You Can't Win

I first discovered Jack Black's `You Can't Win', as I suspect many readers did, when I found out that it was William S Burroughs' favourite book. Until I read it, though, I couldn't imagine just how big an influence it was on Burroughs - who drew upon its style, and the code of honour it describes, for the entirety of his writing career.When you read Burroughs' foreword to this edition of `You Can't Win', it hits you that he didn't (as you might assume with a favourite book) reread the book regularly. Rather, he memorised the book as a boy, and then throughout his life `read' the version memorised in his own mind. Even the passages that Burroughs quotes in the foreword aren't word-for-word precise (I compared them with the text of the book proper), because they've been committed to myth and memory, and are recited in ritualistic fashion.All of which aside, `You Can't Win' deserves to be known as more than just `the book that inspired Burroughs'. It's written in a plain, unsentimental style which has as much in common with the writing of Charles Bukowski as it does with the Beats - a style of writing which reached its apotheosis with `The Grass Arena', the harrowing autobiography of the British alcoholic vagrant John Healy. (Now, someone should teach a literature class comparing `You Can't Win' and `The Grass Arena' - THAT would be an inspiration.) What these writers have in common is that when you read them, you instantly think: `Now this is good, compelling, uncluttered prose.'Many of those who have posted reviews below rightly praise Jack Black's memorable language and characterisation, which make `You Can't Win' into a kind of turn-of-the-century lexicon and encyclopaedia of the life of American thieves and hobos. But I was even more struck by Black's remarkable resolve, self-dependency and moral fortitude, and above all his categorical refusal to feel sorry for himself, or to let the reader feel sorry for him.Three passages in the book in particular, all of which concern prison, are horrific - two passages in which Black is punished by flogging, and an absolutely unbearable passage in which he is tortured in a straitjacket by a sadistic prison warden. If these passages had been written by a lesser writer, I could not bear to read them. But Black takes the reader firmly by the hand, conveys what happened to him, and moves on.Describing the first flogging: `It would not be fair to the reader for me to attempt a detailed description of this flogging.... If I could go away to some lonely, desolate spot and concentrate deeply enough I might manage to put myself in the flogging master's place and make a better job of reporting the matter. But that would entail a mental strain I hesitate to accept, and I doubt if the result would justify the effort.'Describing the second flogging: `To make an unpleasant story short, I will say he beat me like a balky horse, and I took it like one - with my ears laid back and my teeth bared. All the philosophy and lo

Hard. Unforgiving. Undeniably American.First the good news: this is a harrowing story of a misspent life from the man who chose to waste it. He is brutally honest; a better writer would have excluded the coarse sentimentality here. However, that would make this a false document or impair its ability to stir your emotions. I admire this man greatly. He is a hardened criminal who loves books and easy money. He describes, in great detail, the allure of crime in a simple, direct style.The bad news: this man is not a professional writer. If you are looking for a distinctive prose style or something that will fit into a literary cubbyhole, this is not the book for you. This is not a beat book. This is not an avante-garde book. This is a book written by a man who has lived a long and puzzling life with comparatively little formal education. It is probably closest to "Papillon" or any other true life story.

This is a bright engaging book that deserves wider audience than its current incarnation as an influence on Burroughs is giving it. The hobo-thief underworld of an American past is truly alive in these pages, and it made me wistful and meloncholy for times and places I'll never know. I want to stop at the hobo junctions of Montana and Idaho from this true-life tale, but I'm afraid of what I'd find there today.

From train tracks to opium dens, and finally to the stability of a job at the San Francisco Public Library, Jack Black writes a very personal account of adventure, hardship, loneliness, and longing. I absolutely loved this book. Black is a wonderfully interesting person, and his story is like none that I have ever found anywhere else--the story of a hobo in the early 1900's, who steals, does drugs, lives like a bum, rides the trains, and eventually decides he's had enough, settling down to a more conventional lifestyle.He is the kind of person you want to meet and have a beer with. When the book was over I lent it to every person I cared about and they all loved it too.