sideways at me and grinning. They would nudge one another in the ribs and wink. me.
I
in the kitchen
I'd
march out with
a
bowl of food
in
one hand and
a loaf
on would glaring at any
of bread in the other, in that crazy, directionless defiance
the approaches to insanity.
I
march up the prison corridor pig
who
looked
my
insisted
to
on
my
freedom.
my cell like that,
I
way.
.Do you know what is so odd about this? I would be almost ready to kill myself. I wanted to be free so badly. Always I burned, truly burned, with the need to leave prison, to be free: to get away from this thing that was destroying my life irrevocably. I would sell my soul for freedom from prison, but I won't give an honest day's labor or "behave" myself for an instant for that same thing. Is that not strange? My poor soul! What a state it must be in to be bought so cheaply .
.
.
.
.
.It isn't
in prison. It's
prisoners
who work
.
.
out their petty relationships
the prison system in America that drives
them
on one another. We are not to blame. We are not animals, but we are herded like animals. We are torn by the system of parole that rewards everything base and vile in to outrages
man. If we betray our poor comrades, we are rewarded. If we compete for the good graces of our jailers, we are rewarded. If we refuse to defend outselves, we are rewarded. If a man lets himself be used by the prison staff to catch ana
other prisoner, he
is
rewarded.
If
he sucks your cock
to get
The Inmates
you to
talk to
him, he
85
rewarded for the information and
is
congratulated for his method. There
no mistake made who spend all
is
when
prison staffs are regarded as brutal sadists
their
working time creating and influencing prison intrigues
most
of the
They
vile sort.
say that people
who
live
together gradually begin to
look alike. Married couples begin to "look" like one another
because their
an agreement about
facial expressions reflect
things around them, because their mannerisms sies
—
have become
that the lover
We
have.
all
lovers to
They
similar.
say
it is
and idiosyncra-
a sign of
and the beloved grow into one.
We
become
all
know
it
I
genuine love
have seen
"look-alikes."
Something deep within me, however, turns over each time
been
I
notice that
I
in
my
my
look like
in prison all their lives.
change
appearance.
I
It
both declassed and decultured.
is
this
who have
"brothers"
the cast of an outlaw, the face of
It is
Men who
outcasts, while existing in society, it,
in its grave
have over the years studied the
"outlander" (to use the archaic term).
loathe
it.
takes years of living together for
have
have become
this
an
men social
physiognomy.
I
lumpenproletarian cast of the criminal; this prod-
uct of a war of nerves no one declared but which
is
forced upon
us!
After ten or fifteen years, the sun never sets nor
There are no seasons: no wind or rain There are no children to give you a
prison. hair.
women
to comfort your soul.
I
rises in a
or sunlight in your vision of
life,
no
have never walked beneath the
sky at nighttime on prison grounds.
Your needs
are transformed into creatures that stalk you
with reflections of every flaw in your personal existence. There is
nothing so superfluous as the personal need to
needs, and those needs
fulfill
personal
become magnified and kaleidoscoped
into such intense images
and
objects, they lose
what
little
IN
86 reality
they had until you, yourself, are no longer able to accept
reality as easily as
You
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
try only to
—
you once may have.
keep yourself together because others
—other
You don't comfort one another; you humor one another. You extend that confusion about this reality of one another by lying to one another. You can't stand the sight of each other and yet you are doomed to stand and face one another every moment of every day for years without end. You must bathe together, defecate and urinate together, prisoners
eat
are with you.
and sleep together,
The
talk together,
work together.
manifestation of the slightest flaw
is
world-shattering in
you very discreetly passed wind
huge stadium and suddenly the thousands of people grow silent and look at you in condemnation. That is what prisoners do to each its
enormity.
other.
It is as if
in a
GODS AND DRUGS
vM
ogis starve their needs to death.
them about
asleep, but they always like a
civilized
man,
awaken again and
puppet on their like
to
God, the
in
our breasts that
you and
all
feed mine dreams.
I
strings.
I
white men.
am
a
try to
God
put
move me
white man, a
The need
to live close
necessity, in other words, that breeds the certainty
God
exists,
has been washed from our genes
through history. Unlike you and most white men, of
I
drives
me
from even the
because, unlike others,
I
do not
ritual feel
my
despair
conventions of religion,
the necessity within
me
modern God, my despair does
of social conventions that respect the dead. Unlike
white men, philosophers, not drive
me
despair of
to the existential act of belief.
God, not because I do not want to but do not believe in religious ethics because cannot, and the same goes for all of my "beliefs." And for I
do not believe
because / cannot. I
who
in
I
IN
88
my
"feelings."
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST cannot choose what
I
envy, hate, love or
I
believed the death penalty to be absolutely "im-
desire. If
I
moral/
would not hesitate to save anyone from execution. my conscience would haunt me. Is all this a psycho-
'
I
Otherwise,
logical aberration? Is
it
"idealism"?
I
do not think
But
so.
I
modern existentialist philosophy unconsciously aims finding a way for a man to live with a guilty conscience, a
think at
all
He
ple.
would seen
loves
too,
if
Man
and simlife too much. He fears others too much. And I I could, but I cannot live with a lie. But I have
conscience that haunts him.
men who
is
a coward, plain
are such facile liars they can stick to their story
for decades.
...
It just
be rooted
in
occurred to
some
society (mankind) in
of
parallel
and
me
that any brand of theism
brand of "faith." Displaced
beings always results in faith
in personal
some metaphysical world. Faith is a a phenomenon. Existential faith for
in the distinction
between one's
ass
hell of a concept, a hell
Sartre
and
For strange reasons too
(rather literally).
he actually said that
must
faith in
meant
faith only
a hole in the trite to
loss of faith (i.e., fear;
ground
go into here,
phobia) in a hole
mean that also literally) results (by displacement) in the phenomenon known as homosexuality. He really said that to(I
ward the
last
two hundred pages of Being and Nothingness.
read that thirteen years ago and
anyone (even he) could be so thing
—even
when
if
it
still I
I
have trouble believing
crass, so stupid, as to say
such a
were, in a way, true. Idealists are so naive
they talk about material
reality.
human element in all religions very beautiful and touching. Religious ideas move me very much, almost as much as the people who hold those beliefs. am moved by the .
.
find the
I
I
knowledge that you find consolation I
wish / could.
You
are a very lucky
Kierkegaard, Buber and Jasper spired I
feel
and changed me. I
owe
in religious existentialism.
What
—
to
little
man.
name
My
three
readings of
—
left
emotional maturity
me I
in-
have
to Soren Kierkegaard's works (after Nietzsche's
childish ravings).
89
Gods and Drugs
want consolation more than anything in this world. I it if I have not been consoled by God, by a vision of the true Glory of God. I mean this with all my heart. Science is not consolation to me, any more than any abstract knowledge I
cannot help
be
of the world can
The
a consolation.
truth of religious existentialism
My
than the truth of science.
because for some perverse reason, I
is
problem
my
of a different nature to live with both,
is
life
has been such that
just one of those. what Marxism has all
cannot be happy, cannot be consoled, with
The two must be
reconciled,
and that
is
the indication of possibly doing.
.
so
.
.God, I need a
now.
fix
It is
the only respite possible after
many years. Next month I begin working on my seventeenth
year behind bars.
To
the glow that begins like a
feel
my
up through
thing nothing else can give me.
with
my belly and rises my temples, is someme what need to live
fire in
nerves and organs, up to gives
It
I
all this.
The
this. You do not becomes necessary out
other gods are nothing compared to
have to believe
in anything.
of despair to believe in
you can
live
believing
When
it
God, you have cheated oppression when mind into
beside the beast without twisting your
it is
God.
Someone said that if there was no God, men would invent The man who invented opium must have been the most
one.
rebellious.
I
believe the word, in this religious context,
is
damned.
Have you noticed how, into revolutionary matters tip of I
is
true clear to the
South America.
sometimes think
sphere" capitalist
is
mushroom,
it is
our antidote to the
devil.
The "atmo-
most powerful monolithic I do not "need" what the few drugs (a little marijuana,
so stifling in this the
empire
in
devil alone can give
I
hemisphere, drugs are tied
in this
somehow? This
the entire world.
me
if I
have a
hash).
wish revolution
in this
country were as simple as that
in
IN
90
underdeveloped countries.
industrially
my
life in
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST would otherwise end
I
the act of murdering a pig in the prison corridor.
when
Especially nowadays,
much
prisons are so
"easier"
(i.e.,
American communist). I long without respites once in a while. These
psychologically an inferno for an
would not
last
respites are only available
through drugs.
Ole!
What if am only justifying myself unconsciously with these I
words and they are I
silly
but not as
realize,
excuses to be an asshole?
fully as
should, that
I
about myself are only expressions of
my
all
these doubts
isolation.
Given the
material freedom to act, to organize and develop situations and ties,
remember
to
my mind. would laugh of my "reflections on my
no such self-doubt would enter these (present) days
I
reflections"!
A
comrade
arrived here the other day from another prison.
He thinks of discipline no drugs, no punks,
in
terms of physical health (no smoking,
etc.).
In terms of calisthenics almost. This
attitude expresses an ultra-leftist tendency
degrees; so far to the
He came first
time
left, it is
to prison with a natural life sentence. This
in prison.
Although he has been
years now, a lot of circumstances have,
him from many
protect ers
—and,
He means
it
is
his
in prison five or six
seems, conspired to
of the realities of prison: other prison-
therefore, himself.
does not understand
bourgeois,
which has come 180
identical to the right.
i.e.,
vice.
He
has the conscience of a
he has an obviously bad conscience, which
guilty feelings.
He
wants to stand aloof from the predicament of prisoners and yet he is one of them. Naturally, he has felt a few of their
most pressing needs graceful needs). to enjoy
He
(to
him
very humiliating, shameful, dis-
denies to himself he feels
them and seems
denouncing anyone who does not deny such needs
in
himself.
He
does not understand that
men who
are deprived of the
Gods and Drugs
97
most basic forms of happiness will always find that happiness in other forms. Happiness is a serious need: a need as final, as
human
inevitable, to the support of
life as sleep.
As long as he is a part of a people who can only find happiness in what people in other parts of the world call vices, he must feel the need for indulgence in those vices. There are several escape routes out of it. There is insanity (I mean lumbering, slobbering insanity). There is suicide. There is co-existence, and by this I mean becoming a tool of
who govern us in prison. None of these routes can get you away
those
in
one
piece. All of
them stem from fear of yourself, uncertainty about yourself. I told him once: "You cannot as a communist revolutionary bring your spick-and-span ass into a Peruvian bohio and de-
nounce the peasant-serfs for chewing the cocoa leaves for the cocaine and order them to first stop eating cocaine and wasting their bodies before they can organize for revolution." It is
one of the only forms of happiness possible
To demand
such a thing
is
to
their oppressors, their patrons
.
I
.
them.
for
demand they join forces with who make the same demands.
—
started taking heroin a long time ago in prison.
I
had
knocked back three years in the hole, solitary confinement. skin and bones, a nervous wreck (as usually occurs).
just
came out
I
My
friends sent a kid to
about
me and
eager.
I
my
cell for a present.
He was
excited
broke up the whole thing and sent him
away and cooked up a fix. I used for emotional reasons, I guess. We all need emotional security. It's the only way I can get it, so I do it. It's practical and most convicts serving long sentences use heroin for that purpose.
.
.
.There
is
a kind of marijuana that
and expensive.
A
It is
It is
is
therapeutic.
very good, very potent
the leaves of a sex-starved cannabis plant.
female cannabis plant
is
placed to grow
among male
surrounded by male plants. Pins are inserted
plants,
at various points
IN
92
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
of
its
stems to prevent the seeds from passing along the
to
be
fertilized
They say They say at actually
this plant, after several
night,
move.
when
It pulls its
arms about
its
by the males. She begins to quiver and
its
body
for
stalks suffer.
weeks, contorts in pain.
the sun goes down, you can see
it
though wrapping
leaves into itself as
warmth. The idea of tragedy
in plant
created by man.
life is
Everywhere
see suffering,
I
I
see
someone who
derives pleas-
ure from the fruits of suffering.
.
.Some people get sloppy and ignorant; some go numb sly and paranoid when they fuck with
.
—
and dead; some get dope
in prison.
myself until
I
get philosophical.
lately.
narcotic wave,
When
I
I'm alone
never realized this about
my
in
cell floating in a
begin to think about philosophical matters,
I
and things have such
clarity
almost
it is
the experience of
like
satori.
Today, on hashish (behind Benzedrine),
my bed and
by
to me. It I
is
I
felt
kept a notebook
important that occurred
fragmented but coherent.
discovered there
pearance and
reality;
than the other.
my
wrote whatever
I
I
is
only a relative difference between ap-
the one
is
intrinsically of
no more value
related this line to other things,
and here are
notes, verbatim:
The seem
interior
can induce exterior change. Vice versa:
We
always
to accept the appearance of things as being of less value than
Why? Men like me do not calculate value. This is why we fail to be stingy,
the "reality" of things.
fail
to
be properly clever
in
exchanging values with others.
Instead of calculating value, determining
its
refuse by a kind of built-in reflex to put a price
that
we have no
There But
is
as
Price
on
values ourselves, but in reality
worth, it.
It
we
instead
then appears
we have no
price.
a difference. I
and
said above, value.
is more "worthy" than the other? no more "moral" or real than the other.
which
The one
is
Gods and Drugs It is a
vicious circle
93
something chasing
itself,
its
own
tail in
pursuit
of something other.
After the abrogation of negation, there will be no contradiction
between such things
as "price
not the contradictions.
How
above the
tion of our species; a step It is
thing.
as
I
Even my
moment I
though could
The
is
will exist
Homo
sapiens. It
pleasures.
Even when
my
I
I
am
so
It is this
that
nism, Marxism.
Marxism. wish the
I
it
pass away.
greatest happiness.
my consolation. common people sense
Marxism
is
happy
have an appetite to see
me
anguish,
in the doctrines of
commu-
notion of spiritual existence in any form causes
despair.
but
a step higher in the evolu-
were weathering everything in this world. Every-
last forever, still
weather even
and value." The things
strange. It
is
It is this
they identify with the forces of Satan.
(A man with no apparent values who
feels distress to
the point of
anguish over the idea of a spiritual existence.)
Men And we
like
me mean the death of god even before god is conceived. God perish from the world and everyone can also
can make
"sense" this in Marxism.
CHOOSING SIDES: COMMUNISTS
AND MARXISM
TM
he better part of my conscious life has over the years become deeply enmeshed in a political outlook. It is one of the inevitable products of suffering in prison
"true" or "false" reflection of us in
all
my
is
—whether
beside the point.
It is
it
me.
is
a
It is
shoes.
is the truth told from a certain viewpoint meaning of a thing from that viewpoint. It is not quite the same as relative judgment. When one says one man s T freedom fighter is another man s terrorist, one understands what .
It
.
.Propaganda
defines the
propaganda
The
is.
opposite of propaganda
occurred that did not occur,
I
is
falsehood.
am
lying.
I
If
am
I
say something
not engaging
in
propaganda.
When Christianity was still establishing itself in Catholic Church, there was an agency
in
the
Roman
the Vatican called
Choosing
The
Sides:
Communists and Marxism
Office of Propaganda. Its mission was to teach priests
Church
how
officials
propagate
was not established to
but an outlook on the world.
lies,
Obviously, from a certain point of view,
men
and
from the point of view
to interpret events
of the Christian religious doctrines. It
is
95
in prison are things prisoners
all
the
ills
that befall
bring upon themselves. This
propaganda.
From where self
—and one
I
stand,
no prisoner brings these
of the simplest reasons
lies in
ills
upon him-
the fact he
is
a
prisoner and does not have the freedom to do anything to himself. is
free
But is
if
he did have his freedom, one of the proofs he
that he will never injure himself,
himself. This, too,
Whose
I
is
do violence
to
propaganda.
point of view you side with and support
have seen what "blind justice" has done
is
up
to you.
in all its horrors
and I have seen physical torture beyond belief committed by prison authorities on prisoners. This is all bourgeois punishment.
The
prisoners with the strongest will rebel.
enough
ligent
to read
and understand
a little,
If
they are
intel-
they rehabilitate
themselves as men, not through religion or prison regimentation or physical torture or
"Thoughts on Capital Punishment," of, and the discipline that
but through the comprehension attends,
communism.
The government
tells
everyone that
taught through torture and that
it
communism
has to be
imprisons and poisons men's
minds, taking their "freedom of thought" away.
wing in society pressured the government, communist literature was absolutely forbidden in assure you, until the left
I
any prison population here
in
America.
and others have risked serious disciplinary punishment obtaining and guarding communist literature. I
.
.
.No one can
strong
will.
My
(or ever has)
I.Q.
accused
jumped from 127
me
of not having a
to 138 over
two years
of
%
IN
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
intense study of the works of
1969. This was
.
to
Marx and Lenin between 1 966 and
documented by
a prison psychologist himself.
.If anyone wants to know why prisoners are so attracted communist, subversive literature, the answer is simple: the .
communist press always prison and in describing
tells
the truth in reporting events in
prison conditions.
Is
that so difficult
to understand?
Prisoners
They do
come into contact with communists out of need. when they have no choice. They can write and
so only
appeal to senators, congressmen,
news media, the courts
civil
rights attorneys, the
—and on and on —
all
day long and not
receive the slightest attention, seldom even a
And what
thy.
word of sympa-
are they complaining about? Torture at the
hands of guards; frame-ups
for crimes inside prison they never
committed; lack of medical attention; capricious and arbitrary discrimination; the destruction of their mail; the interrogation of their friends
and
endless but
long, longer than any
it
is
relatives outside prison list
prisoners in other countries can present.
—the
list
Communists
prisoners attorneys so that the courts cannot so easily
people to
not
give
make
Commu-
confetti out of their petitions in the clerks' offices. nists inquire
is
of grievances that
about prisoners and go into the streets among the
stir
up concern
for prisoners.
Communists conduct
campaigns to governments (state, city, federal, demanding an end to the maltreatment of prisoners.
letterwriting etc.),
They do everything legally and
to rescue prisoners
possible to help reform these prisons
from
insanity, injury, death.
They do
this for all prisoners.
No one else does a thing. The and clergy are worse than anyone there
is
little
they can do, etc.
liberals, else.
the humanitarians
They
are "too busy";
They stand around
talking to
one another about their experiences with prisoners; they seek to be "recognized" as authorities and "spokespersons" for prisoners. And never once have they ever as a group or as individuals
effectuated a single reform or helped a single prisoner
Choosing
Sides.
Communists
tortured in prison.
use them, their names,
The FBI
accomplish behind the scenes prison reform.
assuming
rect in
this
97
Communists and Marxism
—but everyone denies
Communists always behave
as
is
to
cor-
out of vanity.
it
anyone would expect
real
people in a real society to respond to one another. Communists, not
leftists.
If
had not come under
I
their influence,
have gotten out of prison long ago. But over and over again.
dope
who
fiend
I
would have been
I
I
probably would
would have returned,
a thief or a jive-talking
has no idea of anything else in
singing the blues and paying his dues in prison.
life
Why?
except
Because
what the government, the state reared me from childhood to be; that is what adjusting to prison does to a man. that
I
is
am
still
very ignorant, but
important lesson
that
is
I
I
My
can remake myself.
will betray
most
anyone and anything
in
my beliefs, and I know mere "friendship," mere "blood," is but a sentiment. Anything, any tie I might have, that is based on a sentiment, is in danger of betrayal by me. I never do it easily; nothing is more extreme situations. Everything except
painful to
me
than to betray a sentiment either
in
myself or
done it only once or twice in my life, but in my heart I have done it a million times. I consider it a weakness now to be loyal to any sentiment. In that way I am loyal to my
others,
heart, I
and
I've
my "human
have chosen
weakness."
and
sides,
in so
doing
I
have won.
I
have
learned to always choose sides and attack the other side as ruthlessly as possible.
Perhaps
this
is
something
a
Castro could
easily
understand
but a Sartre could never grasp.
When
Dostoevsky pointed out that we are not generalized
men, abstract men, the the opposite: that shit, etc.
we
He meant
ideal
are
that
"man," he did not mean
all
all
to imply
ignoble, sensuous, weak, full of
of us, the ones "full of shit" (like
myself), weak, sensuous, ignoble, etc., are all capable of dying for a just cause, a "beautiful idea," a principle.
In short, that
— IN
98
we
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
are all capable of honor, not just the
He meant
human
that the
heart
is
"Noble Classes."
by no means
a
weakness. Quite the contrary. Nothing that touches the heart
absurd, because the Absurd
is
and the heart chooses
tion
to the exclusion of the other.
at
bottom
a contradic-
you
if
insoluable contradiction
will, is
a
A paradox titillates the human heart, does not burden
paradox. it
An
is
defends a term,
sides,
human human
with despair of absurd, meaningless existence. Half the prob-
lem with Sartre and Camus and their ilk is that the bourgeoisie have forgotten how to laugh from the heart but not the belly. This
.
another thing a Castro can understand, but not a Sartre.
is
.When
.
a
man
takes a position opposed to another
refuses to discuss the matter
the truth of his position
man
next
feels that
a feeling in his heart that the
does not have, he has taken an anti-human stand
against humanity. This
common
achieve a
on the grounds that he
lies in
and
we
correct, since
because
is
(social)
the aim of humanity to
it is
agreement.
Any
fool
can see
this
is
are social beings.
In reality, only equals can reach agreements. So long as classes are not equal, I
men
are not equal,
and there
particularly since these
over
us.
his life
words.
A man who is
in
"disagrees" that
no position
deeds
If
enemies hold the power of
will solve
someone
else
is
my
can reach any agreements with the enemies of
life
no way class
or death
should take
to restrict this "disagreement" to
the "disagreement," they are as valid
as words.
Sentiment today
it
is
is
not the source of
human weakness
although
the tool of that weakness.
Some (Spinoza, for example) say: Love is that weakness, but when I speak of the human heart I speak of something imbued with love.
Today I think human weakness springs from social Today I think human weakness stems from the
human
nature
In short,
is still
very
much incomplete
human weakness
lies in
divisions.
fact that
in its evolution.
the fact that no one
is
Choosing
perfect because
no society
of this that pardons
Communists and Marxism
Sides:
perfect. It
is
men from
not the consciousness
is
choosing
99
Only ignorance
sides.
pardons.
Being conscious that no one
is
perfect
is
to intuit, to grasp
with the heart the nature of an imperfection and to take a stand against
This
it.
is
commitment Wrong. Anyone's
called:
Dialectical Right contains
The human
the truth of
this.
maintain
integrity
its
around the world This
is
if
heart
is
if it
does not
by siding against Wrong, by chasing
need be to stomp
why Castro
heart can feel
betrayed
it
into dust.
allowed prostitutes to organize (unionize
their forces) instead of "abolishing" prostitution in
He
never
this.
This
is
why
(man-made), making sodomy
power
in
mankind
is
state
of
Havana.
go away and hide. Sartre did not properly
let it
understand
it
Lenin's party abolished "laws" a
crime when the Bolsheviks took
Russia through the October Revolution. just that abolishes
No law
men. The "higher" laws are
the material principles that govern the universe as well as the societies of
tion
the
men,
and sodomy felt
needs of
in spite of
prostitu-
were not necessary, and nine-tenths of
men
in a reactionary society are necessitated
by unnatural conditions of
Communists
men. There would not be
if it
social
life.
are closer to solving
all
kind than any scientists or philosophers
the "riddles" of manin
the past and present
have ever been. I
do not mean
to boast
but a demonstrable
fact.
when I
I
say this. It
is
not a "theory"
"Damn
did not one day say:
the
whole world! I'm going to be a communist!" Frankly, the
word scared the
a million ways, trying to I
shit
evade
out of
this
me and
"infamous"
pursued philosophy not as a disinterested
my
life
was fighting to retrieve myself from
my
a student or scholar,
but because
hasn't? Everyone has at lasted
cause
much I
longer;
some point
my
life
in life.
I
temporized
title.
scientist,
not as
depended upon
it.
I
death throes.
Who
my death
throes
But
was much more endangered be-
was fighting the time of
my
life
and
I
have been
in
— IN
700
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
prison a long, long time. Dissatisfaction with
me
me, drove
drove
life itself
farther than the rest.
peaked with Hegel and Schopenhauer and regressed with
I
Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. But
Marx and
with Karl
ism since then has taken
me higher yet;
teach the highest principles of
Nietzsche
advanced to a higher
I
Lenin, Stalin and
human
Mao
society.
the presence of communists
felt
level
Friedrich Engels. Every advance in Marx-
when he wrote
of the philosophers of action, the philosophers of the future
who would come after him,
such as Kierkegaard,
who perceived
the death of faith and the birth of individual responsibility and
commitment. The thing-in-itself is knowable through action. Marx put an end to philosophy, to philosophical studies as
we
know them. He
traditionally
has given philosophers the
tools to
change the world, and ipso facto called forth a new
kind of
man who
.
.
Marx demonstrated philosophically that the endowed with legitimacy not by God but by a ruling
.Essentially,
State was class.
pursues philosophical problems.
In bourgeois society, whatever rights a citizen has are
granted by the State, by bourgeois interests. These rights support the existence not of the individual citizen but of the bourgeoisie.
What good is
one man to another
an object of exploitation.
skills, it
is
his
American society? Whether what is sought are in
He his
knowledge, his cooperation, his capital or his labor
makes no
difference.
Men
imprison one another not
just in
the concrete sense but in the most abstract and mental sense.
A man
is
originally
an obstacle for
men by
the grace of those
very qualities which are sought in him. Ultimately, in this society of
men,
obstacle to
men
The
it
is
Man
himself
tragedy of the society of
dominate Man.
who
—and not Woman, who Men
men
can never be
is
an insurmountable
plays is
no decisive
that
fulfilled as
it
role.
can never
men, because
Choosing
Sides:
Communists and Marxism
men
every advance in society drives
farther
101
from themselves by
the same measure that they require for themselves the qualities
they must seek in other men.
No man
American
in
society has
ever gone to his grave fulfilled, content, for this reason.
This
true because in his
is
he must confront, almost
life
and he must violate the good if he is to survive as a member of society. And what is meant by "good" if not the qualities of justice, equality, truth, freedom all of those things we consider "ideals'? How is this tragedy reconciled? How do men redeem themchoice between good and
daily, a
evil
—
selves in their
wholeness as
Man?
It is
reconciled in a farce
—
and with no lack of poetic justice: all the romantic intrigues of courtship and consummation of sexual love between men and
women
in this society of
duced
in
woman are reprobetween men. The powerful and
men
relationships
that excludes
wealthy magnate, the distinguished and honored senator, the ingenious and cultured scholar
man and
the sportsman
—
—
as well as the
find themselves
members
their "holy" will power, infatuated with
sex
—the other man. does not matter
It
mains.
woman;
if
can appear
It it
can appear
it
in in
is
common
family
one day, against
consummated, the
of their
own
intrigue re-
the underlying competition for a
almost every act of personal violence,
especially in the psychological violence
committed against the
mind.
And them
in the history of all civilizations a
all
as
they
fall
symptom common
to
and ruin is the image of that embracing himself in passionate
into flame
farcical fulfillment of
Man
sexual love.
.
.
.I've
The made
spent a lifetime packed with others like sardines.
most obvious thing to change. Fear
I
notice
is
how
easily
people can be
and ignorance are the mental weaknesses that The two are distinct; in no way are they
give access to people. identical.
Words
teach nothing but a vocabulary
—
in other
words, words only address the imagination in one way or an-
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
IN
102
other.
sand
The
use they are put to should be to
People begin to
castles.
act,
not to build
think and change for the
really
if they are forced to experience things, whether good or evil. They become refined only in this manner. If it were otherwise, life would hold no gusto, no surprises, no interest. We would all be the same. Reform is merely words;
better only
revolution
A
action.
is
revolution
the most liberating experience, the most
is
glorifying experience
world
coming
own
their
.
is
destinies in their hands.
.To me, to
.
It is a time when a new when men and women carry
anyone can have.
into existence,
live
is
to change.
That
is
fundamental to
Marxism. I'm not trying to convert you, I repeat. You are much wiser than I. Wisdom to me is still a star in a galaxy light-years
You
away.
insult
me
by assuming
I
am
so prejudiced
I
cannot
hold a conversation with anyone.
.
.
me
.They always say ineffectual,
as
if
I
effete things.
were part of a conspiracy and told
—
She spoke
me
to
"Violence
all there was to it. happen outside the will of man. not conspiracies by experts. It does not matter
breeds violence"
as
if
that was
told her that revolutions
I
That they are what anyone thinks about revolution
is
No
They
talk as
though a
something that begins and ends with people
'
ing 'positions" on issues. test.
violence.
one 'Votes"
for
A
revolution
is
tak-
not a debating con-
it.
The maxim which states violence breeds violence should answer their own doubts about violence. If they think the American government and its ruling classes and flunkies have not always committed violence on the American lower classes and weaker nationalities, they live in a dream all by themselves. .
.
.There
ment,
is
nothing strange
in
the fact that a violent govern-
a violent class, breeds the violence that will
violently bring
them
to their knees.
someday
Choosing
.
understand the question that
.1
.
that
it
Communists and Marxism
Sides:
seems people can change
arises
103
when they
for the better
relate
without
vio-
lence, without experiencing the real force of circumstances of social revolution.
Aside from the fact that the experience of social revolution is
a cherished wish of
a dreadful thing at all
—and
most of the world's masses I would concede perhaps
—
a
it is
is
not
"bad
experience" for the enemies of those masses.
The enemies clergy
—
—and they
are mostly the political liberals
and
say that "an awful lot of violence and anguish can take " I'm not used to talking s skull.
place simply within one person like this,
but
this
is
one of the few cases where
I
can properly
say such notions are "quaint."
—
God knows, know all about "one person's skull" but let me just say this. There are those who suffer from themselves I
and there are those who suffer from others. There is a vast difference. The first form of suffering is illegitimate. This by no means says it is not genuine suffering the sufferings of a
—
Hamlet.
It
is
illegitimate because
suffering of others. Selfishness Historically, classes,
it
is
it
really
does ignore the
genuine form of suffering.
a
has always been a malady of the oppressing
the ruling classes.
No
one
else suffers
from
it.
—
Words do not infuriate me. My beliefs are "arid?" they must be because my life is arid. I have never qualified my belief in things like violence, and your friend is indeed a "cultured Marxist" nowhere near the Marxist I am if he is unaware that Marxism-Leninism preaches violent conflict. If one phrase could characterize Marxism in action in capitalist
—
—
would be violent conflict. I do not But it is a fact of our society (and "human behavior," as you suggested). it
like
it
and never
did.
not,
I
believe, of
society,
said
.
I
.
.The type of ridicule
I
like best
nineteenth-century "critiques," the
by Kant and refined master of
it.
To be
is
the eighteenth- and
critical
method originated Marx was a
in revolutionary writings.
able to breed
contempt
for
something
is
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
IN
104
associated with the ability to teach. a thing lightly,
by being
airy
You cannot teach by
about
its
surface
People tolerate things that amuse them, even
But no one
taking
—by humor. if
doesn't
it
what he has contempt for. There are things in this world that need to be set straight. Amusement is not the way to get the job done; contempt is. What creates amusement and humor is differences that truly are only transitory or surface differences. But to laugh at the differences between, say, the working class and the bourgeoisie as if they were only surface differences is to lie. The differences "suit" them.
tolerates
are painfully profound.
The
anguish of a bourgeois over
and the anguish of
party)
life
(what
tie to
wear to the
a proletarian over life (lack of shoes
for the kids) are not superficially different.
They are not
equiva-
lent.
.
.
.Once from
letters
in the hole, serving
a fortyish
movement people asked the idea being that outside
who were
if
about two years,
woman who
wrote
me
I
received
because some
the public to write and show concern,
the Bureau of Prisons
concerned,
it
would save
knew
me
I
had people
from the goon
squad after every meal, then at the psych building
in Spring-
all, did work. We became friends and had nothing but my balls in that cell, but if I had a few dollars, I could have bought something from the prison store by ordering it. I had no toothpaste, let alone a cup of coffee or cigarettes. I once asked her (she was constantly ending her letters, two a week, with "Be sure and let me know if you need anything") if she could send me a few dollars and I listed the essential things I needed. She wrote me a haughty letter (I in a strip-cell, so fucked up even the sight
field. I
This strategy,
wrote a
all
lot to her.
in
I
of a piece of colored cloth
moved me
to euphoria), telling
me
and that she did not like "materialists." She said she thought I was above "material things." I quickly wrote her in my frenzy not to be abandoned, and apologized. She wrote me letters on rich, scented paper and sent them in scented envelopes, and told me about her probI
surprised her
Choosing
Sides:
Communists and Marxism
lems getting into television acting and
(I
105
swear to God, I'm
not lying) about her having "only one" mink coat that meant everything to her!
When
you are so down that you
you hit the bottom
there,
"bottom";
it
—
or so
will cling to
anyone out is no
seems. There really
it
bottomless, this pit of the "ten thousand
is
things" that you
fall
through forever
you do not grab one of
if
them, no matter how slimy.
am intellectually consistent, stable. But when it comes to my situation, my subjective side, can react to pain like rattlesnake. No one likes to be hurt, to be injured, and all of I
me, a
I
this in
painful. All of these things are
is
any
civilized society takes for
mean, petty things anyone I do not have.
granted but that
Anger, anger I'm not even conscious
of,
always burns within
me.
And
it
is
even painful to talk about
cannot possibly know heart, the feeling
me
to
that
so humiliating
is
one has
it
this experience, for
and
to suffer through
it
to you because you it is
so close to
delicate, that
to grasp
what
it it
my
seems really
means.
someone
and calm, someone on the gentle you for what you take in essence be nothing (perhaps slighted him accidentally in a minor
It is as if
side,
to
rational
were to one day rage
at
way). I
know how
and
to
And
to have
weep
it
feels to
be comfortable for pity
be a natural
Spartan outlook.
—who she missed one meal would me my "materialism," things" — there no me
someone
—
ascetic, a natural Spartan,
in that asceticism, that if
ridicule
for
"selfish-
"scheming for is greater insult to than to be accused like that. And yet, as I said above, we all have to get a grip on something, no matter how little, to break ness,"
through that pit of the "ten thousand things" (I sound Chinese philosopher, I know, but I just started The Secret of the Golden Flower (by C. G. Jung and Richard Wilhelm). the
fall
like a
.
.
I
can never be happy with the petty desires this bourgeois
society has
branded into
my
flesh,
my
sensuous being.
IN
106
And what
is
the experience
missed, so
odd about
so it
in the fact that
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST it all is
enjoys (or thinks I
that society has denied
it
enjoys).
oddity exists
cannot know from experience what
why am
I
I
have
not happy?
have been denied the society of others:
I
The
me
it is
as simple as
that.
.
.You rold me,
.
finally,
that
I
have a Marxist-Leninist vision
and that those ideas die the hardest of all. Not really. It depends on who has those visions. You said you prefer "ideas which are fragile and delicate and have to survive each day and be re-created each day under the most I
most scorn all
difficult of conditions."
think that perhaps you have scorned knowledge of "the difficult of
conditions" and are even
me and my
condition.
The most
now
fragile
trying hard to
and
delicate of
ideas are those that reflect the fact that within
beings, there defile: a
is
human
an impenetrable area that no one can enter and
heart of
human
tenderness so tenacious, so all-suffering
and accepting, calm and resilient to human response, to love, that no force on earth can ever defeat it. It is the idea of the soul and there are many of them; they are born "fragile and delicate and have to survive each day and be re-created each day under the most difficult of conditions." I need beauty like I need to breathe. Do you imagine that those most cherished revelations, those ideas you speak of, do not come to me in that pit as they do to you? I know how transitory beauty is, but I also know from experience how eternal it is in the heart of man. It just now occurred to me that I would like to think I have captured some of that beauty
—
for myself.
AMERICAN VIOLENCE AMERICAN JUSTICE: The Legal System
m n America
it
has always been popular to follow mass murder-
ers, crooks, killers of all stripe.
everything its
vast,
tioner's
that
if
it
America
fashions, even people
cultivates violence in
—the people fashioned by
complicated governmental administration. The Execu-
Song should speak
to America; should
tell
the story of Gary Gilmore entertains them,
Americans
if
they
thrill
to the violence done to (as well as done by) Gilmore, then they
should always be prepared, always have a gun or a cop within reach, because
American
it
will
happen again and again
traditional system of violence stands
as long as the
above the use
of reason.
For Americans to be shocked and disgusted
murders and is
at
at senseless
crimes of extreme violence against the innocent
exactly identical to an old, worn-out prostitute expressing
moral indignation at the thought of premarital sexual
America that. Tell America that
relations.
Tell
as
long as
it
permits the use of violence
IN
70S
in its institutions
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
—
in the
traditional to this country
whole vast administrative system
—men and women
will
always
in-
dulge in violence, will always yearn to achieve the cultural
mantle of
this society based on swindle and violence. America can get angry because of the violence done to my life and the countless lives of men like me, then there will be an end to violence, but not before. But whatever you say, tell America it is not (as Europe is fond of saying) a raging monster that was bred by the emigra-
When
tion of the worst blood of
America
Tell
it is
cannot, has never tried
And because
it is
all
the nations of the Old World.
a cringing, back-stabbing coward because to, exercise its will
a coward,
it
does not respect reason. America
resorts to the use of reason only as a final
only after too
it is
.
it
it
without violence.
attempt to persuade,
has tried unsuccessfully to destroy a man, only after
late.
who were ashamed yesterday of having Vietnam are now saying: "I fought for Are now proud of it. Proud of killing and
.The Americans
.
served in the military in
my
country."
(!!!??)
—mutilating—
a doll-like people whose average adult male weighs under ninety pounds, stands under five feel tall, and tends to be a vegetarian and to practice that delicate form of sexual innocence called in the West "free love." Proud of
torturing
deflowering a gentle and beautiful people!
.
.
.
It is a
big American pastime to talk about
—and
how
horrible
America is worse than the Soviet Union! Particularly since no one in this goddamn country will help or gives a good goddamn what happens to us. This is the most unjust and oppressive country in the whole world, and I'm not going to go into lawyerlike details and comparisons. I'm not going to "argue my case" by their rules. I am totally convinced and I do not believe I would have suffered greater injustices in Soviet justice
is
yet
—
any country in the world than
I
have here for a lifetime.
American Violence/American
I'm wrong, show me. That
If
the
last
decade: help
us.
is
what
709
Justice
have been saying for
I
Bring justice to these courtrooms,
jails,
prisons. .
if I were asked the single most consistent cause derangement in prisoners, I can tell you with utmost
.In prison,
.
of mental
confidence: injustice. First
and foremost, the
The
land.
dured
if
injustice of the laws
and courts
injustice of the prison administration could
of this
be en-
that were the only injustice.
maxim: Anyone in prison who has faith in retrieving the injustice done him by appealing to American jurisprudence will go mad unless he abandons it and refuses to ever believe there is an ounce of justice in any courtroom or I
can state
as a
prison in America. This does not apply to I
must emphasize. America
If
have an animal
I
whom
far
is
I
countries. This
from "universal"!!
have taught to stand on
and beg on command, and
legs
all
it fails
to
do
so,
I
its
hind
must punish
it to obey my command. by deprivation as well as with the whip. Any other way of teaching it to always obey would register in the animal as a reward for disobeying. This applicait
some manner
in I
inflict pain.
I
tion of force can
animal and If
commit
I
then
still
I
to teach
can do
it
be humanely executed.
I
cannot injure the
be humane.
force to a degree that
it
can be called violence,
seek the destruction of the animal and not just the
correction of a habit of disobedience.
no one can dispute any of this. I taught the animal to stand and beg by rewards. But if at some point or for whatever reason it does not properly obey and stand and beg, I may send it to an animal trainer. When I do So
that,
far,
I
tell
the trainer what
do on command. I to stand and beg. If
to
I
fail
to
do
tell
that,
it is
him
if I
the animal knows but does not
to teach
it
to
obey
my command
simply send the animal to a trainer
be trained generally speaking, the trainer may teach
it
every-
110
IN
thing but what
it
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST requires to obey the
command
to stand
and
beg.
The animal
learns that
any pain
being that nourishes and sustains for disobedience.
If
inflicted
it is
pain
is
stand and fight or "learn"
its
pain
is
it it
it by the upon itself
no recourse but the application of
violence in order to destroy the animal.
with violence;
upon
inflicts
does not assimilate this "lesson" of
it
self-inflicted pain, there
itself
it
will
To kill
it.
become maddened and
will flee. It will
do
It will
defend
sullen. It will
all this if it
does not
self-inflicted.
Do not ask me what all
this has to
do with American
justice:
American system of justice. American courtroom. He is told to shut his mouth unless spoken to. He is told he is a fool if he tries to be his own lawyer. He is told his motivaof the essence to the
it is
A
prisoner begins his "training" in an
tions are not the subject matter of his indictment for crime.
His court-appointed lawyer tells him what law he violated and how many years in prison the punishment carries. He is told that if he informs on and betrays his friend, he will receive leniency. If he is the only one charged with the crime, he is told that if he helps solve other crimes, he could get leniency. He is told that because he knows the hour of the day and the day of the year and that he is in jail, he cannot claim to be insane. It does not matter that he cannot either read or write or understand the vocabulary or the rules of the court.
why he robbed
not matter
a store
—
just that
It
he robbed
does it.
If no violence was committed and he has a degree of wealth which places him above the need to rob a store, he will receive leniency in some form if this is his first indictment for crime.
He
will not
Yet he
be sent to
will
prison.
go to prison
if
he does not have the degree of
wealth which places him above the commission of such a crime.
and
He
is
sent to prison
if
he
is
poor.
That
is, if
he
is
poor
refuses to (or cannot) act as an agent of the police to betray
his friends If his
and solve whatever crimes they committed.
lawyer likes him, he will dicker with the prosecutor and
the judge to obtain as short a sentence to prison as he can.
If
American Violence/American
111
Justice
his lawyer does not like him, he will not make that effort. In America today over eighty-five percent of all defendants who go to prison have pled guilty.
In
of this the prisoner never learns a single social value;
all
never learns the definition of law or the customs of his society that the judicial system claims to be based upon.
Every right the prisoner has
turned against him.
is
chooses to plead not guilty in order to receive a
he
will, if
found
the
guilty, receive
maximum
trial
he
If
by
jury,
penalty the law
prescribes for putting everyone to trouble, for "wasting" every-
one's time. His
trial
jury of peers
a determination of acquittal only
is
instructed solely to reach
if it
cannot be proven by the
government that the physical event did take
place.
The jury is The jury The jury is
told that his motivations are, in essence, irrelevant. is
never told
it
can acquit for any reason at
intimidated into believing
law
if
did otherwise. Yet
it
personal sympathy. of lawyers is
it itself
Not
and scholarly
it
would be
all.
in violation of
the
can acquit out of nothing but
the fine-honed, specious reasonings
all
jurists in
the world can refute
this. It
a practical fact.
Men
have pled guilty to murder and have been executed
without anyone asking them the simple question:
Why?
In
no
other country on the face of this earth do such injustices exist today.
There
is
no tyranny
profound
this
in
any country but
America. It is
held in this country that the punishment ends upon
sentencing and is
commitment
to prison. This
not punished further, while he
is
means
a prisoner
in prison, for the crime. It
—
would be "double jeopardy." This is what the law states yet there are two black men who were sent to prison ten years ago as youngsters and the judge ordered that every Christmas Day the warden was to place them in solitary confinement until New Year's Day and it is done. This is the spirit of American
—
justice.
The
prisoner enters prison.
He
is
thrown into
a violent
whirlwind of moral, mental and physical destruction.
The government
likes to
boast that capital punishment
is
— IN
112
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
any more. The government likes to boast two or three men out of over two hundred million has been executed in the last twenty or twenty-five
virtually nonexistent
that only citizens years.
Yet more prisoners are murdered today
in
American prisons
than in any other on earth. About ten percent of America's
wounded
murdered annually. Every single prisoner every day must exist with the imminent threat of assault at the very least and from any quarter. prisoners are seriously
or
—
.
is
.
.The sentence to prison
committed
is
to prison for x
A man
the judicial punishment.
number
of years. So
he
sits in
and the law releases him. It is bearable because he can measure it, no matter how insufferable the prison conditions are. If he leaves an eye or hand behind, he prison for x years
is
nevertheless getting out.
But when the
judicial
sentence
is
indeterminate, he
tenced to a longer term every time any pig
time he "rules"
he
is
is
disciplined,
—which
feels like
is
resen-
it.
Every
punished for infractions of prison
are as arbitrary as the currents of the
in effect resentenced to prison
wind
before the parole board.
There are no procedures before the parole board that guarhim "judicial due process" and this fancy legal term means no less than a guarantee of justice. How does a prisoner count the time he must serve in prison when it has no end? If it was a life sentence, it still has an end. A prisoner can even face that he will die in prison but by a happy chance may someday be freed before his life is over. The mind's relationship to time is fundamental What can the mind think when the fate of the man has been reduced to such a degree of uncertainty that he cannot predict the next
—
antee
—
day or the next hour?
The
next day or the next hour could result in the certain
annihilation of the (momentary) limit the law has supposedly
placed on his imprisonment, his punishment.
He
could break one of those petty,
mean
prison rules at any
American Violence/American
113
Justice
And also (more importantly) upset the balance of his mind. One of the greatest scientists and philosophers in the world said that the human moment and
mind
is
upset the balance completely.
only conscious of a progression in time because
it
can
count (Kant).
What
happens when the mind experiences
quantity
it
moment
cannot count
the
in time
mind must
—
a progression of
for the reason that at
any
over again the process of
start all
counting because of events so capricious and arbitrary not even
can be calculated? .From here to there is five years. Each day closes the interval between my imprisonment and my freedom, which lies a moment beyond those five years. At any point in that interval, I must stop and start counting all over again, over and over again. For almost twenty years I have had to stop and start over many times. And I am not serving a life sentence. I have merely a nineteen-year indeterminate sentence yet I have their uncertainty .
.
—
served, to this date, ten years of I
have
now been
started counting
in prison for
my federal
it.
That
is
not
all,
however.
eighteen years because before
time,
counted eight years
I
I
in state
prison.
But the parole board ten years.
been
free
weeks
six
have
It refuses to
insists
have only been
I
"recognize" reality
once since January 1963: as a fugitive before
much
I
I
in prison for
—because
I
have
escaped once and lived
was incarcerated again.
Why
do not recognize that I turned the key on myself. Others turned the key on me; I was sent to prison against my will and am held in prison against my will. What else is the meaning of these bars around my cage or those riflemen that keep constant vigil in the I
served so
time? This
is
why:
I
gun-towers that line the high walls that surround this cage?
And I
they like to say that
must
face, or
I
am
not perceiving
reality!
submit to mental derangement, that
serve nineteen years to the day.
the maddening promises that
before every day of
my
I,
I
I
must
can therefore not "believe"
like all
the others, will walk free
"indeterminate" sentence
is
over.
The
IN
114
only way a
man
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
can
—because prison
live
with himself in hell
in Christian society
is
is
abandon hope
to
nothing more than the
expression of Christian hell after death
.
.
.
American judiciary, anyone who is sent to prison suffers civil death. American legal scholars scoff at this today and call it a thing of the past. If they would take their faces out of their books and look a moment beyond official courtroom "facts" and events, they will find civil death is very much in effect in every American prison. How so? It is so simple any child can figure it out. There is no legal relationship between prisoners and any social relationIn the
ship
among
cial
relationship
prisoners not monitored directly
—by
the pigs
is
in
—
a "forced" so-
violation of rules.
It
is
insubordination.
No debt a prisoner contracts from another is not in violation No prisoner can claim an obligation to
of rules. Serious rules.
other prisoners without declaring war. .
.
.There was once a prisoner
named
Blackie,
and during
a
he seized four guards hostage and held them through the quelling of the uprising. In a battle with hundreds of armed riot
guards, one guard was stabbed to death
and many hospitalized
for injuries. It
in which guards regularly bad habit of attacking prisoners randomly.
was one of those penitentiaries
had
fallen into the
No
one ever went to the hole
beaten as he was placed
in those days
in a cell.
One
without being
day the guards
prisoner and there was a mass inmate uprising.
That
killed a
is
how
it
began. Blackie took hostages in the middle of a pitched battle to
He demanded the news media enter the prison and hear the grievances of a committee composed of three men of each race, and he demanded my release from the hole for defend himself.
this purpose.
The
news media were not allowed inside the prison. newsmen were brought in. There were nine of us, and we voiced our grievances until the morning hours and Blackie released the hostages unharmed. He was later removed to a jail outside prison and no one ever national
Instead,
two
local small-town
American Violence/American
saw him
alive again.
his shirt
from
his
He
was
bunk. For
Blackie was well over
six
seventeen years and loved
He
have hanged himself with
said to
many feet life,
115
Justice
reasons no one believed
He had been
tall.
especially his
this.
prison
in
own.
was not given an autopsy and the only witnesses of
death were guards. They in fact wrote the original death
his
report.
A
young intern came to see me during some legal proceedtown and he spoke to me in hushed tones through the
ings in
screening in the holding tank of the
He had only seen me that there was The
jail.
morgue, but he told
Blackie's
body
a crease
an inch deep around Blackie's
at the
and was an expert. He told me that over two hundred pounds of pressure had been applied to the noose and he explained the physics of it. Only two or three pounds of pressure is enough when a man hangs himself. His weight did not matter in any throat.
intern was specializing in forensic medicine
real sense.
The "law" him
cannot be buried without an But Blackie had no relatives. I tried to have an autopsy and filed a petition before the
states that prisoners
autopsy at the
least.
disinterred for
courts with the help of an attorney.
The
ruled, "recognized" that while Blackie
court,
when
it
finally
was never given an
autopsy, there was no living cause for action, since
I was not on him. I tried to get around this by producing proof that Blackie was indebted to me, and his death had resulted in a legal financial loss the government must pay if it was found he died of causes other than suicide. The court ruled no prisoner can have obligations of any kind
and had no
his relative
legal claim
to other prisoners.
How am
going to get him out of his grave?
I
to get justice for
As long
as
do nothing
The
I
.
.
am
How am
going
him? nothing but a ghost of the
civil
dead,
I
can
.
prison reform that took place for twenty years
1960 to 1980
I
—never succeeded
— from
in establishing the constitu-
IN
116
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
tionality of prisoners' rights. It
stopped short at the
civil rights
of individuals. It
has resulted today in consequences few of us dare to
contemplate.
When
the prison reform
needed to do was send
had the good sense
courts
movement began,
a letter to a judge
to
all
and ask
a prisoner
for help.
The
presume that there was a funda-
mental antagonism between a prisoner and those
who held him
and so the courts did not question
a complaint
prison,
in
outside the courtroom.
Today, the courts
not accept even a petition for a
will
writ of habeas corpus unless a prisoner sends in a filing fee or a certified affidavit of pauperism
ployee
who
empowered
is
penniless prisoner
—and the
to administer oaths
must turn
He must
to.
ation of the prison in order to
file
prison
is
em-
the one a
get the cooper-
a complaint against the
prison.
In essence, the courts have returned not only to a "handsoff" doctrine in regard to prisons,
question that
may
but also
in regard to
any
lead to an issue of prisoners rights (distin'
guished from individual constitutional
civil rights).
Therefore,
the courts have even embraced a "hands-off" doctrine toward prisoners.
We
have been handed over to policemen to be dealt
with in any way
it
a true statement
regard
in
a
to
pleases them.
I
have never read or heard
come out
of the
prisoner's
condition,
mouth
of a policeman
and
curious about the mentality of policemen,
do
is
tical
have the vaguest notion of what a fascist,
and
find
anyone
if
is
one has to
all
fascist
is,
a poli-
out a few of a policeman's ideas
The policemen are the concerned. The every whim of
about patriotism and democracy. law so a
far as a prisoner
backward pig
be
murdered,
is
is
framed
for
crimes
tortured within an inch of his in
explanation
is
A
prisoner can
never
committed,
law for a prisoner today.
a
single,
life
he
—and
all
that
is
required
unquestioned statement of a
American Violence/American pig
that
no
was
there
foul
play
117
Justice
on
his
part.
Nothing
more.
While
in
Leavenworth, a grand jury
turned an indictment on
me
for a
in K.C., Kansas, re-
crime that carries a ten-year
sentence: conveying a dangerous weapon.
—
Do
you know what
pen one of those long BIC pens. The little ball was missing, and so they decided I had altered it enough to make it a dangerous weapon in the hole. (Now, I have a copy it
was?
It
was
a
of the indictment;
send
it
to you.
I
if
would please me to and the BIC was found "insane" on another
you disbelieve me,
was arraigned before
charge was dropped only after
I
it
a magistrate,
charge.)
.
I
.
.The law has never punished anyone
want
for hurting
punish a wrong done me,
me.
If
entirely
up to
Just picture yourself in that position right there in
New
justice to
it is
me.
You can't call a cop or the law when your house is burgled, when you are mugged downtown. The police walk York.
into your
home,
slap
you around
(to
put
it
mildly)
and help
themselves to whatever they want. Your wife and kids even.
Anyone
there in
New York can
are punished without even
have absolutely no rights
The most you can do
accuse you of anything and you knowing who your accuser is. You to legal protection by prosecution.
is file
a civil
are "slapped," but nothing
hands"
is
I
hope
merely
this
this.
doesn't
complaint against the is
done.
doesn't even bother to respond to the "admonition." up, stretches, yawns
and ambles away. All the
faces
even the judge's, are covered with smirks. That's I
have had to
live all
city.
The "slapping of The judge says: "Now, Mayor (Warden), happen again." That's it. The mayor
Hands
my
it.
He stands
around you, That's
how
life.
What would you do? I assure you, you'd become a deranged coward or the exact opposite. If you become the former, every-
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
IN
775
happy and
one
is
the
latter, they'll
you
they'll give
little
rewards.
destroy you at every opportunity they get.
They'll say you are "crazy," a psycho, etc.
coward
you become
If
The "norm"
is
the
in this situation.
To become
rehabilitated
means
to accept
and
by the and
live
values of your society. It requires not just faith in the laws
customs of your society, but
—and
faith in the people of your society
to extend those values,
and reproduce that
faith, in
your
transactions with others in social intercourse.
To
someone
rehabilitate
a process of teaching. It
is
process of learning by experience for the rehabilitation.
He
requires to
know
man
is
a
need of
in
the benefits of the values
of his society; he requires a firm understanding of the proper
and customs of his society. man who is a social anomaly can
uses of the laws
Only
a
best interests, especially
him, for a
social
when
fail
to pursue his
the pathway becomes clear to
anomaly knows the values of
and
his society
laws and customs.
its
The system of justice in America teaches these as to men as if they were social anomalies already
—
lessons if
they
had knowledge of the values and customs and laws of this society. This reflects the American maxim: Ignorance does not acquit.
So rehabilitation punish
men who
And what tail?
It
is
presumed and American
(theoretically)
know
does punishment that aims at rehabilitation en-
does not aim at winning
presumed
justice seeks to
better.
a prisoner
men
over by reason
cannot be won over by reason.
—
It is
it
is
the
application of force.
.
.
.A system of justice that does not instruct by reason, that
does not rationally demonstrate to a
accomplishes the opposite ends of
No
one
in
any prison
in this
man
the error of his ways,
justice: oppression.
country has ever been shown
— American Violence/American
the errors of his ways by the law.
It is
119
Justice
an annoyance no one
in-
volved in the administration of justice wants to be bothered with.
So
it is
relegated to the prison regimes.
Everyone
in prison has
committed crimes, could be
called a
But that does not mean everyone in prison belongs would like to suggest that there are men who are justly
criminal. there.
I
in prison
prison
but do not belong there.
who do
there are
men
justly in
belong there. Perhaps the great majority of
prisoners belong there.
come and
And
They keep
returning. I've seen
them
one Almost every one of them entire prison turn over in population. (in fact, everyone I've seen) feels relieved to be back. They need shaves and showers; they are gaunt, starved-looking when they come in from outside. Within a week they are rosycheeked, starched-and-pressed, talking to everyone. Laughing a lot (hail-fellow-well-met). They fit in in prison. This is where they belong. Or, to be more charitable because if men pursue their best interests, no one really "belongs" in prison go; leave
and return
for so long, I've seen at least
—
me
let
say that there are less uncertainties in
than on the outside. they have it.
Prison
become is
It
is
institutionalized out of habit.
much more
prison
life in a
not a matter so simple as that
than a habit with
That
men who
is
not
belong
here.
The
point
is:
there are those
—and they
day
—
Let's leave off
They
just
do not
where fit
in
it is
they belong; that
—do not belong—
many, but
are not
men for whom prison does punish and who do not belong here in prison.
they are
is
punishes every
not the point.
in prison. /
am
speak-
ing in terms of being, not justice or any other occasion.
Luckily, those in prison
who do
and seldom
a long, long
time
much time But there are some who do spend For them the hole was made.
not belong seldom spend
return.
in prison.
Prisons certainly were not erected to serve the purpose of a
boardinghouse; a private estate; a separate cultured I
commune.
submit to you that prisons can serve the purpose of rehabilita-
— IN
120
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
tion of men. But there are men who cannot be rehabilitated, and these men belong in prison. Society and not prison prevents their rehabilitation. For rehabilitation is something we all stand in need of; the rehabilitation of society itself has not been accomplished. This is reflected also in the fact that so
many men
in prison are
not
rehabilitated there (there in prison). If
society
man
be a
to
And
I
is
so intolerable that a
in prison,
it is
men
suggest that a few
man
can only
feel
himself
the "fault" of society. are constantly rehabilitated in
prison: they belong in society or they belong to
be dead. But
not in prison.
.No one has ever come out of prison a better man. I'm like Allenwood and Maxwell Field the places they send government informers and that frail species of individual who falls from the graces of the government or the Republican party or the Stock Exchange. I'm speaking of the penitentiary. There is at least one in .
.
not talking about places
Some
every state.
Michigan, federal
Illinois,
— —have states
government
like
New
York, Texas, California,
at least a half
itself
dozen of them. The
has over forty prisons but only about
a half-dozen penitentiaries.
I'm speaking generally.
I
do not mean
to say anything "less"
than San Quentin, Walpole, Leavenworth, Dannemora, sey
ber
Farm
(Huntsville), Anglola,
—do not
fit
into
what
I
am
Trenton
—
Ram-
prisons of that cali-
They do. have seen prisoners come and saying here.
For almost twenty years I There is not one of them who comes
to prison for the
first
go.
time
who is capable of the vast repertoire of crimes he is capable of when he finally gets out of prison. I'm not talking about the fine technicalities of, say, safe-cracking or the
mechanics of
murder. I'm not talking about methodologies.
No one learns
those things in prison, contrary to the govern-
ment's claims: prisoners do not learn
from other
prisoners.
They know how
how
to
commit crimes commit crimes as well to
American Violence/American
you (reading
as
about
how
to
this) do.
commit
121
Justice
Novels and the cinema teach more
anyone could
successful crimes than
possibly learn in prisons.
What
is
the will to
down their throats in spite of themselves is commit crimes. It is the capability I am speaking
forced
of. It
used to be a pastime of mine to watch the change in men,
to observe the blackening of their hearts. It takes place before
They
more bewildered than afraid. them. They are Every experiencing men and the administration of things no novels
your eyes.
enter prison
step after that, the fear creeps into
—nor even the worst rumors about
or the
cinema
teach.
No one work
start to
Everyone
is
in prison, are
is
It is a practical
very least
if
afraid. It
matter.
—someone
the yard or
thumb
prepared for
down
the
If
will
one
not prepared for
life
prison
—can
when they
threaten you.
tier to
your
cell,
When
first
it.
you do not threaten someone
—
fear.
at the
you walk across
you stand out
like a sore
kill.
times you have to "prey" on someone, or you will be
many
years,
you are not
bluffing.
is.
For want of a better expression, of
pigs,
not an emotional, psychological
"preyed" on yourself. After so
No
Even the
you do not appear either callously unconcerned or
cold and ready to
Many
is
it.
so dangerous,
it
this
is
a cynical experience
changes you so that you don't even
it's a way of commit murder, and everyone from the warden on down are active accomplices. That is putting it
notice the change in yourself. In five or ten years,
life.
You
mildly.
see pigs
The most well-known
politicians
suppress evidence of such crimes. often, It is
vowed ers
it is
and judges
are
rife.
You
actively
see
it
so
routine.
routine to see guards to
They
kill
make
sure prisoners
who have
one another are forced into a cell together. Prisonalready demonstrated they will kill anyone. You
who have
them kill each other ment of guards.
see
The
like flies at
prison clergy, the easiest of
the instigation and arrange-
all
to intimidate, keep their
— IN
122
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
mouths shut because (they whine) they cannot "prove" anything and, you know, the evil is outweighed by the "good" they can do if they just keep quiet and "do what they can." If they speak out, they are
By the time you
fired.
get out
of anything, any crime at
Have you of
combat
—
man
ever seen a
himself to murder?
am
I
you get out
if
—you
despair because he cannot bring
not talking about murder in the heat
that very seldom occurs in prison
of cold-blooded premeditated murder.
who do
have ever seen
—
The
Most
of
them it.
I
am
speaking
only prisoners
I
not suffer from that despair of being
who are capable of it (not a few). somewhere down the line that they
incapable of murder are those
are capable of
are capable
all.
—
find
—
To
discover that there was no basis for your
young consummating his man who has doubts about being capable of and when the time first sexual encounter with a woman comes, if he did not perform magnificently, at least he got the
anxieties about
murder
is
a feeling similar to that of a
—
job done. If
You
you can
feel stronger. kill like
that,
elements of every crime
you can do anything. All of the
come
into play.
There
is
the deception;
the ability to hold a secret; the calculation; the nerve activity of well-planned
Most important, you
—and the
violence.
learn never to trust a
man, even if he deceive them-
how men
sincere.
You
learn
and how impossible
it is
to help
seems honest and selves
and executed
them without
injuring
yourself.
You know
all
of this
and more
in a conscious
way before you
get out of prison.
do you steal when you get out? Why do you commit crimes you never dreamed of being able to commit before you entered prison? You have changed so that you are not even aware there was a time you were incapable of such things. If you meditate on it, you tell yourself that you steal because you are no longer afraid of going to prison. This is because you do
Why
not remember you were not afraid originally.
The
truth
is
that
— and
money
I
mean
the wealth of a
life-
— American Violence/American
time you have labor. Capital
something that
All you require
is
123
cannot be earned by honest
lost in prison is
Justice
is
expropriated: stolen.
a little self-confidence
—and anyone who
walks out of prison has that: he has confidence in himself, but
no confidence
The how to
at all in others.
sorry thing about
all
this
steal properly in prison!
is
that you truly did not learn
The very
thing the government
and the apologists for American prisons charge prisoners with teaching one another. All the capability you have for crime never made you a whit more intelligent in that regard.
—
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
AND GARY GILMORli!
CJomeone
passed
me
a small
book containing a selection of I found a fragment on capital
letters written by Marx. In it punishment This may amuse you. It was an unfinished letter to the New York Herald Tribune in response to an editorial in The Times on capital punishment. found it interesting because Marx points out a causal I relation within society between capital punishment and senseless, atrocious murders and suicides. The Times editorial observed that whenever there was an execution especially a well-publicized, famous execution there seemed to follow "instances of death by hanging, either
—
suicidal or accidental/' within society.
Marx
attacks this
predilections
phenomena
by saying The Times
and bloody at
logic,
y
with
its
hanging
"has stopped before these
the apotheosis of the
hangman"
—
in
other
words, that people were merely imitating the hangman. The
Times ignored the hanged these
phenomena
man
of "suicides
as having any connection and accidents."
to
125
Capital Punishment and Gary Gilmore
Marx showed
this
by citing some data compiled by another
The Morning Advertiser (an enemy of capital punishment and The Times). The data cover a period of forty-three days of the year 1849, showing not only suicides but 'murders of the most atrocious kind, following closely upon newspaper
(British),
the execution of criminals':
MURDERS AND Hannah Saddles M.G. Newton
EXECUTIONS OF
.... March .... March
Millan Petley
20
20
SUICIDES
March 22 March 22
J.G. Gleeson (four
Smith
.... March
27
Murders at Liverpool) Murder and Suicide at
Howe
March
31
Poisoning at Bath
March 27 April 2
Leicester
W. }.
....
Wards murders
his
mother Landish Sara
.
.
.
April 9
Thomas. May 9
April 13
Yardley
April 14
Doxey, parricide
April 14
J.
Bailey
kills
his
two
children and himself J.
Griffiths
J.
Rush.
.
.
.
.
.
April 18
Chas. Overton
April 21
Danie Holmston
Marx merely acknowledged self
April 7 April 8
Bailey
.
April 17
April 18
May
a relationship here,
2
but he him-
did not draw those parallels (or the table).
Marx points out that the bourgeoisie accurately predict the number and kind of crimes that will be committed over any given period, based on a number of approaches including the
—
above
table.
Budgets
for prisons, scaffolds, judges (so on) are
estimated on such figures.
Marx itself as
writes that
it is
difficult for
the bourgeois
mind
to see
the cause of crime by creating the conditions legally.
Here the fragment
trails off,
but Marx coupled the cause
connecting the data with the reason for compiling the data. I would like to add that capital punishment was originally employed in law as a punishment for things we today view as misdemeanor crimes. A man was hanged for everything from
IN
126
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
pickpocketing to stealing morsels of food.
It
was
originally
and not murder.
effectuated to prevent petty crimes,
In history, capital punishment appears before there appear
the crimes of atrocious murders and suicides.
Not only do laws perpetrate the forms of crimes they "abolish/' when they finally contradict the very purpose they were written for they give birth to other forms of crime. This
become
has
Men
is
what
of the death penalty in history.
Son of Sam are consciously motivated by capital What else do you call their now-standard manner of toying with the police by leaving clues in the form of riddles and notes to mock the hangman? That is how it can strike a morbid and immature mind, as Marx related in the fragment. But there is more. .Here in prison the most respected and honored men among us are those who have killed other men, particularly like
punishment.
.
.
other prisoners.
Everyone
relationships
all
It is
not merely
in prison has
fear,
but
respect.
an ideal of violence, murder. Beneath
between prisoners
in prison
is
the ever-present
fact of murder. It ultimately defines our relationship
among
ourselves.
And "murders and
suicides" have not always been aberrant
we reached
behavior in society. Before
this stage of civilization,
our society had no such things as murders and suicides.
The
events these terms define today were not so defined then.
human
was no more a horror long ago in our punishment is to us today, and there are periods in our history when a man was given high honors only through acts of what we today call murders and suicides. A man who killed his father was looked upon with awe at one time, Ritual
sacrifice
society than capital
for example. .
.
.1
think that
strata of social,
one of
all
people feel something special beneath the
everyday consciousness
murder or
suicide. It
is
as
the degree of frequency
We are reminded us,
not
when
they learn that
by an atrocious act of frightening to the common man, to
their society has lost his life
just that
it
occurs. It can drive him.
that anyone in society can easily
anyone can
easily
murder
be murdered. Death can
727
Capital Punishment and Gary Gilmore
come from any
quarter where other people are present. In one
degree or another, we learn
The
this. It is
human
expectation influences
not an "instinct":
notion that capital punishment
contradicts
itself
human
chance. is
a deterrent to
before the whole world
murder
when someone
is
actually executed for an act of murder. It demonstrates irrevo-
cably the opposite of the purpose for which the law was written: the
men who
are executed were obviously neither insane
nor deterred in committing atrocious murder.
The
subject (the
hanged man) has dominated the object (the hangman). The only way to prevail .
The
.
to
is
kill.
causal relation
is
the government, because
it
con-
the death penalty with murder. Practical knowledge
nects
(common
consciousness) does not distinguish the government
punishment with the apotheosis of
that practices capital
itself
the hangman.
.Your book about what happened to Gilmore should be accompanied by a little chorus of screams in the audience, don't you think? If society punishes its members by death and imprisonment, why is anyone surprised when a member of society punishes his enemies with "death and imprisonment'? (Que va! Savages!) .
.
.
.
.
Everyone knows that America
trialized civilization
behavior. talk like reality
—has the
around
almost
Why, execute a
that any modern, indus-
scientific
means
to alter a
man's
You can even call it "brainwashing," if you want to a fool who has been sheltered all his life from the us.
We
can "brainwash" a
not commit murder again. this,
—
effortlessly:
then, does
man
so that
he
will
The whole world knows we can do
Do
it
humanely, without destruction.
American
in this
man
country
is
society execute criminals?
To
perhaps ten times more costly
than "brainwashing" him to never commit crime again. It is not more "humane" to execute a man than to "brainwash" him when he has committed murder. It is not more humane to kill a man instead of making of him a better man
who
does not
kill
people.
IN
128
This
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
the argument from civilization against the death
is
penalty. It
is
anything but a sophism.
According to Marx: "Punishment
in general has
been de-
fended as a means either of amelioration or of intimidating.
Now, what
right have
you
intimidation of others?
such a thing as
to
me
for the amelioration or
there —there —which proves with the most com-
And
statistics
punish
besides,
is
history
plete evidence that since Cain, the world has
is
been neither
intimidated nor ameliorated by punishment.
The criminal
is
either a scapegoat or the merchant of his
own
soul.
This
is
the essence of the form of justice that
America
in
in
the
last half of
we know
today,
the twentieth century.
modern American justice and I don't want you to think I'm saying this is all there is to it. Everyone knows you can purchase our justice with one coin or another and that those denied "free will" by the circumI
say this
is
the essential concept of
stances of their class position (the stupid, friendless, poor, etc.)
pay the price of the crimes of those more fortunate.
.
.
I
realize that
Gilmore.
I
I
have completely identified myself with
many men like me; I am not unique because we do not classify
assure you that there are
We
from unique. are Others do. In this case, the prison regimes, the authorities do. And if you went into any prison that held far
ourselves.
Gilmore and
me and
asked for
all
of the prisoners with certain
backgrounds, both in and out of prison, backgrounds that
in-
clude observed (and suspected) behavior, you will get a set of files, a list of names, and my file and name will always be handed you along with Gilmore's (and at least eight to ten
others).
Gilmore appeared when convicts were principled, when being a convict was important. It was a time when a man was
129
Capital Punishment and Gary Gilmore
Then in
own
Judged as an individual. transition began. Previously, if you were even seen
judged by himself, his a
conversation with a pig,
on
a snitch:
made
are
he was
easy,
it
actions.
could jeopardize your
because the
pigs,
Now
randomly.
killed casually, I
Shame
life.
the prisons
think, realize the value of
keeping prisoners suspicious of one another and disunited.
.
.
.Nothing about his case
is
more easy
for
me
to understand
than his insistence on being executed.
To me, and
clerk
the problem of Gilmore
is
why
did he
a service-station attendant in the act of
kill
a
motel
armed
rob-
when they did not resist? It is difficult for me to grasp that. You only reasonably kill like that if it is a robbery for a great sum of money. It is predicated on the motive that it will be your last robbery. Or you kill like that, if it is your first robbery
bery
and your
last
He may by
and you are desperate, driven.
have been
his record alone
little
professionalism.
many
a petty thief,
an unsuccessful
you have to grant him a
Anyone who has been
little
thief,
but
expertise, a
in prison so long,
minimum
(you might becoming "hip"). That is what deepens the problem Gilmore poses for me. What possessed him to do that? He could have at least driven to Salt Lake City to rob something, if he was worried about being identified. It is only thirty miles away from Provo. I'm uncertain as to the nature of his intelligence. I do know he experimented quite cold-bloodedly with himself. (He once wore half a mustache; he steeled himself to do things ordinary so
times, acquires that gratis at the
call it
men^ould not If
do; he was brave).
he had the intelligence of
men who
are portrayed as
"Nietzschean," he killed them for experimental reasons. Like
Leopold and Loeb, intelligence that
for example.
There was something
was morbid and sublime, from what
can gather about him. Certain kinds of of the gods. But first I
if
God
men
in his little
I
incur the jealousy
wished to destroy him, he would have
driven him mad. Even a communist knows that! do not understand why Gilmore did that. I want to under-
IN
130
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
stand, because then
I
would understand
a little about
what
evil
is.
.
.Sometimes
.
many
(like
now)
think Gilmore was one of the
I
"causes" that culminated in the deaths of those two
and that they are the
men
Sometimes I feel the focus on them, and Gilmore was but one of many causal forces that combined to effect their end, their real "effect."
of the "effect" should be
deaths.
The problem
here
is
just as great as
logical or existential connection
of their deaths
Thinking of
and the it
in
is
the
as the cause
effect (their deaths)?
it
solves.
think a "cause-efTect" continuum in this matter must be
I
internal, primarily internal as
Where
such a way only leads up a blind alley and
more questions than
raises
the other:
between Gilmore
"movements." But
to use this idea
an index to contemplate the matter throws open the gates
to such a deluge of psychological
and behavioral and
ideological
theories that you can hardly get a footing without reflecting
your
own
internal private beliefs, because to say anything
take a position
among
to
"schools of thought" and theoretical
"systems" of thought, of
belief.
know this. There is nothing as internal as pain, espehuman pain. The catalog of suffering it would take to
But cially
is
I
record the intricacies of pain that led to the manifestation of
an act of multiple murder would be very melancholy to
.
.
.However ignorant
sophical matters. sophical
turn
of
my
Sometimes
mind
is
relate.
I do tend toward philodoubt that anyone with a philo-
impulses, I
fit
to
judge anyone.
He
never
comprehends the concept of guilt. That is not the concern of true justice. The question is, rather, if he was privately guilty. For a variety of reasons he could only be guilty in his heart if he chose to be. Only he really knew. We can only guess at it.
Capital Punishment and Gary Gilmore
131
His insistence on execution seems to point to that conclusion If
(among other I
things).
myself were certain and could accept his private
knowledge of his prior innocence would itself acquit him mind, but I am not myself sure he should be privately because of the kind of pain he must have suffered
guilt,
in
my
guilty
in his life,
pain caused only by the consciously evil intentions of the penal institution in our present society.
It is
hard to get at the truth of men. There are a
general "truths," but truth I
is
always something specific.
lot of Still,
bottom man the opposite is true. At
don't want to leave the impression that
I
feel at
is vulgar, yet I'm sure you know I feel bottom men are principled; the vulgarities are acquired. When I say "principled," I in no way mean "innocent" or "full of love and good feelings." I mean, at bottom men do what they think and feel is "right" whether good or evil. This means that at bottom men are not weak and I would never say, to justify a lapse in principle, "I am only human" as though that were some kind of justification for weakness, moral weakness. Flesh and blood is much, much stronger than fools believe.
—
—
When Marx identified the "holy family" with
men's dreams "on earth," he implied that the dreams would end should that paradise be realized. He implied that the conquest of the universe is the sine qua non of the conquest of man's of paradise
dark side, of his instincts, of nothing
less
than the unconscious.
Today one must begin not by studying the unconscious mind but by studying the world, the material world ans can't possibly understand.
The
—
a thing Freudi-
universe obeys laws, a great
variety of laws, but fools think this reflects that
born free and have no free
will,
when
men
are not
in fact this very belief
men because only by knowing those laws, those principles, can men put them to use instead of being blindly tossed about at their mercy, the mercy of men's own ignorance. enslaves
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
IN
132
So the
pity of
that neither Gilmore nor the world really
it is
knew what was happening have reached
.
level of civilization
.You said Gilmore wrote Nicole over
.
pages in three and a half months. of religious feelings.
the result
When
mysticism, religion.
is
all
I
we
illustrated.
hundred
fifteen
guess they reflected a lot
one mixes poetry and philosophy, emotional and impas-
It is
we
sioned "reasoning" before a fact are
The
to them.
time and place was defined,
in this
are
all
at the
mercy
helpless before: death. I'd bet you could almost
of,
we
adduce
the nature of his mystical beliefs from the nature of his particu-
death
lar
—from
will
it.
This
such as his formal, legal execution, his
facts
waiting alone in a
cell for
last fact
is
his wishing in the latter days to
it,
probably the most crucial to the uncon-
scious formulation of his mystical beliefs: to create his
own
eschatology as well as his
Only
a convict,
afterlife, his eternity.
wax upon the
when
were
a
lost,
could not be more enslaved.
conquest of his
can't
will
know how
and the nature convicts feel
of,
sad
I
in reality
feel
when
I
subject as though
it
he could not be more realize the source of,
the involuntary pride and exhilaration
when they
though they were vicious
all
up hand and foot as dangerous animals. They make
are chained lions,
out of pussycats like that.
killers
own
will it
an old hand at suffering that special kind of
anguish, could so absurdly
You
To
the spotlight, center stage.
It's as if
The world
suddenly
we
are in
has focused on us for a
moment. We are somebody capable of threatening the world in some way, no matter how small a way. That is why, for example, Son of Sam could not suppress that smile, that bashsmile pride causes in very humble, very humiliated men.
ful
Men
in chains.
It is
that involuntary pride of humiliated
a strong
to
component
when watch him
last
days
in
men
Gilmore's emotions,
that
the whole world seemed to be holding die.
I
feel
was
his feelings, in his its
breath
Capital Punishment and Gary Gilmore
Nietzsche said things relevant to this
133
in his Zarathustra in
the verses of 'Tale Criminal/'
.
The Red and the Black
.I'm reading
.
least
twenty years since
now
that I'm older
first
I
read
it.
that there
is.
It
me
occurred to
It's
been it
at
more is
one
— the romantic outlook
in the first
existential age, the last vestiges of
today
again.
can appreciate
and from more points of view. This
of the best portrayals of romantic love
—
I
pages that, in this
romanticism appear to us
(in social intercourse) as paranoia.
Stendhal unwittingly presents Julien Sorel as a homosexual totally
deluded from childhood into working out his desires on
the stage of a society ruled by the male.
about on and carry out
in personal relationships
standing
itself
woman
was
I
guess that misunder-
what the romantic period of our
defines clearly
like.
Stendhal's
women
are really victims of
(hilarious) sense of "duty," la
is
who completely misunderstood
one another and yet continue together. history
stage they walk
Stendhal, in this book, has succeeded in displaying
herself.
people
The
their petty sublimations
men
victimized by a
but one of them, Mademoiselle de
Mole, delivers a "biting epigram" she could have arrived
meditating on Gary Gilmore:
man
the death sentence."
is
the death sentence. ter of a official
I
men
I
death sentence
referred to above
romanticism. I'd like to self
could be put to death without
sanction.
in his
ing"
'The only real distinction for a Not death itself, mind you, but
don't think the Mademoiselle, the daugh-
Marquis, knew
In other words, anyone
was
at
there at the
last.
I
who is
says Gilmore's real distinction
involved in the "misunderstand-
which
I
mentioned
know what Gilmore thought
of him-
can't help but to secretly wish that
was protected by some such delusion
To be wrong
as a definition of
he
at the point of death.
is one thing, but to be so completely in error, so wrong that everything in existence scolds you for your mis-
IN
134 take,
is
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
a terrible experience.
I
wouldn't wish
it
on anyone
(except the bourgeoisie). I've
one
experienced
else.
some
of
I
think
my
I
it
sufficiently myself
will
mistakes.
not the law!)
not to wish
it
on any-
always feel the debt of apologizing for
(To other people, of course. Certainly
RACISM IN AMERICA AND HI HIM) BARS
m
lipping
Engels
this
Diihring, policy of
through morning,
a I
booklet of excerpts from
confirmation of what
human
rights
Marx and
found, in a passage from Engels' Anti-
employed
I
said about the
American
as a political doctrine
—
a cry
of self-defense, exactly like the plea of a prison guard held
hostage at knife-point by a prisoner he has spent his working
time intentionally tormenting: "But children! Please, don't
Here
.
.
those
.
kill
me!"
It is
I
have
a wife
and two
a ploy.
it is:
And it human
is
significant of the specifically bourgeois character of
rights
that the
American Constitution, the
first
to
recognize the rights of man, in the same breath confirmed the slavery of the colored races then existing in America: class privileges
were
proscribed; race privileges sanctioned.
How
is
racism "significant of the specifically bourgeois char-
acter of those
human
rights"?
— IN
136
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
human rights sanctioned the Magna Carta, which established
All of these trines of the
right (writ of
ideological doc-
the white man's
habeas corpus), and Manifest Destiny, which
established the white man's burden (colonialism).
Under the doctrine
of Manifest Destiny, any white
man
could declare the sovereign rule of his land over any non-
European lands under the auspices of various colonial mandates of the various white man's countries.
This
is
how human
by
lished
were established. They were estabwhich extend legislatively up to this
rights
legal doctrines
very day.
The the
idea was that the white races
would
rule
and administer
the non-white races; that the non-white races
affairs of
would become the source of labor and the white races would become the source of capital, i.e., civilization, wealth, culture. in existence.
It is still
The
race theory of
humanity evolved
in those early days of
the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century, but there
was not for
in existence at that
time the
scientific tools required
proper scientific demonstration. Hegel, at that time, was
the most systematic in his empirical "proofs" of white suprem-
acy
Philosophy of History).
(cf.
The
race theory of
humanity
states that the
the most advanced in the evolution of the
the genetic structure of the white races
non-white races
more
inferior
—indeed,
it is
to the
out to be the white
The
it
white races are
human is
species; that
superior to the
states that the darker the race, the
"human
race."
The human
race turns
race.
scientific tools are
the tools of scientific empiricism.
Empirical observation and experimentation conclusively demonstrate the truth of the race theory of humanity.
The so-called
"humanists" take the position that the white races should guide the
become This world
is
less
fortunate through an evolutionary process to
white.
possibly the "best-kept" secret in the bourgeois white
scientific
community
—and includes
also twentieth-cen-
tury bourgeois philosophers, especially in Continental Europe.
Racism
(Heidegger
one of the important "pioneers.") It is so "setalk about it to one another. I can imagine
few even
cret,"
them
is
137
America and Behind Bars
in
in their
a
brow
significantly every
or
come
in
and arching gathered
white laboratory coats catching each other's eyes
—
Great Experiment"
—
that help to cinch "the theory"!
drawing to a
is
(The Great Experiment
time some new data are
is
close!
I
can hear
what, historically, the
ideologists called democracy.
Only
later did
it
first
come
it
"The now.
bourgeois to refer to
the United States of America.)
The
only statistics that "favor" the black masses of Ameri-
can society are those that demonstrate greater athletic prowess than the white masses. But this
is
even "explained away" by
the citation of selective slave-breeding prior to the Civil
—and
have heard
I
it
War
explained away like this even by current
black scholars themselves.
So there
is
no lack of empirical evidence
theory of humanity.
Crime
behavior, economic
—the
includes everything.
behavior, psychological response It is
because of this
causes
—
that
is,
list
to support the race
statistics, social list
that this theory culminates in genetic
according to scientific empiricism.
It is
already
recognized in the athletic prowess of black people as an inherited characteristic of race.
Professor Shockley demonstrated that black people are in-
mentally inferior intellectually.
herently
He had
the "bad
taste" not to simply publish his finding but to talk about
to discuss
it
in a
men. His "discussions"
him
begin with what
is
no longer
for
What to do about this is the object of his "discusThe consequences to democracy are negative, to say
people.
—
all
or his listeners debatable: the genetic inferiority of black
sions."
the
it,
"democratic society" of "free and equal"
least.
The
only scientific force in the industrial world that opposes
at least in
theory
—
this race theory of
humanity
is
the
proletarian-class theory of history with the tools of scientific dialectical materialism.
Here tic
is
the communist theory in opposition to the capitalis-
bourgeois theory (based on scientific empiricism):
)
IN
138
(This
is
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
from the Notes
and
to Anti-Diihring
appears also
it
appendix to Engel's Dialectics of Nature. It is from Section (a) On the Prototypes of the Mathematical "Infinite" in the
in the
Real World.
... By recognizing the inheritance
of acquired characters,
it
ex-
tends the subject of experience from the individual to the genus; the single individual that must have experienced
the results of the experiences of a
among
instance,
no longer neces-
is
experience can be replaced to a certain extent by
sary, its individual
number
of
us the mathematical axioms
its
ancestors.
seem
If,
for
self-evident to
every eight-year-old child, and in no need of proof from experience, this
is
Negro
"accumulated inheritance."
solely the result of
.
them by
to teach
difficult
.
a
proof to a
Bushman
It
would be
or Australian
.
The accumulated
experience of a
use Engels' terminology ditions of a society,
—
is
number
of ancestors
—
to
twofold: the outward cultural tra-
which includes books,
myths,
tools,
etc.;
and secondly, genealogically acquired experience. Perception
is
based on these two areas of experience to
become conscious knowledge. (Logic
itself is
one aspect of such
knowledge.)
What is self-evident it
cannot be placed
self-evident.
requires
no
by someone
in question
And what
is
proofs, for the simple reason for
self-evident ultimately?
whom
The
it
is
world
is
self-evident; the existence of the selfsame individual
evident.
Those
so far as
outward experience went
are the
two things
a Cartesian could not for
him.
He
is
self-
doubt
could also not
doubt the mathematical perception he entertained so magnificently. Descartes
Communist intelligence;
and that
states the bourgeois
.
a
a prejudice
only the foundation of bourin general. It states that cul-
and genealogical .It is
is
is
empiricism
isolation
and history has demonstrated .
an obstacle to
is
world outlook
and not of science
scientific
geois science tural
it
was a white man, a European.
theory states that prejudice
maxim
is
the death of
all civilizations,
this abundantly.
that the morally strongest
and the most
— Racism intelligent
in
139
America and Behind Bars
among an oppressed people
and
scaffolds
in
are to be found
on the
the prisons of the oppressors.
in prisons with American Indians, and black Americans. Without quesMexicans and Chicanos, tion every non-white prisoner I have known is grappling with but the most cona revolutionary consciousness of the world sistent, the most persistent, are black prisoners. I have seen them so radical in their critical perception they cannot will
have spent a lifetime
I
—
— understand even
not
a book.
a paragraph of conceptual
language
in
learned early they will not learn by rote anything that
I
addresses the everyday world.
They
will
not clutter up their
minds with (memorized) "knowledge" which is not self-evident to them. I have heard them point to the most abstract and seemingly universal "principles" and condescendingly say: "It is prejudice!" and leave it there. I admit this was maddening to me, particularly since a certain amount of vehemence and
—
hostility
is
manner when they make
always evident in their
such declarations.
Morons do not hold such
opinions.
gence do not become enraged over
Men
with low
injustice;
intelli-
they question
nothing and accept everything said and done to them.
.
It
.
.And whence came
came
this
"holy" white European Culture?
from the Roman and Islamic European culture coalesced as a distinctive "en-
as a cultural inheritance
civilizations.
many
tity" as a result of the ingathering of
and
logical
specifically
cultural "entities." It
began
races; as
many
genea-
an independent,
European culture roughly over the period we
call
the Renaissance (from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century).
of
Islam and
many
Rome had
a similar history of
many
The same
cultures,
races.
is
an ingathering
true of Ancient
Greece and India and China. It is equally true of the Mayas and Aztecs in the Western Hemisphere.
Whether or not
the world was round only became a question was no longer self-evident that it was square (or "flat"). Whether or not the world was the center of the revolutions of
after
it
the universe
—the
"lights in the sky"
—only became
a question
IN
140 after
it
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
was no longer self-evident that in European history is long.
was
it
so.
The
of
list
examples Let
me
go with the
no one
evident;
world-is-flat
example.
doubted
in that culture
was once
It It
it.
self-
had that
felt
From
it
flowed a whole world outlook, a whole body of knowledge.
It
certainty about
had the
fixity
it
that forbade properly doubting
of a popular prejudice
prejudice consists
Anyone
of.
for
— and
this
whom
is
it.
exactly
what
that fundamental
"fact" was not self-evident lacked intelligence and was consid-
ered a fool (in those days there were not any fine distinctions,
such as
Only
idiot,
moron,
ability to
and
be able to place
the world was
could do
flat.
this.
and
racially
had the
culturally distinct people
in question the
Only those
for
fundamental
whom
it
whom
the world
culturally
backward
is
in
flat
fact that
was not self-evident
Only, therefore, the fools could do
In a society for is
etc.).
a genealogically
—and
this
it!.
every society
manner
—
all
knowledge of the world that contradicts the world being is
the flat
erroneous: an example of ignorance or a mental defect.
American (European)
In
society the intelligence tests are
not just of European culture, but are part of the European cultural traditions.
These
extent prejudice has
do nothing but demonstrate the
tests
become
a popular fixity.
People in European culture artistic creative
who have shined forth as true who have been capable of
geniuses are those
transcending cultural prejudices, barriers.
gence
test
could possibly discover
the failure of the test
—the high
No
—except
said, in all
intelli-
quality of this intelligence.
In every society in the world, the wisest
aside
academic
negatively, through
men have
always
one way or another, that only after they had pushed they had learned as a student did they begin to exercise
their intelligence. .
.
.What
overall, a
matical
European intelligence tests is, certain kind of self-evident knowledge called matheis
reflected in the
Its logic is
tions of quantities self-evident.
A =
C.
fundamentally mathematical.
and
The
opera-
their relations (in formulations) are
It is self-evident
that
if
A =
B and B
=
all
C,
Racism
The
in
America and Behind Bars
intelligence quotient
judging the degree of
itself a
is
fixity (in
way
of mathematically
the popular mind) of the
evident axioms of mathematics. Nothing more.
the most passive and obsequious
pendent
—people
141
It
self-
means that
—ultimately ignorant and
de-
our society will score the highest
in
There is no such thing as a "de-cultured" intelligence test. Even if the mathematical method is employed and the quotient
is
a ratio
between the genetic age of
a certain people (in
substitution for the chronological age of an individual) cultural age of that people (in substitution for the
of that individual),
still
and the
mental age
the quantity of positive and negative
("true" and "false") answers creates a mathematical judgment of values of qualities
—
values that are not quantitatively
mea-
surable.
Machines can form of
calculate. Therefore, calculation
the lowest
is
intelligence.
Whatever must be learned by rote is a prejudice; it is not knowledge. Knowledge is something that has a subjective side, an intimate meaning as well as an outward meaning. The tune of the hickory stick across the butt of a schoolboy
is
proper experience required to inform his intelligence
goddamned dog is
fool should
taught: to obey.
is
he
is
know
He
is
him
number number x
thinks that x
the arithmatical
But
this
number
what
a
not taught to understand what
it
that. All
he
is
—even saying the —
doing when he obeys
based on "love and kindness"
of
is
of is
unless
fool
taught
just
is
obedience
his
who
is
composed
may be what
the
is
whipping
thumps across the butt
is
what
of.
the best illustration: In actuality (for
thumps
not the
—and any
number
x
is
I
suspect x
composed
(e.g., whipped) what concepts are, more often than what mathematics is. He is being whipped what history is; what ideals like justice, equality, etc., are; what passion and poetry are. The boy is being punished in order to learn a poem! Punished to "know" what is true, good, beautiful. A truly gifted boy would turn on his "teacher" And what? If he had a pistol, he would shoot his way out of school the way Carl Panzram did. That
the boy what things of!),
is
being taught
are,
—
—
IN
142
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
what he would do. Then he would probably rob a bank and get out of town fast! This is what made the "Chinaman of Konigsberg" (Kant) say: "Genius makes its own rules." Even European philosophers have taken notice that most of what we take for knowledge is nothing but bias and prejudice. The point Engels made was that we would not demonstrate to "a Bushman or Australian Negro" what is self-evident to us but that a Bushman or Australian Negro could, because he (and not us) is in a position to do so for the simple reason it is
—
—
him not self-evident. Nor can humanity(l) look upon itself the way it does other species of life. "Humanity" may "know" what the best strains is
for
of
wheat or
best). It it
cattle or
are,
seeks in a species, but
qualities that
human people; a
dogs
can breed strains of
make up
being). This it is
a
peculiarities.
and to
.
.
We
know
speak a
At present
by Mexican Spanish.
to
cultured and genealogical
we
are
still
toilet tissue
evolving,
arrest our evolution.
aliens here.
No
one speaks
Some of them piss in the down the toilet you see
—
go past your
cell in
pushbroom when he sweeps the
in herds, like
the
know what we know what we once
no position
in
flush toilet tissue
heaps of shit-stained
move
scientifically
complete, many-sided
that as a species
little
shower and refuse to of the trustee's
is.
is
growth would be to
.I'm surrounded I
(a
not because humanity cannot breed
is
traits are actually
arrest that
English.
being
because "humanity"
human
in relation to itself (at
to bring out certain qualities
cannot breed
human
complete human being
took to be
it
but only
life
the wake
corridor. Flies
miniature cattle grazing a few feet above
The Mexican border
is only two miles away. most foreign countries the water pressure in sewer plumbing is too low to accommodate the flushing of wet paper through the pipes. This is why most of them who have never lived in this country and speak no English do
the
floor.
In
Mexico
—
—
as in
—
—
not flush the
toilet tissue
down
the
toilet.
Racism
A
racist
could
for
.
.1
about
are
months
five
man
— maybe
was
I
people do; that
is
some experiences
I
In the to Texas.
summer I
you see the
free once.
and
five
I
was
months
a half
free
—
in
of the world!)
have seen racism outside prison.
Some
143
Do
a big deal out of this.
wasn't always in prison! Hell,
1962. (I'm a I
make
America and Behind Bars
between ignorance and prejudice?
relationship
.
in
why
I
had before
of 1962, before
arrived in
,
I
do not
have to state that
I
went
I
like injustice. I
do
not.
Here
to prison:
was sent to prison,
I
went
Texas, by bus. At the bus station
there were two identical drinking fountains.
One
said
White
Only and the other said Colored Only. It was the first time I remember seeing anything like this. I thought it funny. It was in July of 1962 and the civil rights movement in the South was over with.
What
I
mean
pation of students in the anti-war
The but
in
sizable cities of
Texas
all
is:
before the large partici-
movement
had
their
joined
Colored
it.
Districts,
the small towns in the country, there were no Colored
Districts.
Blacks could not enter those small towns without a
mate excuse." After dark, blacks caught
inside the
'
'legiti-
towns risked
death.
The named
small
town
my
folks lived in
— my grandparents—was
.
In the small towns in the country, instead of a Colored District,
each had what they called a nigger-town!
though they were shadows of the reflect in
real towns.
was
as
They seem
to
It
concept the psychoanalytic relationships between the
conscious and subconscious mind. In the
when
town
of
the sun rose.
blacks came in from nigger-town They washed the windows of the businesses;
swept the streets and sidewalks and picked up the garbage.
Then
they left town before the stores opened. I was at a movie house the only one in town and I rose in the middle of the movie to go to the restrooms. Walking up the aisle, I
—
—
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
IN
144
happened
to notice in the balcony that
occupied by black people. to
sit
anywhere but
all
the seats were
discovered they were not allowed
I
in the balcony.
I
had to
believe they
purchase their tickets for the movies at a certain time each week. They could not merely walk up to the ticket
seller at
movie time, like white folks do. I took most of this racial discrimination to be only an eccentricity of the South. I never attempted to guess at its implications.
Then one day
I
was watching the news on
was an on-the-spot news I
switched
off
black
man
He He must have been
left
The news event
house was at bay against a wall of
was a farmer from the town's nigger-town.
he had
successful at farming, because
International-make hauling truck
He had a little boy,
the house.
a block away.
as big as a
the bus station.
There
covering an event there in town.
the television and
was happening about
A
flash
television.
filled
about nine years
a big
with neat bales of hay.
old.
The boy
stayed in the
cab of the truck.
The
farmer's truck was double-parked over one of the white
But there were no other had come into town to purchase a
lines that separated the parking spaces.
He
vehicles parked there.
block of
ice.
The bus
which
station,
sat
on the
outskirts of
town, also had an icehouse.
A
cop had fined the black farmer two hundred
with the alternative
hauled in his
off to
jail.
—
The
if
he did not pay instantly
dollars,
—
of being
much cash him. The cop
farmer did not have that
pocket and so the cop tried to arrest
called for reinforcements
and about eight or nine more cops
arrived.
One
tried to grab the farmer,
was, at the edge of the parking
who pushed him
lot,
aside.
what remained of
There
a barbed-
wire fence. All that remained were cedar posts sticking up from
the ground, and the farmer jerked a post out of the ground and
backed up against the
He had
to have
wall,
brandishing the club in one hand.
been strong
always buried deeply.
as
an ox, because cedar posts are
Racism
When with, as
arrived the cops
I
me
shouted at
had him surrounded
back to the
said, his
I
Every cop had
his pistol
to stay back,
wall.
but
The farmer was merely
He did her
not attack.
They emptied
on the farmer.
fire
was seeing.
I
standing there with the club raised.
heard him shout over and over: "Leave
their
ammunition
—more
guns
lethal
him from
firing at
dead before he
in his
body.
He
than .357-magnum
The
They
bullets.
about twenty
a distance of
He was
feet.
hit the ground.
was parked so that the front
driver's side,
inches.
me
jerked each time
The little boy was wailing, watching his daddy his truck
I
froze,
I
him. They were shooting him with .44-caliber
a bullet hit
were
I
him. They
at
walked up anyway. Before
I
could not believe what
I
in a semicircle,
drawn and aimed
reached the police, they opened
because
145
America and Behind Bars
in
tire of
was over the white dividing
talk later circulated that
line
die.
I
saw that
the truck, on the
about
six
or eight
he was one of those "crazy
niggers."
When
I
left
Texas by Greyhound bus, there was one other
incident that struck me. These buses are engaged in interstate
commerce and have no
regulations once aboard the bus that
discriminate as to race. I
took a seat by the window, in the middle of the bus. All
the seats were
A
full
except about seven or eight seats on the
aisle.
black student about twenty years old boarded the bus.
He
was the only black there. I
was
lost in
thought and staring out the window when he
stopped and inquired
me. Absently I
still
words
I
said:
if
he could
"Sure,
it
sit in
was not conscious of anything idly.
He had
the
empty
doesn't matter."
boarded with
special.
at least
seat next to
He
We
down.
sat
spoke a few
one other college
student, a white boy from Idaho.
When
the bus stopped at a cafe for supper,
the bus and entered the cafe. together at the counter.
I
The
we
all
got off
black student and
I
sat
remember vaguely asking him where
IN
146
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
the other student had "disappeared"
to.
Then we both ordered
supper from a waitress. In due time
mine
arrived. I
began
eating.
his order to the waitress. / kept eating.
He
order to the waitress. / was through eating.
He
inquired about
inquired about his
He
inquired about
and by now I was getting impatient. She told him that his supper was in a brown paper bag "to go." I looked from him to the waitress, still so innocent I did not understand what was going on but it was clear they did not like one another. I was so stupid I thought that his supper-to-go was because the bus was going to depart before he could finish eating it. He took the bag and paid his check. He and I walked outside the cafe. There were fifteen or twenty passengers standing about on the sidewalk and along the bus. White folks. He stepped onto the lawn and I followed him. He sat there on the grass and opened his bag while we talked. We talked about nothing that had anything to do with the situation at least I thought so. But I recall now that he kept asking me carefully, between bites of food, where I was from. I kept telling him I was born in Michigan. He would chew his food and nod and blink his eyes. The old ladies, the old men and all the others watched us his order again,
—
—
closely.
I
remember
ing manner.
that they
all
grinned at us in a very engag-
We were the only ones on the lawn.
I
thought that
amused them. kept looking in the crowd for the other student, the white
I
boy.
I
heard his
caught glimpses of him, but he apparently never saw or
me when would call to him. I
head was
Every time
I
glimpsed him,
in the act of turning.
When we boarded ought to picket
That was the
the bus again, the black student said: "I
this place." first
time
it
Then we resumed our
dawned on me
allowed to eat in the cafe.
We
were
seats.
that blacks were not
still
within the Texas
border. I
recall
in the
the better part of our conversations was about
United
States.
He
told
me he
liked
cities
San Francisco. At
Racism
that point the white student spoke up. it:
my
catching
The white
I
said quietly:
I
could get rich there.
a big
It sat
believe,
The
No
It
it all
had
I
in racial discrimina-
on
me before went I
Lake City.
dancing place owned and operated by the
on the edge of what was then a black was Second East Street on the corner of, I
right
Seventh South
Street.
place was called Liberty Wells. blacks,
visible there
Mexicans or Indians allowed. The only things were the white faces of physically healthy and
even attractive young white people twenties.
They
intelligence of
who
period
asked,
I
—
to prison occurred in Salt
neighborhood.
so?"
said.
guess the only other experience
Mormons.
"How
student giggled, and the black cleared
tion of black people that left an impression
There was
they do
Then he leaned forward toward me "The dude is a fag know what I mean?"
he
up: "Hustling,"
and
You know how
eyes intently, he addressed the black student
and observed that curious.
147
America and Behind Bars
in
all
in their late teens or early
had the slow mentality of
one of those
cattle,
the
evil
elderly virgins of the Victorian
teach schoolchildren the alphabet and to properly
hate themselves. It
was about ten or eleven o'clock
walking through the area. traffic to pass.
my
in
the evening and
I
was
stopped at the curb, waiting for the
Liberty Wells,
sat kitty-corner
about
I
from where
I
I
noticed, was having a dance.
had paused. Six
age walked up and waited with
me
It
or seven blacks for the traffic to
pass. I
crossed the street with
them and continued down the
sidewalk, directly across the street from Liberty Wells.
There were thick oak trees along the sidewalk on one side and a chain-link fence on the other side. There was no light at that point.
The blacks crowded around me and I stopped. The largest one stood in front of me. The first thing I thought was that I should have carried my gun. I told him to get out of my way and started toward him. He said: "First you have to fight one of us."
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
IN
148
Then he pushed
a scared smaller
one
got
my
on him before I could do was
licks in
the fence, and
all
hit the ground.
I
hit
I
with a right and went for him, ignoring the blows from I
me.
in front of
brushed him aside and stepped into the spokesman.
I
I
him
all sides.
rolled to
there and try to block the
lie
kicks.
While they were
me, one kept
hitting
yelling
something
about not being able to dance. Then they ran down the walk.
I
my
stood up and brushed off
side-
About twenty
clothes.
whites were gathered at the foot of the steps leading into the
dance
hall,
watching.
looked at them and
I
Today
I
realize
it
made
sense.
continued on
I
my way.
have had to pay the price many times
I
for
the social injustices committed by white people in this society. I
much in mean white people who are
have never been close to them, have never had
common
with them.
in a position to
dance
to a
And by
commit
that
I
these racial injustices.
I
had never been
at Liberty Wells, nor ever cared to. is supposed to turn me against me into the ranks of white society.
Getting attacked by blacks
them.
It is a
form of "rehabilitation"
main
virtually the
it is
It
ers
supposed to force
It is
in
many prison
systems,
program there. There you will find
rehabilitation
has worked overall,
who
—and
would
I
say.
prison-
are attracted to racial doctrines, but not near as
many
as the policemen in Los Angeles and Orange County, however. It
me that beneath the robes of the Klan,
has never been lost on
you are more than Mussolini himself
likely to find a
who
policeman. Indeed,
justified his "revolution" of
it
was
policemen
by saying that "the working people will be happy only when there is a policeman on every street corner." Excuse me, but
When
I
I
could never support the police!
think of the profundity of the injustices done to
black people in America, I
would not be
a
man
socially in treating
feel a horror
I
if I
I
cannot
easily describe.
believed that blacks are not justified
any and
all
white people in this society
with violence and hatred. Even as
I
write this
white boys being raped and murdered
I
am
aware of
in prisons, of
white
— Racism
men and women There
is
being attacked and murdered by blacks.
such a thing as social justice
of individual
149
America and Behind Bars
in
White
justice.
—
it is
not a question
society created black
society
(The phrase "racial discriminaremoved from the deep horror white society gave birth to, and nurtured: the nigger. ) The peculiar way the bourgeois class in America developed brought this about. I refuse to sanitize it by offering yet another through
racial discrimination.
tion" seems to be light-years
"class analysis" of the history of racial oppression in
Just the same, there
America.
it.
not in the nature of "white society"—or white cultures
It is
—
a class basis for
is
to oppress other peoples.
There
—
no democracy for blacks for all non-white AmeriAmerica is a white man's country, and this is not simply a result of blind economic laws. I was once reading some old booklets that contained minutes of the U.S. Congress at the turn of this century, and there was a debate concerning the need for legislation to control foreign cans
—
is
in this country.
emigration to America.
A
quota system based on race alone resulted from
senators were concerned with
stemming the
tide of
this.
The
Chinese
and Japanese immigrants. can quote exactly the principle for determining the quotas:
I
"If
America
senator
name
is
—he was not "it is
non-European
A
going
man
to
remain a white
a
famous senator and
our duty to
restrict
s I
country, " said the
have forgotten
his
entrance into this country of
" races.
quota system for
all
immigrants was worked out and
enacted by Congress to insure that
far
more white people than
non-white were allowed into the country. I
remember when the
State Prison was racially integrated for
There were hundred prisoners. Segregation of so few seems absurd beyond belief today, yet in the history of the state over a hundred years black prisoners
black prisoners.
It
is
incredible to recall today.
exactly six blacks out of about eight
—
—
IN
ISO
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
had been segregated. The Chicanos and Indians represented almost half of the prison population and were never segregated. When this happened and it happened all over the country it began a struggle for the rights of all prisoners. When the Civil Rights Act came into existence a few years later, it permitted prisoners to enter federal courts and sue for their rights to be free from discrimination and cruel and unusual punishment. It began a period of prison reform that had a revolutionary effect on prison conditions for the vast majority of all
—
—
prisoners.
We no longer had to fear being tortured and thrown into the hole for writing a letter to a judge, a lawyer or a senator. For
the most part
it
became
possible to
communicate with anyone
through the Postal Service. Playboy magazine was no longer a in the hole on had a right, for the first time, to medical care, to proper food and clothing. We had a right not to be loaned out on shotgun crews for slave labor to private businessmen. The screen barriers were torn down and for the first time we could touch and kiss our people in the visiting room. They unchained me from the floor and quit tear-gassing
contraband item punishable by twenty-nine days the "starvation diet."
me
my sleep.
in
It
We
became unconstitutional
to use electroshock
therapy to punish prisoners.
The It
is
list is
endless.
true that
when
these things
came
into being,
"sophisticated" and subtle forms of abuse arose.
form of prisoner
arose in the
killing prisoner.
Until then, there was a
was
It
more
harmony among
prisoners.
There
from the prison staff and it was were once one. We were united not
a line that divided prisoners
understood by us just in
all.
We
our misery, but as men; as
men
regardless of race.
There was violence and murder between prisoners who crossed that line as informers not because a man was "black"
—
or "white."
But
it
was nothing to the violence among prisoners that And this violence can be measured by the number
exists today.
of caseworkers, psychologists, sociologists; by the
number
of
Racism
who
prison employees
come about
America and Behind Bars
in
are not ordinary prison guards.
merely
try to is
reform thieves
—
has
uncon-
their goal, conscious or
make policemen out
to
It
SI
America that prisons do not
in typically freakish
scious,
I
of prisoners.
The same way
government makes policemen out of criminals and drug addicts,
who
Society,
them
gives
are turned into informers outside prison.
which has never
exploit that equality to get
them
prison deprives
The problem believe I
I
in reality
accepted blacks as equals,
"equality" only in prison, where they immediately
back
in prison
what
society outside
power.
of:
of racism
politically disturbing to
is
have grappled with
it
in political theory all
see a blind injustice of such towering proportions,
to take in
all its
it is
me.
my
I
life.
difficult
ramifications.
Oppressed races and nationalities
in prisons
immediately
seek to assert the kind of supremacy over whites that whites subject
them
to outside prison. It
—and "should be."
It is
is
almost a mechanical law
the only time and place in this country
most non-whites can redeem the promise of
their childhoods,
namely, to be men. In most of
my a
my
letters in this regard,
eyes the ideal of individual justice
matter of social .
Justice
.
is
the individual.
draws
.
.
its
—and
not always bloodless and It
mistakenly had before it
was,
all
along,
justice.
is
it
does not always
visit
above intellectual considerations and
it
morality from consequences.
.The word "nigger"
realize, in spite of
is
itself offensive,
I
have come to
attempts by both black and white anti-
racist intellectuals to use it.
I
it
in a
non-derogatory way: to defuse
Nothing can redeem that word.
When
blacks call one an-
other "nigger," they have accepted that they are inferior as
human
beings.
It is
the same
when homosexuals
call
one an-
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
1S2
IN
other "bitches"
—they have accepted
that they are inferior as
men.
.
.It
.
has been something
have been aware of since
I
I
started
serving time: So long as, and to the degree that a prison regime
can keep can
its
prisoner at each other's throats
abuse and torment
it
its
—
to that degree
prisoners; to that degree are the
American prisoners multiplied. In the South the prison regimes use mainly a class of prisoners who behave as guards, pigs. They are called variously (depending upon which injustices of
state) dog-boys, building tenders, convict guards, trustees; the list is
colorful,
and every
state in the
South has
its
own name
They are given all the authority They are even armed with rifles.
for these inmates.
prison guards.
Out in the Western states, some cases, the prison regime
of regular
prisoners are divided by race. In
will give privileges to blacks and Chicanos and Indians which they deny to whites. In other
whites they give
cases,
it is
ment
this in
many
ways.
called "culture groups."
all
the privileges
They can
to.
They
imple-
use inmate organizations
These groups are given resources not
available to others of races not of a certain "cultural group."
(Outside
visitors
on
"freedom";
a social level;
way
is
it is
the white prisoners
by harassing only one race
who
etc.)
—more times than
Another
not, today
are the ones being tortured
and
discriminated against.
At Leavenworth and Atlanta,
I
all-black cells, especially in lock-up
to four cells.
I
to get
men
per
cell.
was always thrown into if
those prisons held up
Outside lock-up there are eight-men
was always the only white man
me
attacked by blacks.
The
there.
The
idea was
idea was to get
me
to
hate blacks. I
personally have never
in lock-up or
on the
my
had any problems with them,
yard. This
is
because
I
either
am known among
and as a rule whites are turned into active racists by this method. They have always placed the most outspoken black Muslims in cells with me in lock-up, but I have never had any problems. them. But
case
is
exceptional,
Racism
This
is
in
America and Behind Bars
because we share a
common oppression:
I
at
bottom,
oppression and racial oppression are identical. Before
I
S3
class
even
knew what the word was, I was once told by an old black man when I first started serving time that I was class-conscious. (I looked .
it
up
in
my
books to discover what
it
was.)
.Every leap in the direction of prison reform
.
in prison
by
a period of racial unity
come about
strikes
among
preceded
is
all prisoners.
Work
quickly in quick succession; prisoners fight
back against beatings and are supported by everyone on the yard. Sabotage
on the yard
—
work
at
sites
—
follows quickly
upon any prisoner tortured in the hole. A period in which pigs address prisoners decently
is
accom-
panied by prisoner unity.
.
.We were packed
.
ing the
riot.
A
in cells in
the hole immediately follow-
black prisoner was taken out and severely
beaten. His jaw was broken.
We dumped on
the pigs, tore up
we could. This was in the largest of the federal The pigs were afraid to let us shower for fear we would when they opened a cell door.
everything prisons.
attack
About three weeks later they let us shower one at a time. About twenty pigs escorted us, one at a time, in and out of the shower
stall
from the
They were
all
cells.
white pigs and they stood directly
of the shower watching
like you.
us."
trying to act relaxed.
One
"We're white men Those blacks don't like you any more than they He watched me and I just said: 'Tuck your
named Punchy like
me and
in front
said, in a friendly voice:
mother." If
do
me
like that, I know they must makes me wonder sometimes prisoners around me.
the pigs would approach
it
to other white prisoners. It
when
We
I
look at the faces of
were sent to prison
rested us, gave us
to
be broken.
The
forces that ar-
"due process" and threw us into prison, hate
our guts and wish to heaven
we
did not
exist.
It
is
not an
IN
154
accident that
we
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
all
too often find ourselves in racial conflicts
of self-defense with other prisoners.
They want
us to
ing one another,
and the police
kill
we
one another. So long as we are murdermaking it easy for the prison regimes
are
to hold us
and destroy
us.
and wounded and jails in the last decade or so in America, you could more easily understand that an armed conflict a war, even though a 'small war" is taking place at this very moment in every state, every county and in every city. It is being orchestrated by the police at this moment. Every day of every year in America at least four prisoners suffer violent death in prison and over one hundred are wounded. They use the blacks against the Chicanos, the whites and the Puerto Ricans. And the whites against the Chicanos and the Indians and the blacks and Puerto Ricans. They use every race against every other race, and that is why they are not tearing If
I
offered here the figures of prisoners killed
in prisons
down
—
—
'
the prisons.
Prison regimes and
jails
"teach" white prisoners to hate
non-white prisoners, because after being white racism
all
socially subjected to
their lives, the blacks naturally attack white
and prison. The authorities want the white prisoners to change their ways and "come back into the fold of white law-abiding society." That's the message and it is as clear as a bell. Whites are forced to defend themselves in prison, even if part of that defense is to take the offensive position. American prisoners in
jail
Sunday schools. Whites have to stay close to one another in most of the large penitentiaries and defend each other. This will be true so long as it is not understood by all races of prisoners that it is to their advantage to live in harmony and mutual regard for one anprisons are not
other. Until then,
But will
this
mutual destruction
can never happen.
The
will
be their
lot.
police, the prison regimes
always see to arranging our lives in prison with an eye to
keeping us at each other's throats.
I
TM
OKI N,\ AFFAIRS
he communists who
led the peasant (and petty bourgeois)
revolutions in 1848 in Germany The communists had not devised
winning the peasant
failed for political
reasons.
a correct political policy for
classes over to the proletarian revolution
gathering strength in the cities of Cologne, Paris and London.
The
lessons derived
from Marx's analyses of the communist
experience in France and Leninist
Communist
class alliance in
—an
Germany
Party,
which
alliance that permits the proletariat, small
number in peasant countries, The first successful revolution
tariat
furnished the basis of the
called for a worker-peasant
to rule the government. led
by the communist
prole-
occurred in 1917 in Russia. Since then, the whole history
development of nations has shifted. The proletarian since 1917 has gathered such immense strength throughout the world that a world proletarian revolution is not
of the
movement
far off.
and
its
The
revolution depends on the worker-peasant alliance
ability to
maintain
its
independence (economic and
IN
156
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
—
from the bourgeois industrial nations concentrated most part in Europe, specifically: England. Every peasant nation that frees itself by an alliance with the
political)
for the
Communist imperialist
closer to the is
Party, the dictatorship of the proletariat,
monopoly capitalism of other
from the
nations, brings us
hour of the successful proletarian revolution that
spearheading, historically, the world revolution.
What
happens
Mexico, Central America and South and the Middle East in Third World nations will determine that hour, which is inevitable. It could take ten more years, it could take thirty or a hundred more years but it will come: It is inevitable. What role the communist superpowers will play in this is another matter. China and the Soviet Union could possibly America,
in
—
in Africa
— —
retard the world revolution. in the
am
I
communist movement
not certain as to their place
today.
They
certainly have
no
claim to leadership (and are not the vanguard), simply because
they are vast and powerful. Little Albania or Mozambique, for the sake of illustration only, could possibly play a more important role in the
movement
ful communistic countries and the Soviet Union.
The
role of these
(in every sense)
like
the People's Republic of China
superpowers
sense on the assistance
than the big, power-
will
depend
in
an absolute
they extend to the revolutionaries
fighting for their lives in the
Third World now,
today.
These
revolutionaries are being tempered in a revolutionary war for
power and
are, therefore, in possession of a
higher revolution-
ary consciousness. I
am
with the most feeble and oppressed of
World in
nations.
I
direct
England when the
occurs
.
.
my
first
concern there.
all I
the Third
hope
to
be
successful proletarian revolution
.
There are perhaps many reasons why I seem to "admire" Russia, but the main one is this: I have developed a feeling that responds to the Russian soul
—the
greatest writers of prose
1S7
Foreign Affairs
came from Russia. I see Russia as a great suffering mass of humanity that has wallowed so deeply in the mire that only great passions could result. Besides,
first
I
studied Lenin and then
studied the history of the
guard" of Russia and vivid presences in his
my
Communist
his
all
it
I
must have
comrades and nurse
feel
it
I
know
personally Lieb-
felt like
suits
across a country is
etc., etc.
I
can
to win a country with
To see the realization To walk with comrades
to health.
years of theorizing, of dreaming.
patched-up
I
"old
Europe during Lenin's time are mind. The personalities of Lenin and all
knecht, Luxemburg, Kautsky, Radek, Bukharin,
my
The
of
all
comrades impressed me.
even imagine what
comrades.
Party he led.
of in
from every corner of Europe and America
we
just
conquered and to
feel
the might that
at last ours.
I have read at least three books by Alexander SolzhenitAugust 1814, The First Circle and The Gulag Archipelago. I have also read a few articles by him. He is a traitor, not to communism (you must first have been a communist), but to his people, his countrymen. (Notice how America is a haven for the vilest of traitors!) I was delighted to read The First Circle because beneath all his shit, I learned a lot about how lenient the Soviet Union was to its prisoners. I have been in prison twice as long as he, and I am not a traitor who tried to hand his country over to another .
.
syn:
country.
He
served ten years in prison for a crime that would
most certainly
result in execution today in the U.S.A. If
execution, he would in
still
just
be starting
his natural life
Leavenworth. In either case, he would never
been
freed.
I
in his life
have served more time than he did,
not
term have
just in
the
hole.
He rism.
was/is a militarist, one
He
is
who worshipped German
not even a propagandist: he
lies,
weaves
The
style of
his fabrications,
one committed.
is
a
liar.
He
milita-
tells his
with a certain amount of
A
certain passion.
style.
That passion
IN
158 is
simply to
exulted in
.
lie
his
way out
bad
of a
situation
—and he has
it!
occurred to
.It just
.
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
me
this
morning that you see
in
my
disgust with Soviet "dissidents" (like Anatoly Shcharansky), a
pro-Soviet attitude.
There born
movement
a
is
—and
movement,
this
the Soviet felon prisons
in
Marxism-Leninism,
There
movement
establish complete bourgeois freedom.
dents."
To me,
I
I
support
I
find in
them
oppose
.
.My
.
position regarding
force
Cuba
U.S.S.R. of
all,
—
(if
to
Cuba
is
Cuban
is
producing.
relation to social
developments have conspired to
"appearances" are correct) to kneel before the
be a "running dog" of
social imperialism. First
alone in the Western Hemisphere.
either to capitulate to
the
Cuba and Cuba's
this: historical
is
The "dissiNot only are
it.
a cynical verification of the
maleducated "intellectuals" the Soviet Union
imperialism
it.
in the U.S.S.R. to
the "dissidents" are ridiculous.
they ridiculous, but
was
communism,
to restore
the Soviet Union.
in
a petty-bourgeois
is
—
ironically,
America and
Cuba had
restore conditions prior to
revolution, or align itself with the
"communist
empire" of the Soviet Union. I
do not agree with Cuba's foreign policy because Cuba has
no foreign Union.
policy.
Cuba
has the foreign policy of the Soviet
The only way Cuba can break with social imperialism is if two or three Latin-American countries have a successful revolution. This would break Cuba's isolation; give her a voice in the Western Hemisphere and allow her to form, if necessary, some sort of bloc to punish her enemies. That was Che's conception of
Cuba I
in relation to
cannot be
other hemispheric powers.
critical of
an infant whose only possible source
of nourishment can be found in the dugs of a wolf.
Lenin made
his Brest Treaty. Stalin his Pact with Hitler.
Lenin saw the Brest Treaty
as a
means
of gaining time, a
means
159
Foreign Affairs
of respite. Stalin saw his pact as necessary,
which indeed
it
was,
because the Western Powers wanted to pit Hitler against Russia and then
move
in
and defeat whichever
side
emerged
victorious.
Lenin's treaty and Stalin's pact were politically brilliant maneuvers. Their response to reality was magnificent. So
is
Cas-
tro's.
Mao, the Chinese Communist Party and the country
are
objectively three separate entities. I
support Mao's influence on the revolution, his contribution
to Marxist knowledge. I I I
support an independent China. do not know enough about the C.C.P. to judge whether
"support" the party.
none we ever heard it rely on weaponry. But it had the best people because they were politically trained, and this element alone defies everything we once knew (or know) about regular positional warfare. I think this is the crux of the difference between bourgeois military doctrines and the military doctrines of people's war. The former relies on weaponry and machinery; the latter on
Under Mao, China had
a military like
did not have the best "weapons," nor did
It
of.
the valor of the people.
The
latter
is
vastly superior in war.
—not nowhere. The innovation warfare century not the discovery nuclear war —
one
seriously contests this
any longer
greatest
in
of
is
at the in
it is
No
Pentagon;
the twentieth the discovery
of people's war.
The
capitalist military
can never use the methods of people's
war without overthrowing
.
.
.The thinking
is
itself.
that the Jews in theU.S.S.R.
who want to
go to Israel want to get there for the express reason of picking up arms against the Palestinians. That is why a lot of people have reservations about the mass Jewish migration to Israel.
That
is
not
from the U.S.S.R.
my "automatic" opinion.
I
don't hold that
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
IN
160
opinion, because
honestly do not know.
I
except, of course, that
have no opinion
I
Jews want to go there to
if
with the
live
same motives anyone migrates to another country, it would be a crime to stop them. But there are rumors to the contrary, and / do know what Zionism is, as opposed to Judaism.
.
wince when
.1
.
the U.S.A. it
only
If
tells
that
I
is
me how
hear that
here in
life in Israel is like life
supposed to be a kind of defense of corrupt,
how
evil
and
Israel,
country
terrible that
is.
you do not understand the devastating nature of
If
violence
—violence
makes the horrible
that
violence look like childish play-acting
prehended the setting
for
both
my
civilized
atrocities of savage
—you have not
truly
com-
and the contents of his mor-
letters
them. That violence that destroys a man's character, als,
mind and
his life, his
that stalks
perverts
all
of his senses
is
beneath the banners of capitalism and
the violence settles like a
plague over industrial democratic republics.
The Shah
chop
of Iran will
off
your hands, but he
will
not
(because he cannot) take your soul from you. In America, for
example,
if its
both can and
prisons hold the slightest authority over you,
will destroy
you
—
can and
it
it
your soul.
will take
We are each of us here burnt-out disaster zones —the more
pitiable because I
am
most of us don't know
it
or can't see
not "for" either civilized or savage violence. Civilized
violence
is,
however, the worst of the two.
It is
a
compulsion
without personal reason that permeates every aspect of bourgeois society.
So
for
me
Marx
even
chies
.
.
in
it
is
infinitely
Saudi Arabia or Syria
and savage
.1
called
life in
"alienation."
to visualize an Israel "like the U.S.A."
to feel alarm; to feel life say,
it.
worse there
—with
its
is
for
me
in quality than,
barbarian monar-
tribes.
wish you would ponder this a moment. Say that
Arab nations tomorrow became partners with
Israel
all
the
and every-
161
Foreign Affairs
thing that implies.
by
The
feudal monarchies would be supported
the interests that support the existence of
all
inevitable collapse of those old feudal systems at
bay for
God knows how many
Revolution would be
stifled.
Israel.
The
would be held
decades.
We
need
instability in that
up the people in that Arab nations are beginning to become aware this. We need to raise popular democratic revolutions in the Arab nations now, and communists are trying to do
area of the world in order to raise area. All the
of all
just that.
This "great country" has sure become enraged
with right-
eous indignation over the Ayatollah's latest farce to get a
out of the U.S.A. by forcing the extradition of one of the most infamous war criminals since the Second World War. Imagine how the Israelis would react if the little justice
U.S.A.
not
only
harbored Adolf
made him an honored course! It
is
guest.
No
Hitler,
but feted
him,
one argues that point, of
the "methods" of the Iranians they take "issue"
with.
Go
Ask anyone: from the man on the Harvard and Yale. See how red their faces get, how angry! At last, at long last, their "country" has been done an "injustice." They are up in out into the
streets.
street to the "experts" in political science at
arms against the Iranian children
show
solidarity
been
historically
barely in
means
its
that the
—
country for daring to
a revolution that has
overdue for forty years; a revolution that
infancy: six
people of Iran.
in this
with their revolution
months
Shah cannot walk
old.
It
free in the
A friend of an enemy
is
is
justice.
That
same world
as the
needs
an enemy. Childish but
true.
The
old yellow pus of
American cowardice
throbbing in the veins of this sorry country. appear? In chauvinism that struts safely in
away from danger.
It
is
is
once again
How its
does
own
it
land,
easy to talk "dangerously" about
knocking people down when you are on your own
turf, be-
IN
162
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
hind an embattlement of thousands of nuclear missiles and
an ocean. This else.
rage.
If
shit revolts I
me
dwelled on
to it,
no end I
just
if I
don't think of something
know
I'd tear
up
this cell in
FREEDOM?
MA ightning rain has
is
come.
about midnight and everyone is
my
—the —has always soothed me. The
roll
always are during a hunger
and
strike. It
is
a torrent of quiet.
They
time to stretch out
relax.
This kind of night driving like
windows and
flashing outside the
It is
the big drums of a
When me happy
it
occurs to
after
all
rain hitting the
symphony
me
orchestra.
the kind of things
these years,
I
windows hard,
of thunder sounds
like to
it
takes to
make
think they are simple.
Simple because money cannot purchase them. Indeed, money
much. Then again, it's not a matter of what I like or dislike, what I "want" or desire. Not a matter of personal taste. It is what I need, what my existence cannot live without. Some would call it "revenge"; others, "vindication." I want justice. I do not want to be in prison so long that I come to gaze up at the sky and curse the stars for my misery. I do not want is
an obstacle to them. But
I
know
I
ask too
IN
164
ever to
come
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
to the upside-down conclusion that
blame/' as the saying goes.
Or
"no one
is
to
that this state of affairs always
has been and always will be in our world.
Or
that
I
turned the
key on myself.
do not know how I would react to the experience of someone, an ordinary man who works for a government, who would come up to me and with his manner, his tone, his voice tell me: "We apologize for what we did to you. We are sorry and will never do it again." If he were truly sincere and I knew it, such an experience would devastate me. I believe it would alter me radically. I might as well forget that. It is not unlike the man who says: 'Til believe in God only if I see Him." In reality his secret desire is to believe, and he does by presupposing God in order to "see" Him. But he never "sees" Him and is never reconciled to his beliefs by an objective but personal act of God: only by his own acts. .
.
that
.1
.
.The main thing too obvious
.
it is
for
me now to overlook is me to exist in prison.
constitutionally impossible for
My vision
of
life
outside prison has
me wonder
become
dream.
a fading
what it has always been all along. I think I want out of prison the way the average man thinks he wants to be a millionaire, or to be, which is a better example, It
makes
if
that
is
a great artist like Michelangelo.
of the sacrifices
and
Not having the
effort that
faintest notion
such things require in the
average man.
Counterposed to "my vision of
life
outside prison"
full-blown perception of a terrible revolutionary war in
—
is
my
its in-
up in fits and starts and dying as quickly in a splash of blood and violence on a scale so microscopic as to go fancy
flaring
unnoticed to the average, everyday perception of events country.
The
realization that
of those unnoticed "fits
and
by
all
odds
I
in this
too will be just one
starts" that dies terribly in a splash
Freedom 7
165
and inhuman violence, indifferent violence,
of blood
heartening. Nevertheless, the line of in that direction.
of
That
the "normal"
life:
The
my
leads inexorably
life
conquered the pastoral one
life.
"natural" revolutionaries ever born to society
first
ways die
vision has
not very
is
in prisons,
al-
always die after long torture and debase-
ment. They are always unknown, unsupported, and usually unconscious of themselves as such.
They think they
die as
"good thieves," "good convicts." The Catechism of a Revolutionary, written by Natcheyev, describes such men. But it describes their Being and not their direct consciousness as revolutionary.
ety
my
is
annihilation. It has
been since
customs, laws of our society oppose
So maybe "really" care
Every
this explains a little of
whether or not
I
am
Simply to die a violent death on
my
why
detail of our soci-
my birth. The it
seems that
.
.
I
how
I
can be happy
society. After all this that society has I
done,
don't want revenge; to punish.
apology of some
itself
sort.
A
little
I
I
just
am
I
to
to
Or walk
an
to
me, not
streets as
my cell and beaten me to the floor, with and consent of everyone? Men who have come
entered
their
working time tormenting me?
the streets with the scores of judges, of politicians,
preachers and lawyers
me
like
consideration. Just a small recog-
be content to walk free along the same
knowledge work and spent
full
naturally
would
by society of the injustice that has been done to mention others like me.
Am
the
American
in
nition
men who have
reason to
"little scale";
blood"). History understands only big things.
cannot imagine
resentful.
prison.
a "bigger scale," (a bigger
with the desire to get out of prison (the
"little splash of
do not
I
ever released from
"splash of blood") instead of in prison, can be exist
morals,
existence in essence.
who have
consciously conspired to crush
through the perpetration of intentional
lies,
cover-ups?'
Who have baited their traps for me with my very sanity? With justice?
With common decency?
IN
166
THE BELLY OF THE BEAST
Or walk the streets with the "faceless masses" of our society who during my lifetime have supported or acquiesced to evil men and their ambitions? And do it with full cynical knowledge? Just you walk out of your
the street. Talk to him.
house and stop one randomly on
may amuse you because he
It
had power over you. You are not subjected
has never
to his ignorance,
his basic evilness.
But been
you had been, you would not find
if
my
all
How
life
under his arbitrary
wish this would end!
I
my
could find
in the world,
How
life
it
amusing.
I
have
heel.
I
wish
I
could walk free
again and see and do things
other people do.
how
would be possible now, though. Too I want to try. It is my right. That is what "human right" is. My right, the individual's right. We all have that right even though we know in our hearts we may be incapable of accomplishing what we don't see
I
much
that
has happened, for too long, to me. But
have the absolute right to
do
right to
to
me what
it
society does have, then at
some time
ing that
.
.
.1
I
in
try to accomplish. If society has the
has done (and
have the
I
my life even
may not be
legally
I
doing),
right, at least, to
the odds are by
as other
do not know how
thought of
if
is still
men.
feel at
being given a parole.
being free from prison receded from
my
time
ever had plans or hopes of ever being a free
feelings, so long
country again in not now.
walk free
now overwhelm-
mind, I
which
my
life.
ago that
Maybe
I
later
The
my
honestly do not recall a
I
man
can write about
in this it,
but
ABOUT THK AUTHOR Jack
Henry Abbott was born
has written for The
New
January 21, 1944, in Oscoda, Michigan.
York Review of Books.
He
(contin uedfrom front flap)
drugs in prison; the
doomed
relationship be-
tween inmate and guard; the complex behavior of prisoners among themselves; the political philosophy that Abbott has forged from his unique vantage point; his views on the American system ofjustice, parole and rehabilitation—and more. Through the relentless force of its language, the extreme urgency of its concerns, In the Belly of the Beast takes us deeper into the life and mind of a hard-core convict than any other book. Always compelling occasionally shocking, this is a haunting portrait of human nature in a hellish world, the debut of a brilliant writer:
a stunning literary achievement.
Jack Henry Abbott has written for The New York Review ofBooks.
Jacket design: Robert Aulicino
Random House, Printed in U.S.A.
©
1981
Inc.,
New York, NY 6/81
Random House,
Inc.
10022
In Praise of
In the Belly ofthe Beast
"We most
have before us the most intense,
I
might even say the
book of its kind in the American repertoire of prison literature. In the Belly of the Beast is awesome, brilliant, perversely ingenuous; its impact is fiercely visionary
indelible,
and
as
an articulation of penal nightmare
it is
completely compelling." -Terrence Des Pres, The New York Times Book Review "It
echoes
like
a
slammed door
in the corridors
of max-
imum security." —J. D. Reed, Time
work touched with dark greatness... in up its own stark poetry, he inverts our reality and asserts his. Darkness, light, hunger, fear, sorrow never have been more extremely defined." -John Rechy, The Los Angeles Times Book Review "Astonishing... a
brutal prose that dredges
"Remarkable... Abbott achieves something accuracy and detachment."
like
an heroic
-James Boatright, The Washington Post Book World
"May be one of the most importaM books of our age." — Vogue