Jack Black (author)

Jack Black (1871–1932) was a Canadian-born American hobo and professional burglar. Black is best known for his autobiography You Can't Win (Macmillan, 1926), describing his days on the road and life as an outlaw. Black's book was written as an anti-crime book urging criminals to go straight, but it is also his statement of belief in the futility of prisons and the criminal justice system, hence the title of the book. Jack Black was writing from experience, having spent thirty years (fifteen of which were spent in various prisons in Canada and the United States) as a traveling criminal, and offers tales of being a cross-country stick-up man, home burglar, petty thief, and opium fiend. He gained fame as a prison reformer, writer and playwright. He disappeared in 1932 in a likely suicide.

For other people named Jack Black, see Jack Black (disambiguation).
Jack Black
Black in an undated photograph published in The San Francisco Call
Born1871
New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Disappeared1932 (aged 60-61)
StatusPresumed dead by suicide
Other namesBlacky
CitizenshipCanadian, American
OccupationAuthor
Notable workYou Can't Win

Life

Black was born in 1871 in New Westminster, British Columbia,[1] he was raised from infancy in the U.S. state of Missouri in the town of Maysville and eventually Kansas City. Aside from this, Jack Black is an essentially anonymous figure; even his actual name is uncertain. In his autobiographical book, he quotes his father as calling him "John,"[2] of which Jack is often a nickname. Some 1904 news articles name him as Jack Black, alias Tom Callahan,[3][4] while a 1912 newspaper article names him Thomas Callaghan, alias Jack Black,[5] and another gives his alias as Harry Klein.[6] One of his nicknames among criminals was Blacky.[7]

After his last spell in prison, Black became friends with wealthy patron Fremont Older and worked for Older's newspaper The San Francisco Call. He worked on his autobiography with Rose Wilder Lane and eventually composed essays and lectured throughout the country on prison reform. He was also rumored to have received a stipend of $150 a week to draft a screenplay titled Salt Chunk Mary with co-author Bessie Beatty, based around the infamous vagabond ally and fence of the same name in You Can't Win. The play flopped, although he was able to attain some amount of popularity, which subsided quickly.

His philosophy on life was especially influential to William S. Burroughs,[8] Burroughs associated with similar characters in his early adulthood and mirrored the style of You Can't Win with his first published book, Junkie.

In his foreword to the 1988 edition of You Can't Win (reproduced in a 2000 edition), Burroughs wrote:

"I first read You Can't Win in 1926, in an edition bound in red cardboard. Stultified and confined by middle-class St. Louis mores, I was fascinated by this glimpse of an underworld of seedy rooming houses, pool parlors, cat houses and opium dens, of bull pens and cat burglars and hobo jungles. I learned about the Johnson Family of good bums and thieves, with a code of conduct that made more sense to me than the arbitrary, hypocritical rules that were taken for granted as being 'right' by my peers."[9]

Disappearance

He disappeared in 1932 and is believed to have committed suicide by drowning, as he reportedly told his friends that if life got too grim, he would row out into New York Harbor and, with weights tied to his feet, drop overboard.[10] In You Can't Win Black describes this state of mind as being "ready for the river".[11]

Quoted excerpts about Black and his memoir

You Can't Win is (...) an autobiography of a reformed criminal. It points a sufficiently obvious moral, yet one that too many at the present day are prone to forget. A deeper question is also raised, and that is regarding the validity of the practical aims and ideals of the majority of people in our modern world.

— The Builder Magazine, January 1927 – Volume XIII – Number 1

Jamboree author Black is a graduate of five penitentiaries, was pried loose from a 25-year prison term and helped to overcome his addiction to narcotics by mustachioed Editor Fremont Older of the San Francisco Call-Bulletin. This play is a dramatization of Black's book You Can't Win. "Every character in this play is drawn from the personal experiences of Jack Black during his years as a criminal or as a prisoner. The types are real and these people actually lived.

— Time magazine, Dec. 5, 1932

Jack had been a sort of a reign of terror...just before the earthquake and fire of 1906. Every crime committed in San Francisco during the first three months of that year was ascribed to Jack Black.

— R.L. Duffus, The Tower of Jewels

He returned to New York and Fremont thought Jack did what he always said any down-and-outer should do, "fill his pockets with rocks and take a header into the bay."

— Mrs. Cora Fremont Older

Bibliography
  • Black, Jack. You Can't Win. New York: Macmillan Company, 1926. Foreword by Robert Herrick. OCLC 238829961
  • _____. You Can't Win: the Autobiography of Jack Black. New York: Amok Press, 1988. Foreword by William S. Burroughs. ISBN 0-941693-07-4 OCLC 153562506
  • _____. Du kommst nicht durch. Berlin : Kramer, 1998. ISBN 3-87956-240-7 OCLC 75910135
  • _____. You Can't Win. 2nd edition. Edinburgh: AK Press/Nabat books, 2000. ISBN 1-902593-02-2 OCLC 44737608
  • _____. You Can't Win. [S.l.] : BN Publishing, 2007. ISBN 956-291-509-3 OCLC 187421471

See also

References
  1. Black, Jack (2000). You can't win. Edinburgh: AK Press/Nabat. pp. 183. ISBN 978-1-902593-02-9. OCLC 44737608.
  2. Black, Jack (2000). You can't win. Edinburgh: AK Press/Nabat. pp. 183. ISBN 978-1-902593-02-9. OCLC 44737608.
  3. "Believe they hold footpad". The San Francisco Call. 18 April 1904. Retrieved 2019-01-01.
  4. "Take footpad after battle". The San Francisco Call. 1904-04-16. ISSN 1941-0719. Retrieved 2019-01-01.
  5. "Two desperate criminals give Finn the laugh". The San Francisco Call. 5 January 1912.
  6. "New Canadian treaty fails to save Black". The San Francisco Call. November 15, 1912. Retrieved 2019-01-01.
  7. Jack Black (2000). You can't win. Internet Archive. AK Press/Nabat. pp. 161, 284, 290. ISBN 978-1-902593-02-9.
  8. who wrote in the foreword to a later edition of You Can't Win, "I first read You Can’t Win in 1926, in an edition bound in red cardboard. Stultified and confined by middle-class St. Louis mores, I was fascinated by this glimpse of an underworld of seedy rooming-houses, pool parlors, cat-houses and opium dens."
  9. Jack Black (2000). You can't win. Internet Archive. AK Press/Nabat. ISBN 978-1-902593-02-9.
  10. Ruhland, Bruno. Afterword. You Can't Win, by Jack Black. AK Press/Nabat, 2000. 272. ISBN 1-902593-02-2.
  11. Black 1926, pp. 49, 50, 153.

Cited sources

Further reading
  • "Out of prison", San Francisco Bulletin, February/March 1917.
  • "The big break at Folsom", San Francisco Bulletin, January 1917.
  • Black, Jack "What's wrong with the right people?", Harper's Monthly Magazine, June 1929.
  • Black, Jack "A burglar looks at laws and codes", Harper's Monthly Magazine, February 1930.
  • "Jack Black's Tales of Jail Birds", New York World, December 21, 1930.
  • Jamboree, with Jack Black and Bessie Beatty; Elizabeth Miele, producer, 1932.
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