AUSTIN REED – The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict. Random House, hardcover, 2016. Modern Library, softcover, 2017. Edited by Caleb Smith. David W. Blight (Foreword), Robert B. Stepto (Foreword).

   â€˜Cut off from all virtue a man will in time,

   Sit brooding on vice and preparing for crime.’

   Written in 1858, but privately held for 150 years until discovered at a Rochester estate sale in 2009, this is apparently the first prison memoir by a Black American.

   It is the picaresque bildungsroman (don’t I sound smart) of a man first imprisoned at aged nine at the House of Refuge in the Bowery in 1833 (for burning down the house of a farmer that horsewhipped him for stealing fruit and refusing to work off his debt), his multiple escapes and further crimes, and his placement at Auburn State Prison in 1840.

   By ‘picaresque’ what I mean is this: I went to a screening of the Italian movie Il Sorpasso. It’s a road movie about a drunken womanizing hooligan who convinces an uptight law student to forsake his exams for an intoxicated spree across the countryside. It inspired Alexander Payne to make Sideways. Payne was at the screening and said that the ‘road movie’ is just a picaresque novel in film form. And he claimed the picaresque novel is at least as old as Don Quixote.

   And that what’s fun and easy about the picaresque novel/road movie (at least from a creative standpoint) is that all you have to do is tell a series of chapters going from points a to b to c on a map. Each stop on the map is a different chapter. And that’s it.

   So while ‘picaresque’ sounds all hoity toity, all I mean to say is that this book is just a series of events in the life of a juvenile delinquent. A real-life Huckleberry Finn with horrific periods of imprisonment for his shenanigans.

   Each time he is caught and imprisoned: “awaiting my arrival… was Mr. Hard Heart, Mr. No Feelings. Mr. Cruel Heart, Mr. Demon, Mr. Fiend, Mr. Love Torture, Mr. Tyrant, and Mr. Cat Bearer” (‘cats’ being the cat gutted barbs slashed upon a prisoner’s back).

   And by ‘bildungsroman’ all I mean is that the book shows how the dastardly, bastardly treatment of a juvenile delinquent turns a mischievous boy into a hardened criminal. “Horrors, horrors, horrors, eternal horror of horrors came beating and pealting upon my mind.”

   I can’t say the book was that fun to read. It was okay. The goal, I guess, of the book was to convince other juvenile delinquents to stick to the straight and narrow — scaring ’em straight from a life of crime.

   The best thing about the book is how surprisingly modern the language is. I had read something somewhere from Raymond Williams, I think (what a great scholar I turned out to be!), saying that the hardboiled/proletarian novel emerged from the prison confessionals of the 19th century. And I guess I can see it to some extent. There is definitely a rough-hewn unvarnished quality to the prose. And it’s the heavy varnish and embroidery that I find so annoying about most literature prior to Hammett, Hemingway and Tully. Get to the freaking point! (My wife has an Onion T-Shirt that reads: “Let the Fucking Begin”).

   So, yeah. I’ve been reading 19th century slave narratives and prison confessionals on Raymond Williams’s recommendation. And so far I guess I agree. Not that I’ve gotten a great deal of joy from these reading experiences so far (although the Confessions of Nat Turner was surprisingly wacko — that dude was a total, astounding wack-job).

   But yeah. I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that plain-talking, hard-boiled prose was happening in America much earlier than we’ve been led to believe. It’s generally criminous and confessional. And it may not be the most enjoyable thing in the world to read. But it’s there. It’s real. It’s hard as rocks and it’ll make your head bleed.

   Just take it from Rochester’s own Austin ‘Rob’ Reed. Stay free of crime, me lads, lest the blade’s scabbard broach its breach: “Show him to me, and ere the sun sets in the west the bowknife of my father shall be stained with his blood.” I beseech ye: don’t let it be so! Stay free of crime, me lads. Let the Lord’s path be your guide, lest your soul swelter in hell, yelping helplessly, forevermore.