Jacket design by Gavin L. O'Keefe |
SLAMMER DAYS
George Sylvester Viereck & Jack Woodford
These days, when we hear of "prison memoirs" we think of hardened criminals who, while paying their debt to society, learned how to write the story of their lives from their cells. Slammer Days is not one of those books. The two books in this present volume are the prison memoirs of hard-working, professional writers who wound up in prison for different reasons, but who felt compelled to write of their experiences in the big house after they were released. They use their writing skills to show how the system can beat a man down and how a non-criminal mind can persevere and eventually triumph. Richard A. Lupoff, writer and all-around literary powerhouse -- with no criminal record of his own -- says in his detailed introduction: Slammer Days is a window — more accurately, I suppose, two windows — into the prison life of two talented, prolific, and even to an extent important, writers of half a century ago. You will read this book, these two mem oirs, and come away from the experience a different person than you were before you read them. Read Men Into Beasts and Home Away From Home and see if you would have survived as well as George Sylvester Viereck and Jack Woodford. |