Mailer helped get it published and it garnered extensive critical acclaim. Mailer agreed, and the book, which was actually a series of letters Abbott wrote to Mailer, was called "In the Belly of the Beast". Abbott wrote to Mailer and offered to write a book about his life in various prisons and what it was like. In 1977 he read that writer Norman Mailer was writing a book about convicted murderer Gary Gilmore. In prison he was troublesome and defiant, refusing to obey orders, and spent an inordinate amount of time in solitary confinement. He was eventually caught and sent back to prison, earning himself an extra 19 years for his additional crimes. In 1971 he escaped and, while on the lam, committed a bank robbery in Colorado. Abbott was given a sentence of three to 20 years for the killing. At 21 he was serving time in a Utah prison for forgery when he got into a fight with a fellow inmate and stabbed the man to death. In trouble with school authorities and the law at an early age, Abbott was sent to a reform school at age 16. Jack Abbott was born on a US Army base in Michigan, the son of a US soldier and a Chinese woman.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |