Description
"Much of this book is about loneliness. Yet its pages are bracingly companionable. It is one of the friendliest books ever written. It is a superb piece of autobiography, testimony that cannot be impeached. While it is a statement of an American tragedy, it has laughter, brevity, style; as a book to pass the time away with, it is in a class with the best fiction." - Carl Sandburg, New York World "Nothing half as rewarding has come down the highway of books about thieves, tramps, murderers, bootleggers and crooks in years " - New Republic "I believe Jack Black has written a remarkable book; it is vivid and picturesque; it is not fiction; it is a book that was needed and it should be widely read." - Clarence Darrow, New York Herald Tribune A major influence on William S. Burroughs and other Beat writers, this lost classic was written by Jack Black, a drifter and small-time criminal. Born in 1872, Black hit the road at the age of 16 and spent most of his life as a vagabond. In this plainspoken but colorful memoir, he recaptures a hobo underworld of the early twentieth 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. AUTHOR: The travelling criminal known as Jack Black was born in 1872 and disappeared in 1932. Black spent most of his life as a petty thief, opium addict, and convict. His matter-of-fact autobiography, You Can't Win, was published in 1926, and its stranger-than-fiction accounts of hobo life exercised an enormous influence on William Burroughs and other Beat novelists.… (more)
Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Edinburgh AK Press 2000
User reviews
LibraryThing member ChazzW
Somewhere, buried in an article about something else, I saw an oblique reference to Jack Black’s 1926 memoir as a little known cult classic. Hooked. I’m a sucker for little known classics, so I had to read this one. A sort of cautionary tale replete with gentle sermonizing, it’s also a truly
It’s the details of his criminal activities that are riveting - the stick-ups and heists, especially the planning of them, the fencing, the house break-ins, the hotel knock-offs, the safe cracking - as well as his descriptions of the prison systems (of both Canada and the US) back in those years. And it’s the prison systems and the reforms that Black felt made sense that must have been the real impetus for this book. One can’t help but think of our current approach to ‘crime and punishment’ when Black talks his straight talk about what works, what doesn’t, and is mostly counter-productive.
Jack Black. From juvenile ‘delinquent’ to rail car hoppin’ hobo, to on the lam criminal, to brutalized inmate, to bottom of the barrel ‘hop-head’, to prison reform librarian….it’s all here, and though Black admits his failings, he makes no excuses for himself. The code of the criminal that is a large part of Black’s memoir, carries over to Black’s post-criminal life with a consistent code of dispassionate self-examination. Therein lies the respect that Black earns from the reader with his honesty.
It’s difficult to explain to a layman the pride of a professional thief. Nevertheless he must have pride or he would steal his clothes, beat his board bills, and borrow money with no thought of repaying it. He doesn’t do those things day after day, but day after day he takes chances and is proud that he can keep his end up and pay for the things he needs. All wrong, of course, but there it is. If I had brains enough to grease a griddle, I would have taken a hundred dollars from the boss Chinaman in the matter of Chew Chee and gone off somewhere, got a job, and tried to do the right thing by myself and others. But no, I was a journeyman; I had served a long and careful apprenticeship; professional pride - I don’t know what else to call it - would not permit me to take the Chinaman’s money for rescuing him from our common enemy, the law, and I went out to get money in my own way.
I was wrong. I knew I was wrong, and yet I persisted. If that is possible of any explanation it is this: From the day I left my father my lines had been cast, or I cast them myself, among crooked people. I had not spent one hour in the company of an honest person. I had lived in an atmosphere of larceny, theft, crime. I thought in terms of theft. Houses were built to be burglarized, citizens were to be robbed, police to be avoided and hated, stool pigeons to be chastised, and thieves to be cultivated and protected. That was my code; the code of my companions. That was the atmosphere I breathed. “If you live with wolves, you will learn to howl.”
Of reforming the criminal, Black has lots to say about the penal system as it existed in the early decades of the 20th Century. And while the reform of that system may have been one of the prime motivators for the writing of this memoir, it’s in the area of responsibility and self reform that Black really is very clear and speaks from experience - whether it’s in kicking a drug habit or changing one’s criminal ways.
I had long realized that my every act was wrong and criminal; yet I never thought of changing my ways. After thinking it all over with all the clarity and logic and fairness I could command, I was convinced that nobody but myself was to blame, and that I had just drifted along from one thing to another until I was on the rocks. I hadn’t been forced into this life, and this predicament, by any set of circumstances or any power beyond my control. I had traveled along this road largely of my own free will, and it followed that I could get on the right road any time I willed it.
Somewhat dated in a quaint way, a period piece of sorts, it’s still refreshing for its honesty and candor.
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fascinating account of the incubation, life and reform of a professional drifter, hobo and petty career criminal. There’s an innocence (if that;s the right word) reading it now from the perspective of the 21st Century. Writing about his formative years, his education as a criminal, his many incarcerations and his eventual reform, Black’s memoir is a rapid, straight ahead read that holds the reader’s interest with his inside look at the criminal mind - though this criminal mind probably is more insightful than most.It’s the details of his criminal activities that are riveting - the stick-ups and heists, especially the planning of them, the fencing, the house break-ins, the hotel knock-offs, the safe cracking - as well as his descriptions of the prison systems (of both Canada and the US) back in those years. And it’s the prison systems and the reforms that Black felt made sense that must have been the real impetus for this book. One can’t help but think of our current approach to ‘crime and punishment’ when Black talks his straight talk about what works, what doesn’t, and is mostly counter-productive.
Jack Black. From juvenile ‘delinquent’ to rail car hoppin’ hobo, to on the lam criminal, to brutalized inmate, to bottom of the barrel ‘hop-head’, to prison reform librarian….it’s all here, and though Black admits his failings, he makes no excuses for himself. The code of the criminal that is a large part of Black’s memoir, carries over to Black’s post-criminal life with a consistent code of dispassionate self-examination. Therein lies the respect that Black earns from the reader with his honesty.
It’s difficult to explain to a layman the pride of a professional thief. Nevertheless he must have pride or he would steal his clothes, beat his board bills, and borrow money with no thought of repaying it. He doesn’t do those things day after day, but day after day he takes chances and is proud that he can keep his end up and pay for the things he needs. All wrong, of course, but there it is. If I had brains enough to grease a griddle, I would have taken a hundred dollars from the boss Chinaman in the matter of Chew Chee and gone off somewhere, got a job, and tried to do the right thing by myself and others. But no, I was a journeyman; I had served a long and careful apprenticeship; professional pride - I don’t know what else to call it - would not permit me to take the Chinaman’s money for rescuing him from our common enemy, the law, and I went out to get money in my own way.
I was wrong. I knew I was wrong, and yet I persisted. If that is possible of any explanation it is this: From the day I left my father my lines had been cast, or I cast them myself, among crooked people. I had not spent one hour in the company of an honest person. I had lived in an atmosphere of larceny, theft, crime. I thought in terms of theft. Houses were built to be burglarized, citizens were to be robbed, police to be avoided and hated, stool pigeons to be chastised, and thieves to be cultivated and protected. That was my code; the code of my companions. That was the atmosphere I breathed. “If you live with wolves, you will learn to howl.”
Of reforming the criminal, Black has lots to say about the penal system as it existed in the early decades of the 20th Century. And while the reform of that system may have been one of the prime motivators for the writing of this memoir, it’s in the area of responsibility and self reform that Black really is very clear and speaks from experience - whether it’s in kicking a drug habit or changing one’s criminal ways.
I had long realized that my every act was wrong and criminal; yet I never thought of changing my ways. After thinking it all over with all the clarity and logic and fairness I could command, I was convinced that nobody but myself was to blame, and that I had just drifted along from one thing to another until I was on the rocks. I hadn’t been forced into this life, and this predicament, by any set of circumstances or any power beyond my control. I had traveled along this road largely of my own free will, and it followed that I could get on the right road any time I willed it.
Somewhat dated in a quaint way, a period piece of sorts, it’s still refreshing for its honesty and candor.
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LibraryThing member Stbalbach
I'm giving You Can't Win 4.5 stars placing it on the "cult classic" category because almost 100 years after publication it's still in print, there is even a movie version coming out this year (2015). It was also an influential favorite with Beat writers including William S. Burroughs who emulated
Jack Black was born in 1871, and the period the book mostly describes is from about 1887 to 1900, when Jack was in his teens and twenties at the height of his adventures. The country was in a funk, crime was rampant, just about everything was legal including opium, industrialization was changing things but social welfare had not yet arrived. There were still hints of the Old West - Civil War vets bumming around, old Indians. Cars were not yet widely used and so everything revolved around trains. This is that world seen from the view of a hobo, tramp, yegg, thief. We learn the cant of the outcast, criminals and drifters circulating around the Western USA and Canada, and most of all the stories and adventures of Jack Black in and out of prison. A great piece of first person history and adventure. It's tough to stomach his complete disregard for his actions but does offer some insight into the mind of the criminal who can juggle the contradiction of sympathizing with his mark in order to make the score, and yet not caring about the misery caused.
He apparently wrote the book in collaboration with Rose Wilder Lane of Little House on the Prairie fame. She also ghost wrote Jack's articles for Fremont Older, editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, advocating for better prison conditions. And Lane was a friend of Ayn Rand and may have coined the term "libertarian" (in the modern sense). Lane wrote other biographies under her real name. I read her book on Henry Ford, one of the first bios on Ford ever written. It was criticized at the time for stretching the truth though it was a ripping good story she clearly had an ideological bent towards people who are self-reliant, mythologizing them like her friend Ayn Rand later would.
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book's style and stories in his 1953 Junkie. Jack Black was born in 1871, and the period the book mostly describes is from about 1887 to 1900, when Jack was in his teens and twenties at the height of his adventures. The country was in a funk, crime was rampant, just about everything was legal including opium, industrialization was changing things but social welfare had not yet arrived. There were still hints of the Old West - Civil War vets bumming around, old Indians. Cars were not yet widely used and so everything revolved around trains. This is that world seen from the view of a hobo, tramp, yegg, thief. We learn the cant of the outcast, criminals and drifters circulating around the Western USA and Canada, and most of all the stories and adventures of Jack Black in and out of prison. A great piece of first person history and adventure. It's tough to stomach his complete disregard for his actions but does offer some insight into the mind of the criminal who can juggle the contradiction of sympathizing with his mark in order to make the score, and yet not caring about the misery caused.
He apparently wrote the book in collaboration with Rose Wilder Lane of Little House on the Prairie fame. She also ghost wrote Jack's articles for Fremont Older, editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, advocating for better prison conditions. And Lane was a friend of Ayn Rand and may have coined the term "libertarian" (in the modern sense). Lane wrote other biographies under her real name. I read her book on Henry Ford, one of the first bios on Ford ever written. It was criticized at the time for stretching the truth though it was a ripping good story she clearly had an ideological bent towards people who are self-reliant, mythologizing them like her friend Ayn Rand later would.
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LibraryThing member datrappert
i have read two autobiographies in a row now, and they couldn't be more different--Chateaubriand and Jack Black! No, not that Jack Black. This is former criminal and hobo Jack Black, who published this book in 1926. Like Chateaubriand, he gives an incisive picture of his life and times. Of course,
Anyway, I highly recommend this book, as I did the first part of Chateaubriand's Memoirs from Beyond the Grave. Unfortunately, there is no sequel by Black. He apparently died just six years after this book was published, a presumed suicide. Details are sketchy--he disappeared and is presumed to have taken his own life after coming to the point where he didn't feel like living any more. This readiness for death is also a trait he shares with Chateaubriand--who just kept on living even when he had little interest in doing so!
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the milieu is a bit different. Chateaubriand has the French Revolution for a background, whereas Jack Black has hobo jungles, cheap hotels, and prison. Both write well, however, although in very different ways. Chateaubriand's work is a literary masterpiece. You Can't Win is a masterpiece of straightforward storytelling using the jargon of the times. Both authors were well read, actually. Chateaubriand seems to have read every book ever written. Black, mostly during his spells in prison, had lots of time to read as well, and even ended up as a newspaper librarian once he decided to go straight, a few years before publishing his autobiography. So, while you might not be quoting or underlining passages in Black's book for their literary quality, you'll certainly remembers his stories of his apprenticeship in crime from a series of colorful, criminal, but somehow admirable characters--some of whom meet very bad ends. The preparation for the crimes and the details of how they were committed is fascinating. Home burglaries took place while the victims were asleep, and since valuables such as wallets and jewelry were usually kept in the bedrooms, that's where the thief went. Even if it meant putting a hand under a sleeping victim's pillow to find the loot. Other heists are a bit simpler, but not usually. And so many things can go wrong, as we learn from this chronicle. Of course, Black ends up in jail or prison. Jails of all types and prisons of all types, including in Canada, where a good portion of the book takes place. We also get interesting pictures of Chicago, Kansas City, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, and other places. Criminals must travel. The book uses a few words to describe ethnicities that aren't politically correct, but Black doesn't seem to bear any animus to any race or creed. He goes out of his way to praise the Mormons he did time with, for instance (most of the polygamists) for their generosity in sharing everything they had. Black also attests to the honesty of Chinese. He spent quite a bit of time with them due to his hop (opium) habit, which is one of the interesting sub-plots of the book.Anyway, I highly recommend this book, as I did the first part of Chateaubriand's Memoirs from Beyond the Grave. Unfortunately, there is no sequel by Black. He apparently died just six years after this book was published, a presumed suicide. Details are sketchy--he disappeared and is presumed to have taken his own life after coming to the point where he didn't feel like living any more. This readiness for death is also a trait he shares with Chateaubriand--who just kept on living even when he had little interest in doing so!
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LibraryThing member PaulMysterioso
Jack Black's criminal autobiography, and the model for most of William S. Burroughs's fiction, is still a tour de force nearly one hundred years later. Black lived in turbulent times, losing himself to all "good society" and finding home with the criminal underworld at the end of the XIXth Century.
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Within we learn of bindlestiffs, yeggs and gay cats, the art of riding the rods, hobo conventions, how to do time and how to commit crime. Black in unflinching in his presentation of his criminal past, simply reporting the facts with a minimum of moralizing. A truly amazing and thoroughly American document. Show Less
LibraryThing member amareshjoshi
Very interesting look at the lives of thieves and hobos in late nineteenth and early twentieth century America and Canada. Well written in simple plain language. There were a lot of typos though, as if the editor used a spell checker.
LibraryThing member RodV
It's kind of like a Jimmie Rodgers song in book form; hopping trains, "riding the rods," hobos, gambling, hold-ups, violent deaths, prison, duplicitous backstabbers, tried-and-true pals, pistol-packin' papas (and mamas); it's just about all in there. I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff if it's done
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well, and this is done very well, so I loved every minute of it. Some reviewers have called into question the veracity of Black's "autobiography," but to me it just doesn't matter whether he told the absolute truth as it happened or if there were some "stretchers," as Huck Finn would say, or even if he just made the whole damn thing up (which I doubt very much). There are truth and value in his words, and it's quite an entertaining and informative read. Show Less
LibraryThing member Paperpuss
Definite classic that not many seem to have read.
LibraryThing member Stahl-Ricco
Smiler - “Kid, I’ll never try to rob another Mormon. I’ll go to work first.”
The author, Salt Chunk Mary, the Sanctimonious Kid (Sanc), Civil War veterans and all manner of ’yeggs’, vags, bums, winos, and ‘hypos’ fill this book with a cornucopia of colorful characters! Heck, even Bat
The author, Salt Chunk Mary, the Sanctimonious Kid (Sanc), Civil War veterans and all manner of ’yeggs’, vags, bums, winos, and ‘hypos’ fill this book with a cornucopia of colorful characters! Heck, even Bat
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Masterson is in here! And the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco! Black is a thief, albeit not a very lucky one, and his travels across the U.S.A. and Canada, and his travels through the jail cells of both countries, are quite an adventure to read about! He describes everything with great detail, including his heroin addiction, and he even gives his opinions on prison reform and ways to improve the legal/justice system. But it's his adventures that make this such a good read, and one can see the impact this book, and those adventures, would have on future generations, especially Kerouac and the Beats. This almost reads like a thief's version of "On the Road"! I sure am glad I picked it up! Show Less
LibraryThing member rottweilersmile
this was a super surprise sleeper hit for me. i read it on a whim after hearing about it on a podcast and it's become one of my favourite books ever. the story told is an inspirational one, I'm guessing slightly embellished but it's hard to get upset if so because at the end of the day it's just
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talking about a guy and his life. it's not like something like the irishman book where if believed, means the author had a large hand in shaping world history. this is just, some guy, and that's how i like it. highly recommend Show Less
Language
Original publication date
1926
ISBN
1902593022 / 9781902593029