{"id":1878,"date":"2013-06-10T07:30:54","date_gmt":"2013-06-10T06:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.longkeshinsideout.co.uk\/?p=1878"},"modified":"2013-06-10T07:30:54","modified_gmt":"2013-06-10T06:30:54","slug":"the-books-have-it-3-by-william","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.longkeshinsideout.co.uk\/?p=1878","title":{"rendered":"The Books Have It-3 —by William"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Your book articles have certainly brought back old memories Billy Joe and it would be great to hear of a few others commenting such as Charlie did given that there was an abundance of books passed through the jail and compounds about \u2018everything under the sun\u2019.\u00a0 I have to say, I can\u2019t argue with your recollections of you having lent many a book and never had them returned but I hope you are not including me in that category!\u00a0<\/strong> Just think, had you have operated a more organised lending service you could have made a fortune in people owing fines for late returns. Well I finally got round to writing this last week and have to start (reluctantly) by agreeing with you about Tarantula.\u00a0 However, I should add that since it was written in the mid- sixties when the music drug scene was at its height I can forgive Dylan with writing only what can be described as a book about chaos.\u00a0 That said, I have read it six times and currently have two different copies. As a genre, the book is hard to define but is filled with literary references to fictional and factual characters, such as Rain Man and President Plump or Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot which always intrigued me and sent me on searches to find out more about what I\u2019d read.\u00a0 In an era before the internet, books (and for me the music of Dylan) was our font of learning which opened a new world inhabited by the likes of Wood Gutherie\u2019s \u2018Bound for Glory\u2019 and Kerouac\u2019s \u2018On the Road\u2019.\u00a0 Likewise, it was music that directed me to a lot of books I would otherwise probably not have heard of or never have read, such as, William Blake\u2019s \u2018Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience\u2019 very influential in the music of Van Morrison and Arthur Rimbaud\u2019s \u2018Je est une autre\u2019. A lot of the books you mentioned I now recall reading particularly those whose topics were of common interest to us all.\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking about the many Vietnam books (I bought Herr\u2019s Dispatches last year), the prison ones of Jimmy Boyle (I still have both of those) and the boxing biographies with \u2018The Sixteenth Round\u2019 having a special interest for me for the connection between Dylan and Carter.\u00a0 From the vast range of books you recall Billy Joe we could never be accused of limiting our reading, (even though yours was an acquired taste), but it\u2019s hard to ignore the common interest we all had in certain topics such as you have mentioned about \"\"<\/a>the Mossad as Charlie did about the general history of Israel.\u00a0 In fact, the fascination we all seemed to have with The Six Day War meant many a book on the topic was well circulated and I recall reading Moshe Dayan\u2019s \u2018Story of my life\u2019 in which it was well documented if memory serves me well. My dad was an avid reader and used to pass them in to me when he was finished.\u00a0 In the \u2018First Blood\u2019 style, you may recall one he sent me called \u2018Open Season\u2019 by David Osborn which was adapted also into a film with William Holden and Peter Fonda.\u00a0 A fascinating book he also got me was by Daniel P. Mannix called \u2018Those about to die\u2019.\u00a0 It was a factual account of the Roman arena and the gladiators which gave a chilling description of the Roman\u2019s thirst for blood sports.\u00a0 In fact, it\u2019s a collector\u2019s item now and he paid seventy quid a few years back for a first copy.\u00a0 It inspired me to learn more about ancient history and I sat an \u2018O\u2019 Level in the compounds on the subject. A number of books with a connection to incarceration I found interesting and memorable.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>A novel by Jack London springs to mind \u2013 \u2018The star rover\u2019 was a work of fiction about a guy on death row but it still intrigues me how I\u2019m able to recall the opening lines when the author writes, \u201cAll my life I had an awareness of other times and places.\u00a0 I have been aware of other persons in me\u201d.\u00a0 I think this particularly resonated with my own experiences which ultimately led me to incarceration and was in fact a significant feature in me wanting to record the narratives of other prisoners, which you know I did at length.\u00a0 In fact, this is also true of the previous work of Rimbaud which I mentioned as the French title means \u2018When I is another\u2019.\u00a0 This fixation on prison is also found from a different point of view in the Albert Pierrepoint biography.\u00a0 Britain\u2019s infamous hangman, I have since learned, ironically was opposed to capital punishment.\u00a0 More fascination with death and murder nudges me to Bugliosi\u2019s \u2018Helter Skelter\u2019 or \u2018In Cold Blood\u2019 by Truman Capote.\u00a0 Again, this is an example of literature which has \u2018stuck\u2019 with me as I can also recall in the inscription in Capote\u2019s inside cover, two lines of\u00a0 which reads \u201cFreres humains qui apres nous vivez, N\u2019ayez les cuers centre nous endurcis\u201d.\u00a0 Now I\u2019m not well versed in French but again I have been directed through books to want to know more and this was from Francois Villon, the 16th Century poet who wrote this in prison before being executed, and translates into \u201cHuman brothers who live after us, Do not have your hearts hardened against us\u201d.\u00a0 How relevant is that today?<\/p>\n

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