Showing results by author "Jack Black" in All Categories

The favorite book of William Burroughs. A journey into the hobo underworld, freight hopping around the still Wild West, becoming a highwayman and member of the yegg (criminal) brotherhood, getting hooked on opium, doing stints in jail or escaping, often with the assistance of crooked cops or judges. Our lost history revived. With an introduction by Burroughs. A BookSense 77 selection.

You Can't Win is the pioneering American criminal underworld memoir written by Jack Black, a burglar, drifter, and criminal active in early 1900s America. Black's astonishing accounts of hopping trains, cracking safes, escaping prison cells, and drug addiction offer an unusually vivid portrait of American underworld life over a century ago. Beat legend William S. Burroughs ("Junkie") cited the book as influential in his life and writing. In his striking, and often deadpan and humorous, memoir, the author recaptures the transient underworld of the early 20th century.

The traveling criminal known as Jack Black was born in 1872 and disappeared in 1932. His matter-of-fact autobiography was a major influence on William S. Burroughs and other Beat writers. In this plainspoken but colorful memoir, he recaptures a hobo underworld of the early 20th century, a time when it was possible to pass anonymously from town to town. Black's firsthand accounts of hopping trains, burglaries, prison, and drug addiction offer a compelling portrait of life outside the law and honor among thieves.