Stirring Prose
I recently read a lovely article (“On Writers and Their Day Jobs”) on a subject about which I’ve written quite a bit. In fact, I shared part of How to Write a Great Book in another Substack post that dealt with that very subject a couple of weeks ago.
Since you can read all of that via the links provided, I won’t retell it now. Instead, I’ll provide the section about books written in stir.
Four Walls Do Not a Prison Make
If writing at a luxurious estate in the country—or in a private room in a great library—isn’t ideal for fostering one’s creative urges, The State has often been happy to provide other accommodations. For uninterrupted time in which to think, it’s hard to beat a prison cell (although it might be considered an example of what J. P. Donleavy meant when he said “Writing is turning one’s worst moments into money”).
Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf may be one of the most infamous books written in prison, but it’s certainly not the only one. For normal people, the notion of being locked away in some god-forsaken cell—with nothing to distract oneself from the horrors of self-reflection—has little appeal. Writers, however—as we all know—are not normal people.
For scribblers, a prison cell provides time and space to indulge in exactly the kind of ...ahhhh ...ummm ...self-indulgence that got them into writing in the first place. Throw in free room, board, clothing, and laundry, and the chance to mingle with the sort of people who have interesting life stories to exploit, and you have the makings of a perfect writer’s colony.
Normal, rational people avoid writing whenever possible (before you jump down my throat about normal” and “rational” being an unlikely pairing, we have neither time nor space for a digression on the subject of oxymorons). However, when faced with years of little to do but think, some unlikely people have taken up writing. It also has the advantage of using up more days of one’s sentence than sharpening shivs from the handles of old toothbrushes.
Given the unique benefits and qualifications of the penal system, it’s surprising that so few writers have knocked over a liquor store or two, just to reserve a spot in one of these cushy literary dens. Come to think of it, given the percentage of income that writers spend on booze, a hold-up or two makes good financial sense.
Writers could also benefit from the advice Raymond Chandler’s literary agent, H.N. Swanson, gave a young writer who wanted to work in the most lucrative writing genre. He answered in just two words, “ransom notes.”
Sir Walter Raleigh went to prison three times. The first time, it was for marrying one of Elizabeth the First’s maids of honor without first requesting the queen’s permission. Later, he was imprisoned for high treason, accused of being involved in a plot against Elizabeth’s successor, James I. The last time he was arrested for raiding a Spanish colony in the New World (of which the English crown, no doubt, approved unofficially—but which was diplomatically embarrassing). At his desk in the Tower of London (which is still there, by the way), he wrote his two-part History of the World. When he learned that part one wasn’t selling very well, he burned the rest without sending it to the printer. Angry writers occasionally lose their heads, but Sir Walter managed to do it twice.
It seems that Shakespeare had a youthful talent for poaching—and getting caught at it. Some believe that the only reason he abandoned country life for London was to avoid receiving yet another sentence from Sir Thomas Lucy, then Justice of the Peace—and, not coincidentally, owner of Charlecote’s deer park, just five miles east of Stratford-upon-Avon. The Bard later lampooned Lucy, as Justice Shallow, in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Of course, none of this may be true, since no one has ever been able to prove, disprove—or agree upon—very many details of Shakespeare’s life. If ever there was a writer who is truly known only by his work, it’s Shakespeare. If it is his own work (and no, I’m not about to restart that discussion either).
Machiavelli began work on The Prince while imprisoned for allegedly encouraging rebellion against Florence’s powerful Medici family. The accusation was false, but even with a dedication to Lorenzo, il Magnifico, matters never really smoothed out between the Medici and the inventor of political theory. His book is still read by politicians, gangsters, and other literate bullies—primarily for its practical advice and its refreshing absence of ethical concerns.
Writing sent Daniel Defoe to prison too, but his novels did not cause his incarceration. He had satirized the treatment of dissenters in a pamphlet, only to discover that the body of The Church of England had been born without a funny bone. “The Shortest Way With Dissenters” did not amuse dissenters either. Defoe erred by trying to substitute Machiavelli for Thalia, the muse of comedy. His tongue-in-cheek recommendation that the church simply kill all the dissenters was—in retrospect—a tad too subtle.
Perhaps, emulating Swift, he should have suggested that the British establishment simply eat any inconvenient dissenters.
In 1703, Defoe was sentenced to spend three days in the stocks. That sounds like an amusement for tourists today, but could easily have proven fatal in Defoe’s time. While awaiting his fate in Newgate Prison, he wrote a poem, “A Hymn to the Pillory,” that so tickled the mob that they treated him like an honored guest while he stood in the stocks. They even purchased copies of his poem while he was there—which is better treatment than most writers, today, get at their readings.
Prison helped his career in another way, as well. It provided background details, nineteen years later, for the title character of Moll Flanders, who was born in Newgate. Another famous literary character was born in prison: Don Quixote de la Mancha. Cervantes spent some time in debtor’s prison, and used it to begin work on his book, one of the earliest novels, and still among the greatest.
If you really want to write a great book, you might consider going beyond the limit of a few dozen credit cards—enough to provide the solitude of incarceration. Alas, there are no debtor’s prisons in the US—unless the debts are to the IRS.
Thoreau refused to pay a tax that, in effect, supported slavery and funded the Mexican War (among other forms of governmental injustice). While there, he began his famous essay, “Resistance to Civil Government” (better known as “Civil Disobedience”). When Emerson visited his cell, he asked, “Henry, why are you here?” Thoreau responded “Waldo, the question is what are you doing out there?” By the way, Thoreau’s relatives paid the tax bill (just one dollar) without his consent, and the proto-protestor got out of jail after one night.
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” like Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedience,” was part of a noble tradition of prisoners-of-conscience—epitomized by Gandhi, who wrote voluminously during his various imprisonments at the hands of the waning British colonial powers.
Ezra Pound was another writer who never learned to fit in and play nice. An outspoken admirer of Italy, and Italy’s Mussolini, he spoke on over three hundred broadcasts during the war. This, as you might expect, did not sit well with Americans who were in a war against the Fascists. Once the dictator received his foot-first come-uppance, the crusty poet was arrested for treason against the country of his birth.
In a military prison set up in Pisa, Pound was locked in a tiny metal cage that baked in the Mediterranean sun. He used the time to begin work on The Pisan Cantos, but the experience nearly (or “clearly,” depending on who you ask) drove him insane. That madness, however, protected him from prosecution—which would certainly have condemned him to death—by making him unfit for trial.
PG Wodehouse, who had written a short story called “Prisoner of War” in 1915, later fell afoul of his homeland via the radio. During World War II, he was captured by the Germans, in France, and imprisoned as a dangerous enemy alien. The amiable old man was given preferential treatment, because of his age and fame at home. His problems began when he was given the opportunity to broadcast to England and America. Wodehouse was a brilliant writer of funny books, but he was totally naïve when it came to politics.
His stories, rife with unpatriotic silliness in time of war, had fallen on stonily deaf ears. Nonetheless, he thought the British would be amused when he made light of his own situation—keeping the stiff upper lip and all that. Their reaction was quite the opposite: they were horrified that he was giving aid to the enemy, at the same time as the Nazis were blitzing Dear Old England. He became known as “Lord HawHaw,” a popular synonym for “traitor.”
As charmingly clueless as some of his most-beloved characters, he never really understood why his countrymen reviled him.
His first novel after the war, Joy in the Morning, was written while he was still a prisoner of the Nazis. It was published in America, where he lived for the rest of his life. England did—eventually and grudgingly—forgive him; he was knighted, in absentia, in 1975, a few weeks before his death.
Another World War II jailbird, Fernand Braudel, became a prisoner-of-war of the Nazis in 1939. While there, he completed the first draft of his doctoral thesis, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, which became one of the most ground-breaking historical works of the twentieth century. He had neither notes nor reference material in prison, and wrote completely from memory.
Jean-Paul Sartre also spent some time in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp. That’s where he began writing plays (which, coincidentally, feature existential feelings of being trapped in one form or another). While most Nazi camps had no exit, Sartre easily convinced his captors of his poor eyesight and he was released.
Ludwig Wittgenstein, spent some time in a prisoner of war camp in Italy... actually finishing work on his famous Tracticus just before his imprisonment. However the experience later led him to give this piece of advice (not originally-intended for those suffering from writer’s block, but certainly applicable): “A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that’s unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.”
Oscar Wilde’s time in stir was not one of conscience, though it was—in a way—political. He was injudicious enough to flaunt a homosexual affair with the son of John Douglas, the Marquess of Queensbury (yes, the same man who established the formal rules for boxers). While Douglas, pére, could, no doubt, have beaten Wilde senseless, and gotten away with it, he was a gentleman—so he let the courts and jails do it for him. Wilde, however, used part of his sentence to write a fifty-thousand-word letter now known as De Profundis, as well as The Ballad of Reading Gaol—and consume cases of 1874 Perrier-Jouet champagne.
Paid subscribers to these Substack pages get access to complete editions of two of my novellas. Noirvella is a modern story of revenge, told in the style of film noir. Unbelievable began as a rom-com that formed around a pompous guy who is conceited, misinformed, and undeservedly successful (it has since continued to grow as new stories about its anti-hero emerge). Both books are sold by Amazon, but paid subscribers get to read them for free. Also, substack pages (older than eight months) automatically slip behind a paywall—where only paid subscribers can read them. If you’re interested in reading any of them, you can subscribe (giving you free access to them), or buy them in book form should you prefer the feel of a physical book. Meanwhile, it is easy to become a paying subscriber (just like supporting your favorite NPR or PBS station). It’s entirely optional, and—even if you choose not to pay—you’ll still get my regular substack posts—I’m always happy to have free subscribers as readers.