I am down wid dis, dawg!
This is a sad, funny and diabolically authentic memoir about his life in prison (and how he got there) by a natural born, sideways-talkin' wordsmith writing with skill, verve and a kind of disarming warmth replete with a lot of "out of the side of his neck" irony. Lerner, a one-time nice Jewish boy from New York finds himself the cell mate of Kansas, a six-foot-six, three-hundred pound "Nazi Low Rider" with a swastika tattooed on his neck, a prison con who can bench press something like four-hundred pounds, a guy who controls the inner prison culture and enterprises with an iron fist. What's a fish to do? Lerner uses corporate skills, honed during 19 years at Ma Bell, to make friends and influence people. A nice irony throughout is the way Lerner compares the culture of the corporate structure with that of the prison, finding them similar except for the terminology. Lerner manages to weave corporate gobbledygook about "market repositioning" and the "pursuance of outside opportunities" into the prison narrative. He sees that the rake the "Yard Rats" and the "skinhead Phone Posse" charge the fish for using the public phone as "the same economic principle we employed at the phone company by charging customers for both access...and usage." (p. 152)
As far as the structure of this book goes I believe it was originally written in a straight-forward manner beginning with the earliest events and ending with the latest. But somewhere during development it was decided to begin in the middle as Lerner enters prison. This was an effective and tantalizing change for two significant reasons. One, the utter shock of being immediately immersed into convict culture carries the narrative practically by itself, and Two, we are enticed to read on to the end wondering just how such a person as "O.G." Lerner ever got himself to manslaughter in the first place.
Lerner's ear for the language of the convicts is something close to amazing. His absorption of their largely primitive and tribal culture is so complete that as the book ends we see him as one of them in action, inclination and loyalty as he bangs on his cell and yells out on command his blood curdling cat's meow to the disconcertion of the attack dogs of the "Dirt" (that's "Disciplinary Intervention and Response Team, and they ain't nothin' nice") and to the joy of his fellow "dawgs."
But Lerner's story is fascinating in itself. He is an alcoholic and a mighty drug imbiber who after being attacked by "the monster" (as he calls his drug-addled, "Soldier of Fortune"-reading "friend" Dwayne Hassleman) fights back and through righteous rage and superior adrenaline flow manages to subdue and then kill his adversary. The Monster is such a degenerate beast of stupidity and animalistic hate and rage that we strongly identify with Lerner and are entirely pleased that Dwayne is no longer with us.
However, this is to accept Lerner's version of the crime which is not a twit removed from self-defense, a version that the jury apparently did not entirely accept. But as I used to tell my students, the one thing that all autobiographers have in common is that somewhere along the way they bend the truth to their advantage. This is just human nature, some of it unconscious, some of it intentional. It is amazingly difficult to tell the whole, unvarnished truth about ourselves. No matter how honestly our desire to confess all, when driven to autobiography or memoir, we will ever so slightly misrepresent the strict letter of the truth.
But no matter. What counts is that the overall story be told in a vivid and convincing manner allowing us to take the fine points of blame or behavior on advisement, as it were, secure in the impression that, as Huck Finn observed about Mark Twain, "he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."
We can see, however, by reading between the lines that Lerner (although I believe he too told mainly the truth) is more compromised that he lets on. His continued association with the dangerous and crazy Dwayne, who threatens murder and mayhem while alluding jealously to Lerner's "precious little girlie family" (p. 354), suggests not so much forgiveness, loneliness and a big heart, but perhaps something closer to the fact that Dwayne as a drug dealer has "store," the kind of store Lerner thinks he needs to get from one day to the next. We can also see that Lerner becomes not only a "righteous, stand-up con" but a pretty tough guy despite the fact that his nickname "O.G." stands as much for "Old Guy" as it does for "original gangsta" (see pages 49-50). The fact that he wins just about all his battles, physical and otherwise, and never rats anybody out, and is true to his code throughout, may suggest some selective memory device at work.
But again Lerner's ability to spin the tale and make it as vivid as new-found terror allows us to give him his self-image and hope that he will at long last kick the booze and the drugs and be the straight up kind of guy that his two girls can look up to. This narrative is a marvelous step in the right direction. Lerner has a brilliant gift for character, narrative and dialogue that will surely make this tome recommended reading at writers' workshops while being the kind of book professional writers can admire.
Incidentally, the title "You Got Nothing Coming" is the witch-cold, hopeless phrase used on convicts as a kind of sadistic way of saying "no" to whatever the request is, as in "you ain't got NOTHIN' comin', dawg."
--Dennis Littrell, author of the mystery novel, “Teddy and Teri”