Committing Journalism: The Prison Writings of Red Hog

Collects more than fifty essays written from behind bars on prison life, prison overcrowding, and AIDS in prison, along with an account of the collaboration between Martin, a prison inmate, and Sussman, his editor on the outside.

Lompoc Federal Penitentiary convict Dannie Martin, a 46-year-old bank robber and heroin addict, started writing newspaper columns about California prison life for the San Francisco Chronicle 's "Sunday Punch" section in 1986. His pieces--about topics as diverse as the plight of inmates with AIDS and the fate of squirrels outside his prison walls--attracted a following. In 1988, he got thrown into solitary confinement for writing a column criticizing a new warden for establishing institutional practices that Martin ("Red Hog") claimed were likely to incite a riot. A lawsuit followed and Martin received national publicity. In this book, his writings are collected together with Chronicle editor Sussman's commentary about the response of readers and prison authorities to Martin's columns. His prose is flowing and effective; his story, augmented by Sussman, is moving. Paroled in 1992, Martin now lives in San Francisco and works as a freelance writer. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Though of some interest for their insider's view of life behind bars, the ``prison writings of Red Hog''--essays that Martin, a convicted bank robber, published in the San Francisco Chronicle while in a federal pen--are most important as the fulcrum of a freedom-of-speech battle fought in and out of court by Martin and the Chronicle against the federal prison system. Here are Martin's 50-plus essays, embedded within a personal history of their genesis and effect by Sussman, the Chronicle editor who's published Martin since 1986. Sussman begins with a brief bio of Martin (b. 1939), whose early life reads like a training sheet for a career criminal: poverty, broken home, early exposure to alcohol and guns, reform school (where the redheaded author got his nickname, for a fight over a pork chop), broken marriage, drug (opiate) addiction, bank robbery, prison. In 1986, Martin mailed Sussman a piece about AIDS in prison that combined the two traits that were to hallmark the convict's work: fascinating glimpses of prison life (here, represented by an AIDS-infected, IV-sharing, promiscuous gay male known as ``Honey Bear'') framed by a message (the prison system's refusal to deal with its rampant AIDS problem). The essay won attention, and Martin published further essays under a wary institutional eye until he wrote ``The Gulag Mentality,'' which intimated that a new warden's changes might set off a riot--and which provoked officials to place Martin in solitary, beginning the legal struggle whose rather technical recounting occupies the subsequent bulk of Sussman's text. Too many of Martin's remaining pieces also deal with the crackdown, though those written after his parole in 1992 carry a particular poignancy: Will Martin survive in the ``straight'' world? Of interest primarily to civil libertarians and hard-core prison buffs; stronger glimpses of big-house life can be found in Wilbert Rideau and Ron Wikberg's Life Sentences (1992). -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Dannie "Red Hog" Martin began writing while serving time in a California prison for a bank robbery. His powerful, sometimes surprisingly funny, and often tragic articles about life behind bars were accepted by coauthor Sussman for the "Sunday Punch" section of the San Francisco Chronicle and are collected here. Martin vividly reveals the authentic situations and characters in the pen, from his debut expos{‚}e about AIDS in prison to the story of one Dragline Halcomb's exploits as Folsom Prison's top gambler. He also sheds light on the abuses of civil liberties that occur every day in the penal system. But Martin's writings are only part of why this book is so valuable. Despite (or probably because of) his success, prison authorities tried to restrict his publication and put him in an isolation unit. Sussman's accounting of the struggles against the federal prison bureaucracy to gain Martin the right to free expression constitutes the rest of what makes the book important, especially with regard to the First Amendment. Aaron Cohen

Convicted bank robber Martin attracted the attention of Sussman, editor of the San Francisco Chronicle 's Sunday Punch section, with an article on AIDS he wrote in prison. For the next five years, to the chagrin of the prison authorities, Martin's articles appeared regularly in the Chronicle under his pen name, Red Hog. The articles reprinted here are interspersed with comments by Sussman. A less talented journalist than Jack Abbott ( In the Belly of the Beast , LJ 6/1/81) or Wilbert Rideau ( Life Sentences , LJ 6/15/92), Martin nonetheless gives a genuine picture of life behind bars. Readers who are fascinated by this hapless world of victors and victims will find a great deal to interest them here, though the book will probably not attract the general reader. An optional purchase.
- Frances Sandiford, Green Haven Correctional Facility Lib., Stormville, N.Y.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.