CAST THE FIRST STONE

Something of the rough protest of If He Hollers Let Him Go (1945) in a loudmouthed, highstrung transcript of prison where the loneliness of a womanless world leads to restive violence. #109130, Jim Monroe, covers his first five years of a twenty year sentence in a record of the days spent in ball and poker games, in attempts to foil the guards, and to fight down the impulse toward homosexuality which- for Jim- has a sobering, sullying aftertaste. It is the innocent friendship with Dido, young, unsteady, dependent and devoted, which costs Jim his commutation after a sex perversion charge is brought against them- but Dido repays Jim's loyalty with his suicide through which he frees Jim for the world beyond... The anger here- and the compassion- gives this its impetus which may well be lost in the bluster of a raw vernacular. Caution.