 First edition cover | |
| Author | Jack Black |
|---|---|
| Published | 1926 |
| Publisher | Macmillan |
You Can't Win is an autobiography by burglar and hobo Jack Black, written in the early to mid-1920s and first published in 1926. It describes Black's life on the road, in prison and his various criminal capers in the American and Canadian west from the late 1880s to early 20th century. The book was a major influence upon William S. Burroughs and other Beat writers.
The book tells of Black's experiences in the hobo underworld, freight-hopping around the western United States and Canada, with the majority of incidents taking place from the late 1880s to around 1910. He tells of becoming a thief, burglar, and member of the yegg (safe-cracking) subculture, exploring the topics of crime, criminal justice, vice, addictions, penology, and human folly from various viewpoints, from observer to consumer to supplier, and from victim to perpetrator.
You Can't Win originally appeared in serial format in the San Francisco Call-Bulletin under the editorship of Fremont Older. [1] It was so popular that it was reissued in book format by MacMillan and became a best-seller. [1] It has been translated into Russian, Swedish, French, and other languages. [1]
After the book's publication, Black spent several years lecturing at women’s clubs and lived in New York. Black spent his summers in a cabin on Fremont Older's property in California, next to a pool. [1] When MacMillan asked Black to write another book, he was too weak even to swim, according to Mrs. Fremont Older. [1] He didn't write another book.
The main criminal activity of Black's life and of the book is thievery, which leads to discussions of various technical aspects of the thief's "trade", including casing of prospects (surveillance of targets), safe-cracking, fencing of stolen goods, the disposal of evidence, maintaining aliases and avoiding attention or traceability, the social networks of criminals, the experiences of being arrested, questioned, and tried, and the experience of doing time in jails and prisons.
The vices and addictions Black discusses include alcoholism, abuse of opium (hop), gambling, prostitution, and stealing. In his own telling, Black does not seem to have an especial weakness for addictions (for example, he did not become alcoholic himself), but he does describe the addictive allure that gambling and opium held for him in various stages of his life. He expresses an opinion that drug addiction is more psychological than physical; nevertheless, he also admits that breaking himself of a daily opium habit was the toughest battle of his life.
Themes that Black explores through anecdotes from his life include:
William S. Burroughs first read the book as an adolescent and cited You Can't Win as influential in his life and writing, mentioning the autobiography in his 1953 book Junkie . [2] He wrote a Foreword to the 1988 edition of You Can't Win which was reprinted in the 2000 edition.
The book has been adapted to a film titled You Can't Win (in post-production as of January 2020) starring Julia Garner, Jeremy Allen White and Michael Pitt, who co-produced and co-wrote the screenplay. [3] [4]
William Seward Burroughs II was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular culture and literature. Burroughs wrote eighteen novels and novellas, six collections of short stories and four collections of essays, and five books have been published of his interviews and correspondences; he was initially briefly known by the pen name William Lee. He also collaborated on projects and recordings with numerous performers and musicians, made many appearances in films, and created and exhibited thousands of visual artworks, including his celebrated "Shotgun Art".
Robert George Seale is an American engineer, political activist and author. Seale is widely known for co-founding the Black Panther Party with fellow activist Huey P. Newton. Founded as the "Black Panther Party for Self-Defense", the Party's main practice was monitoring police activities and challenging police brutality in Black communities, first in Oakland, California, and later in cities throughout the United States.
A hobo is a migrant worker in the United States. Hoboes, tramps, and bums are generally regarded as related, but distinct: a hobo travels and is willing to work; a tramp travels, but avoids work if possible; a bum neither travels nor works.
The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generationers in the 1950s, better known as Beatniks. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration.
Frank William Abagnale Jr. is an American author and convicted felon. Abagnale targeted individuals and small businesses, yet gained notoriety in the late 1970s by claiming a diverse range of victimless workplace frauds, many of which have since been placed in doubt. In 1980, Abagnale co-wrote his autobiography, Catch Me If You Can, which built a narrative around these claimed victimless frauds. The book inspired the film of the same name directed by Steven Spielberg in 2002, in which Abagnale was portrayed by actor Leonardo DiCaprio. He has also written four other books. Abagnale runs "Abagnale and Associates", a consulting firm.
David T. Dellinger was an American pacifist and an activist for nonviolent social change. He achieved peak prominence as one of the Chicago Seven, who were put on trial in 1969.
Nova Express is a 1964 novel by American author William S. Burroughs. It was written using the 'fold-in' method, a version of the cut-up method, developed by Burroughs with Brion Gysin, of enfolding snippets of different texts into the novel. It is part of The Nova Trilogy, or "Cut-Up Trilogy,' together with The Soft Machine and The Ticket That Exploded. Burroughs considered the trilogy a "sequel" or "mathematical" continuation of Naked Lunch.
Herbert Edwin Huncke was an American writer and poet, and an active participant in a number of emerging cultural, social and aesthetic movements of the 20th century in America. He was a member of the Beat Generation and is reputed to have coined the term.
Jack Black (1871–1932) was a hobo and professional burglar. Born in 1871 in New Westminster, British Columbia, he was raised from infancy in the U.S. state of Missouri in the town of Maysville and eventually Kansas City. He wrote You Can't Win, a memoir or sketched autobiography describing his days on the road and life as an outlaw. Black's book was written as an anti-crime book urging criminals to go straight, but it is also his statement of belief in the futility of prisons and the criminal justice system, hence the title of the book. Jack Black was writing from experience, having spent thirty years as a traveling criminal, and offers tales of being a cross-country stick-up man, home burglar, petty thief, and opium fiend. He gained fame as a prison reformer, writer and playwright. He disappeared in 1932 in a likely suicide.
William Seward Burroughs III was an American novelist, also known as William S. Burroughs Jr. and Billy Burroughs. He bears the name of both his father and his great-grandfather, William Seward Burroughs I, the inventor of the Burroughs adding machine. He wrote three novels, two of which were published as Speed (1970) and Kentucky Ham (1973). His third novel, Prakriti Junction, begun in 1977, was never completed, although extracts from it were included in his third and final published work Cursed From Birth.
Junkie: Confessions of an Unredeemed Drug Addict is a novel by American beat generation writer William S. Burroughs, initially published under the pseudonym William Lee in 1953. His first published work, it is semi-autobiographical and focuses on Burroughs' life as a drug user and dealer. It has come to be considered a seminal text on the lifestyle of heroin addicts in the early 1950s.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) is an autobiographical account written by Thomas De Quincey, about his laudanum addiction and its effect on his life. The Confessions was "the first major work De Quincey published and the one that won him fame almost overnight".
Jack Henry Abbott was an American criminal and author. With a long history of criminal convictions, Abbott's writing concerning his life and experiences was lauded by a number of well-known literary critics, including author Norman Mailer. Due partly to lobbying by Mailer and others on Abbott's behalf, Abbott was released from prison in 1981 where he was serving sentences for forgery, manslaughter, and bank robbery. Abbott's memoir In the Belly of the Beast was published with positive reviews soon after his release. Six weeks after being paroled from prison, Abbott stabbed and killed a waiter outside a New York City cafe. Abbott was convicted and sent back to prison, where he killed himself in 2002.
Kevin Trudeau is an American author, salesman, and convicted fraudster known for promotion of his books and resulting legal cases involving the US Federal Trade Commission. His ubiquitous late-night infomercials, which promoted unsubstantiated health, diet, and financial advice, earned him a fortune but resulted in civil and criminal penalties for fraud, larceny, and contempt of court.
Desolation Angels is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac, which makes up part of his Duluoz Legend. It was published in 1965, but was written years earlier, around the time On the Road was in the process of publication. The events described in the novel take place from 1956-1957. Much of the psychological struggle which the novel's protagonist, Jack Duluoz, undergoes in the novel reflects Kerouac's own increasing disenchantment with the Buddhist philosophy. Throughout the novel, Kerouac discusses his disenchantment with fame, and complicated feelings towards the Beat Generation. He also discusses his relationship with his mother and his friends such as Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, Lucienn Carr and William S. Burroughs. The novel is also notable for being a relatively positive portrayal of homosexuality and homosexual characters, despite its use of words that were at the time considered homophobic slurs.
Raymond Elzie Hamilton was a member of the notorious Barrow Gang during the early 1930s. By the time he was 20 years old, he had accumulated a prison sentence of 362 years.
A low-life is a term for a person who is considered morally unacceptable by their community. Examples of people society often labels low-lives include aggressive panhandlers, bullies, criminals, drug dealers, freeloaders, hobos, gangsters, people who make constant use of profanities, prostitutes, pimps, scammers, sexual abusers and thieves.
Jack Olsen was an American journalist and author known for his crime reporting.
Sile Doty was an infamous robber, burglar, horse thief, highwayman, counterfeiter, and criminal gang leader. Stewart Holbrook says that Doty "was, before the James-Younger era, the most energetic and notorious all-around bandit in the United States." Doty's criminal career is known primarily through his autobiography, compiled by J. G. W. Colburn and published four years after Doty's death as The Life of Sile Doty The Most Noted Thief and Daring Burglar of His Time. As this title suggests, the tone of the autobiography is boastful and unapologetic. Doty excuses his crimes as stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Except where otherwise noted, what follows is taken from the autobiography and may contain exaggerations and self-serving distortions.
John "Johnny" Hope (1856–1906) was a 19th-century American burglar, bank robber and pickpocket. The son of James "Old Jimmy" Hope, he was alleged to have been associated with his father and the George Leslie Gang. He was among those arrested for the 1878 robbery of the Manhattan Savings Institution although he and Billy Kelly were the only men actually sent to prison for this crime.
You Can't Win public domain audiobook at LibriVox