In the Belly of the Beast : Letters from Prison

New York, NY, U.S.A.: Random House, Incorporated, 1981. Hard Cover. Near Fine. First Edition. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. In the middle of writing The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer received a letter from a federal prisoner 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 with Abbott and made a startling literary discovery: the convict's direct, intense prose was decidedly powerful; his letters were extraordinary for their clarity, vividness and ferocity. In the Belly of the Beast, Mailer brings together Abbott's letters to Mailer, edited and arranged according to: Abbott's background as a "state-raised" convict; the bizarre forms of punishment practiced in American prisons; the experience of long-term solitary confinement; the uses and abuses of sex and drugs in prison; the doomed relationship between inmate and guard; the complex behavior of prisoners among themselves; and much more.166 pages. The New York Times Book Review called it, "the most intense, the most fiercely visionary book of its kind in the American repertoire of prison literature. In The Belly of the Beast is awesome, brilliant, perversely ingenious; its impact is indelible, and as an articulation of penal nightmare it is completely compelling." Dust jacket top of spine is slightly rubbed with a 1" and 1/16" closed tear on top edge of front cover..