As the U.K.’s Conservative Party does Son of Sam one better, proposing a law that would prohibit convicts from writing memoirs about their experiences in prison, the Guardian‘s Sarah Crown “takes a look at the works of 10 writers who drew inspiration from their jail time.” Among them are two of my favorites: Dostoyevsky’s The House of the Dead and Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol.
Orhan Pamuk faces criminal charges for mentioning the 1 million Armenians murdered in Turkey at the start of the last century. In the weekend’s Observer, Nouritza Matossian writes, “They say ‘incident’. To me it’s genocide.” (Via The Literary Saloon.)
Martha Stewart’s prison regimen includes scrubbing toilets for $.12/hr, teaching the other inmates yoga, and reading Bob Dylan’s Chronicles.
From Sean Carman’s Dylanland, inspired by the Dylan autobiography: “Stealing isn’t looked down upon in folk music. Hell, it’s an honored tradition. Look at Ramblin’ Jack Elliott. By all rights he should be famous.”
