MY RETURN

by Jack Henry with Naomi Zack Abbott ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 1987

And a provocative return it is in this eclectic collection of prison-wrought literary shards from convicted killer and one-time Mailer protÉgÉ Abbott (In the Belly of the Beast, 1981). This hot, polemical work, written after Abbott's incarceration for his 1981 man. daughter of Richard Adan in Manhattan's Lower East Side, consists of two parts: letters to various well-known writers, preceded by a play (The Death of Tragedy) and an appendix about the killing and subsequent trial. Freelance-writer Zack assisted on the play, and also offers a shameful introduction that attempts to wash Abbott's hands of the killing (to her, the murder was ""an incident [that] was something ordinary""--ordinary to whom? Adan?). Regrettably, this Pontius Pilatism is echoed throughout the play, whose three acts, woven from trial transcript and played as in the Greek, complete with chorus, prove two things: 1) Abbott had better stick to essays; 2) even strong writers can defuse through excusatory self-pity. (As a further embarrassment, the play is garnished with that ""Appendix,"" consisting of witnesses' statements and little line drawings of the murder scene and crime.) Once past the play, however, this compilation is molten gold. The letters (most addressed only to the correspondents' first names--""Dear Norman,"" etc.) reveal an astonishing depth of bold intellectual inquiry, ranging from reflections on crime, Nietzsche, and Wagner, to an autobiographical missive, to ruminations on the Torah and the Holocaust (Abbott, it seems, has converted to Orthodox Judaism). The letters, at once elegant and angry, are in direct line with the iconoclastic ferment of Abbott's earlier work; especially the standout of the bunch, a blistering attack on William Styron that brilliantly and without mercy skewers that writer as an opportunistic, dangerous sham. Always infuriating (even the comparatively weak play rankles), mostly compelling work, then, that confirms Abbott's reputation as our leading jailhouse literary lion.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 1987

ISBN: 0879753552

Page Count: -

Publisher: Prometheus

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1987

Categories: NONFICTION