Conversation with Raymond Carver (review)
both a threat and a home, a punishment and an education. Massey does not sugar-coat his material; these novels are full of graphic violence, shocking incidents, broken dreams, and failed lives. But the author also consistently isolates the strange, reciprocal bonds between individual and institution, between convict and jailer. Through the art-truth of the novel, Massey shows that American prisons have been more than either "schools for crime" or means of rehabilitation. Most often they have been authentic subcultures that also reflect and inform the larger American institutions that surround them. Although the special novels it discusses will not be for all readers, Doing Time in American Prisons is a necessary window to a world both frightening and fascinating.