Murderers With Fancy Prose Styles
09/17/2021
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Earlier: PEOPLE Magazine And Writers' Pet Felons

Esquire writer and murderer John J. Lennon (no relation to murderee John Lennon) asks in the New York Times:

“I Am Serving 28 Years to Life. Why Does One Person [the governor] Decide if I Deserve Mercy?”

Dear John J. Lennon: Just be happy that person is not me.

Two or three generations ago, it seemed like every famous writer adopted as his pet cause the release of some violent jailbird with a winning literary style: Norman Mailer and Jack Abbott, William F. Buckley and Edgar Smith, William Styron (assisted by the young George Will) and Benjamin Reid. Upon their release, all three soon committed new serious crimes, like in Evelyn Waugh’s Mr. Loveday’s Outing.

As Humbert Humbert explained in Lolita, ”You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”

[Comment at Unz.com]

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