Jack Henry Abbott

Abbott is the author of the letters that have been collected in excerpt form in In the Belly of the Beast. His purpose with the letters, as he states, is to expose the American public to the horrors of the American prison system, in a factual and objective way. He originally wrote to Norman Mailer, wishing to help Mailer with his research for Mailer's book The Executioner's Song.

Abbott has lived in prison for most of his life since he was twelve. Before that, he had been in and out of foster homes and was originally incarcerated in a juvenile facility for failure to adjust to foster homes. As a man without access to normal experiences and the outside world, he feels he is stunted emotionally, an "arrested adolescent," with the body of a man and the emotions of a child. He is self-taught, having read...