Moonstone Press will shortly publish a second edition of A Different Kind of Hell, my collection of prison journal entries, fragments, and reflections written during incarceration and the period following my release. I've been sharing selections from the book in Prison Camp over the past few weeks. The following is the introduction to the new edition.
INTRODUCTION
Confessional memoir has become a pejorative. Something for knaves and weak hearts. But what else would you write about, entering prison in the twilight of your career, having gone bizarrely rogue and accused of the largest financial fraud in the history of Connecticut.
A writer, more by circumstance than aspiration, the enclosed manuscript was mostly written in prison and the rest in a cocoon after my release where I reside, still searching in my own dark world for the genesis of my criminality, that perhaps was lurking from the day I stole $10 from my grandmother’s purse at the age of thirteen.
Traditional narrative, streams, vignettes, journal entries, essays, poems, prose poems, scenes, log/verse and an interview with myself comprise this hybrid chronicle of my fall from grace. A long-form narrative just didn’t resonate with me. That’s kind of what prison does to you. Everything’s a departure in prison.
I’d been running from my sins since kindergarten. They finally caught up with me at age seventy-six, and I was sentenced to eighty-five months in prison for two counts of wire fraud. The presiding Judge told me I was disconnected from humanity and all things that make life meaningful and worthwhile. I had a challenging life ahead, he said.
When I entered prison, the disconnect from humanity was complete. A muddled brotherhood was waiting for me. I lived among one hundred inmates. More wilderness than community. There is nothing more solitary than living among the exiled.
I entered prison a ghost and returned an apparition.
Up Next on White Collar Journal:
Wednesday (Justice Notes): Criminal Justice Reform
Thursday (Notes from Exisle): Log/Verse: Daily, fragmented reflections
Sunday (Prison Camp): More Stories from prison
If you’re new to White-Collar Journal, you can read earlier chapters and essays on incarceration, justice, and reentry at whitecollarjournal.com.
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