Hump Day Horror

 

Jack Henry Abbott spent much of his life incarcerated, as a minor at the age of 12 (at a reform school), and then at the age of 18.  While in prison, he killed an inmate and received additional time.

He heard that author Norman Mailer was writing about convicted killer, Gary Gilmore.  So he wrote to Mailer claiming Gilmore was a liar and offered to share a more accurate experience, that of a "state-raised convict."

Mailer was moved by Abbott's writing, and helped him get released on parole in 1981.  He offered to employ him, and the literary crowd in New York was ready to accept him.

Only six weeks later, he got into a fight with a waiter and stabbed him in the chest.  He fled town, and was found in Louisiana, on this day.  He was convicted, but he still had Mailer's support, who advocated for a minimum sentence.  He is quoted as saying, "Culture is worth a little risk."

His book, which was published just after his release, became a bestseller.

The New York Times review stated, "His prose is most penetrating, most knife-like, when anger is its occasion."  It was indeed a knife he used on the young waiter.

But I think part of the horror here is Abbott's maladjustment.  From his years of confinement, "he developed a subjective perspective that every encounter was potentially threatening."