Sharing a gratifying review of With The Silent Knowledge

My thanks to Arnold Shapiro for the following review he wrote about my novel, copies of which are available at www.talespress.com or at Amazon. (Posted with permission.)

Realism, rich dialogue and memorable characters

make novel about the flaws of incarceration read more like a memoir

 

My hope in writing this review is that readers will want to buy this book. I enthusiastically recommend it for several reasons.

        Most novelists begin a book because they have a good story to tell and/or they have strong, memorable characters around which to craft a compelling story. Ray Elliott has both, but adds a third important motivation: that many non-violent convicts don’t belong in prison and that sending them into incarceration only weakens their chance upon release of staying straight.

        Elliott could have taken his position and evidence and written an exposé book or persuasive magazine article. Instead, he chose to make his point through fiction and some memorable characters. I think Elliott chose the most effective medium by writing this novel, “With the Silent Knowledge.”

        We follow the main character, Michael Callahan, a young man who is an alcoholic and a forger – each condition making the other possible. We see “Chip” Callahan during his one-year bit inside an Illinois maximum-security prison for the third time, and then after his release. But here’s what’s so remarkable about this novel:

        Callahan’s time in prison, and everything he experiences, thinks and feels, is so realistic that I felt like I was reading an actual, engaging memoir, not a novel. Ray Elliott describes prison life so accurately that everything he wrote feels like it must have really happened to some inmate, somewhere.

        I can verify the realism of Ray Elliott’s story and the crazy journey of Chip Callahan. I spent a great deal of time inside a maximum-security prison in the 1970s (the time period of this novel) when I was researching and then producing, directing and writing the Oscar and Emmy Award-winning television documentary, “Scared Straight,” and more recently, as the executive producer of the A&E documentary series, “Beyond Scared Straight,” which took me inside dozens of prisons and jails. In terms of what prisons are really like, there is little fiction in the descriptions and occurrences in this fictional story.

        Part of the harsh reality and believability of the story is due to the rich use of dialogue – more dialogue than the average novel and – interestingly – more erudite than most people speak.

        Michael Callahan is very intelligent, glib and well spoken. There are many words in the dialogue that elevate the conversations such as “oblisk,” “asymptotically” or  “picayunish.” The dialogue is so colorful and often witty because Callahan is so smart, outspoken and unfiltered: 

        To Callahan: “Did you hear that Otto died?” 

        Callahan: “Whatever did he do that for?”

        The person with whom he has countless dialogue sparring matches is a young counselor at the prison, Jim Blaine. In fact, Callahan’s story is being told to us by Blaine nearly 50 years after it happened in the 1970s. We’re actually reading a story within a story – book-ended by Blaine’s commentary about the failures and flaws of incarceration – especially of non-violent, often addicted offenders who could truly be changed and rehabilitated elsewhere, by other means than confining them to a prison filled with far worse negative, violent offenders.

        Your sympathy for or empathy with Callahan will be based on your attitude about and knowledge of alcoholism. Callahan is certainly charismatic and likable, smart and perceptive. But he’s also self-destructive. Don’t try to anticipate what is going to happen next and what will come out of Callahan’s intelligent but uninhibited and smart-ass mouth. I found myself rooting for him to make parole and then to succeed on the outside. I could not stop reading the last 45 pages to find out what happened to Callahan once he was released from prison.

        Our journey with Callahan during his one-year behind bars is enlightening, shocking, tragic, amusing at times, and always unpredictable. And, throughout the book, there is even some poetry!

        This is a powerful book in terms of its story, its characters, and its underlying message for all of us who live in this society where more people are incarcerated than any other country in the world, and with a recidivism rate that is shamefully and dangerously high.

        I hope you will enjoy and benefit from reading “With the Silent Knowledge” as much as I did. Yes, it’s a novel, but to reiterate: It reads like an engaging memoir.

– Arnold Shapiro

Oscar and 16-time Emmy Award-winning television producer

An Audience for Mature Films

Note: Here’s the second column about the Scared Straight program that I wrote five days after the first many years ago, during and after class discussions when the suburban Chicago high school where I was teaching wouldn’t allow or approve me to show it in the documentary unit of my journalism class. Most of the students had seen the documentary. It probably still wouldn’t be allowed in today’s politically correct world when the prison population is exploding, and it looks like there is no end in sight for why people are sentenced and sent away from the community. The Scared Straight program has continued, and After Scared Straight was aired on the History Channel this fall. There are pros and cons of the program. Google “Scared Straight” to see them for yourself. Nothing works for everybody, but it seems worth continuing.

___

There’s something about today’s high school students that we tend to overlook sometimes. Maybe it’s called maturity. Here’s an example of it, anyway:

     A review of sorts about a controversial documentary called Scared Straight appeared in this space last week. The program from which the film came was designed to scare kids away from prisons. It seems to be succeeding.
     The Los Angeles Times said the film is “one of the most powerful and unusual television programs ever broadcast … the medium at its finest.”
     Gary Deeb, television critic for the Chicago Tribune, reported that the reaction to the program in the Chicago area “has been so heavy and favorable that WFDL-Ch 32 has scheduled the documentary for a repeat on May 20 (1979).”
     Many high school students watched the program, too. According to an informal poll conducted at a suburban Chicago high school for this piece of writing, about one-forth of the students in some upper-division classes watched the documentary, mostly with their parents. This 25 percent figure is close to the 3 percent of the 10 p.m. audience Arbitron said the film had.
     And during class discussions over the next few days, the students continued to be interested in the film. They talked about the changes in the kids’ personalities who appeared in the film from the time they were first interviewed to the time they were last interviewed.
     The students had seen the changes the kids had undergone from the time they got to the prison to the time they left. Everyone noted the changes in the juveniles serving the sentences from the moment they entered the prison gates on to where they heard the catcalls and looked around at the unfamiliar walls.
     Some students were shy talking about the film, but the shine in their eyes and the nods from their heads showed agreement. Others talked excitedly and waved their hands wildly. Their comments and observations kept the discussions going.
     “Did you see when that one convict told them to take all their shoes off and put them in the middle of the floor?” one student asked who rarely spoke in class. “He asked them how it felt to be ripped off.”
     Those who hadn’t seen the film looked from speaker to speaker and asked questions when they had a chance. Some of the questions were ones that had been asked by skeptics of the program.
     “You mean a three-hour sentence in a prison is going to change a bunch of juvenile delinquents? From New York?” a girl in another class asked. She always questioned anything she didn’t believe. “Uh-huh.”
     “Oh, yeah,” one of the girls who had seen the program said. “If you’d seen it, you’d know why a three-hour sentence would do it. Those kids were scared to death. I would have been, too. So would you.”
     Several students mentioned the violence or the threat of violence in the film. They talked about the relationship between Scared Straight and Night and Fog, a French documentary the class had seen contrasting the comforting color of the present with the dreary black and white of the past to portray the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps.
     They saw the similarities between the degradation and the hopelessness of the convicts and the Jews in the concentration camps. But they also saw the difference. They saw there was no hope in the concentrations camps, and they saw that a few inmates in the prison were able to find some meaning in their lives by helping some kids avoid prison.
     They also saw how the film showed effective use of the medium of television and that of the documentary format by bringing a very real and worthy program to the tube. They expressed appreciation that the media could be used for so much benefit.
     They wanted to see the film in class. It seemed possible. And when they found out it would probably have to be after school, it didn’t matter to most of them. Some did say they had to work.
     Then when they found out they couldn’t see the film after school, they didn’t know what to say. Oh, they were angry. But they didn’t know what to do.
     One quiet boy in the front row asked why they couldn’t see the film. He had seen it and thought it was a good film, worthy of seeing for more reason than one. He was told that the people who made the decision didn’t think the film was appropriate to show students their age.
     He looked back for a minute before he said, “I wonder when it would be appropriate to show it to us? When it’s too late?”
     “It was on television,” another student said.
     “That’s censorship,” still another said.
     And they said a lot of other things about the film and the situation. But not once did they mention the foul language, except to say they had heard it all before. They saw the language as a part of the whole, not as something offensive or to snicker about.
     Nor did they snicker about the varying sexual preferences of the inmates. They didn’t comment about the race of the convicts, either.
     Oh, two kids who hadn’t been coming to class at all did smile crookedly and giggle to themselves about something from time to time. But they’re coming to class now… That’s something for them.

Sometimes Forgotten, Forever Appreciated

They don’t normally march in parades; they don’t normally have banquets and ceremonies in their honor; and they don’t normally receive much publicity for their service.

      And while much has been made of showing appreciation for the service and sacrifices of the American military servicemen and women—since after the Vietnam War, anyway—little has been done to show appreciation for the Americans who stayed behind during World War II and produced the goods and material the troops needed to function on the front.

      I’m quite pleased to see attention given to the service of military veterans. They’re deserving. The (Champaign-Urbana) News-Gazette published a large list of area events for Veterans Day. Services and parades are also held on the Fourth of July and Memorial Day.

      News-Gazette reporter Paul Wood has been featuring a weekly front-page story of an interview with a military veteran for some time. All this is refreshing to see in a country that is now protected by an all-volunteer military—much different that it was during World War II.

      Back then about 16 million Americans served to preserve our freedom and way of life. Some 405,000 of them died during the war in both combat and noncombat-related deaths. More than 570,000 suffered non-fatal wounds they lived with until the end of their lives or still live with. 

But those men and women were backed by soldiers on the home front—production soldiers, if you will—who worked in the nation’s factories, mills, mines, oil fields, farms and other areas to supply the military with necessary support to carry on the war.

      Jim Kelly, an Urbana Marine veteran who spent 36 days on Iwo Jima during that battle where 6,821 men were killed and nearly 19,000 wounded, often mentions those who supported the war effort at home during those times.

      “When somebody thanks me for my service,” Kelly says, “I say, ‘Yes, but don’t forget the civilians who stayed behind and provided the supplies we needed.’”

      Kelly’s wife, Leila, worked in an airplane factory in Torrance, Calif. And there are hundreds of thousands of others who worked to make the war effort a successful one. My father was drafted in 1944, went to Chicago for his physical, passed it, but was given 30 days to return home and somehow wrap up his business for the duration of the war.

My father with one of his hauling trucks in the 1940s.

      In his late 20s, he and my mother lived on a small farm, raised a few hogs, fed some cattle, milked a couple of cows and raised some chickens and had five trucks hauling farmers’ livestock to the stockyards in Indianapolis, their corn, beans and wheat to the elevator and spread fertilizer on their fields.

      Before the 30 days were up, a local farmer who served on the Selective Service draft board started a petition indicating that my father was needed at home to serve the community. And so he stayed. The men he had driving four of his trucks were young men who hadn’t yet gone to the military or older men who weren’t taken into the service.

      Growing up on the farm later, I sometimes complained about the long days in the field during planting or harvest seasons. My father had no sympathy.

      “Back during the war,” he said, “there were times I didn’t pull my shoes off from Sunday morning until Thursday evening. I’d take a load of stock to Indianapolis four nights and sometimes stop in Brazil on the way back and get a load of coal for somebody, scoop it off and then pick up another load of stock to take back to Indianapolis.”

      He wasn’t the only one working like that. They were scattered all across the United States. Many were injured or killed on the job. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that more than 75,000 Americans died or became permanently or totally disabled in industry during the war. Another 378,000 industrial workers were reported to have suffered permanent or partial disabilities doing the work to support the war effort.

      After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, historians report that it took nearly 18 months for the United States to build its military-industrial base to muster the necessary support. And it wasn’t until sometime in 1943 that combat-related deaths exceeded industrial deaths on the home front.

      So factory workers, farmers, miners and others deserve the same words of gratitude and appreciation as those who served directly in the military. The next time you see one of them, you might say a word of thanks for their service. They’re deserving, too.

Out of sight, out of mind doesn’t work for today’s prisoners

When I worked as a counselor at Menard Prison in the 1970s, Illinois had some 10,000 men and women incarcerated. Today it is reported that nearly 50,000 of our citizens are locked away in Illinois jails and prisons.
And according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, the rest of the states are apparently keeping up with the pace. With today’s United States penal population reported to be more than 2.2 million adults, it is by far the largest in the world. Not quite one-quarter of the world’s prisoners are held in American prisons. Those figures are five to ten times higher than the rates in Western European countries and other democracies.

Another 5 million are on probation or parole. And that isn’t all. We have more than 70,000 young people in juvenile detention centers—sort of like prep schools for the Big Houses where the real education begins.

But with the recent attention being paid to the failing prison system and the huge budgetary costs to maintain them, some people are beginning to take a longer look at the practice of throwing people in the prisons and getting them off the street and out of sight with little concern for the consequences for the people imprisoned, their families and communities, and for society at large.

One person who is concerned about the ramifications of this situation is Dr. Rebecca Ginsburg, director of the University of Illinois Education Justice Program, whose mission is “to build a model college-in-prison program that demonstrates the positive impacts of higher education upon educated people, their families, the communities from which they come, the host institution, and society as a whole.”

“I’m honored to serve as the director of the University of Illinois’ Education Justice Project,” she said, “an initiative that provides higher education within a medium-high Illinois state prison.”

As you might expect, most of a countries’ prison population comes from the portion of the nation’s population that is least educated and most disadvantaged. Most of those incarcerated are under 40 years of age, are disproportionately minority, and many have drug and alcohol addictions. A large number also have mental or physical illness and have neither work preparation nor experience.  

With “longstanding interests in social justice” and a faculty position at the University, Ginsburg is optimistic about the effect of the Education Justice Project that has three sites of work: “Education programs to men incarcerated at Danville Correctional Center; host outreach activities for friends and family members of the incarcerated in Chicago; and sponsor events on the Urbana-Champaign campus and community to promote critical understanding of incarcerations and support those impacted by it.”

After hearing Ginsburg speak about the Education Justice Project at a recent Urbana Rotary lunch, I attended “The Ripple Effect” meeting, a part of the program for “reaching inside the prisons with purpose and love, “ where young people and other community members “share a meal and write cards and letters to individuals in jails and prisons.”

In addition to adults with family members in prison and other participants, there were a number of kids there to write to their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins. It was refreshing to see everybody working to communicate with prisoners and let them know they aren’t forgotten. That seems as important as the educational aspect.

“I'm so happy to be a part of this wonderful group of people,” Annette Taylor said. “ I have family members and friends incarcerated right now. My brother just got released in January after doing 10 years in IDOC. And I'm married to a man that was incarcerated for 20 years.”

During those times she said she did a lot of writing and knows how much it meant for her to stay in touch.

“Most of the time I was the only one sending them mail,” she said. “And a lot of time I was their only communication from the outside world.

I wish Ripple Effect had been around then, but I'm so happy it's here now. It's a place where we can all meet, share our stories and most of all, not be embarrassed about our loved ones. I would love to see more people come out because I know that there's a lot of families affected by having incarcerated loved ones.”

The next meeting of The Ripple Effect is Aug. 17 from 5:30-7 p.m. at the Bethel AME Church at 401 E. Park St., Champaign. Whether you have a family member incarcerated or just want to be a part of a worthwhile project designed to provide some “purpose and love” for men in prison, you’re welcome. As the poet John Donne wrote many years ago, “No man is an island/Entire of itself/Every man is a piece of the continent/A part of the main. …”

Some Ancestry 101 from National Geographic Traveler and what I do

I've dabbled in genealogy for years but never really took it seriously, but it's interesting, fun and worthwhile, historically and to see where your family came through the years. For my part, I've been to the Borders area of Scotland where the Elliot(t)s hung out for 250-300 years in and around Hermitage Castle—as we marched down the Royal Mile in Edinburgh to the castle during the International Clan Gathering in 2009, our name on the colors some of the clan were carrying, some men in a second floor flat hollered out "Here comes the Lawless Elliots"—probably true from what I've heard about the Border reivers, which the Elliots and other clans were called; I've been to Cumberland County, Kentucky, around Amandaville, Crocus Creek and Burkesville, where Samuel brought his brood in 1802-3 (and our part of the clan left for Vermillion Country, Illinois, in the early 1830s before heading down to Clark County), visited the courthouse and library there for records, talked to many people in the area and visited the Elliott-Baker Cemetery and saw the old Elliott School; I've been to Troy, Texas, where Robert Elliott, Samuel's son who served in the Confederate Army and left Kentucky after the war is buried with his family in the Old Troy Cemetery and ran around the country with a young couple I met and looked for the graves (see here).
I've checked the records my mother had on her family, the Ramseys from Ireland and the Newberrys from the Isle of Wight, Ancestry.com, which you have to get a subscription to use, and the Clan Elliot USA genealogy web sites, which you have to be a member to use. I've talked with the Clan Elliot USA genealogist and web master who are very helpful. My daughters, Jessica and Becky, have checked records and been a great deal of help in finding people and information. Becky found that Samuel had served in the Revolutionary War in the 10th Virginia Regiment, which is what he received a land grant for in Kentucky. Jessica traced the family tree back to Scotland, and through several generations. Alex Elliott, an African-American retired Air Force noncom whose daughter is married to an acquaintance of mine, took me all over Lawson's Bottoms near the Elliott farm where he grew up—Samuel had 12 slaves when he died. One of them was named Shadrack. Alex's father was named Shadrack, so was his grandfather.
Interesting stuff. Reading a recent National Geographic Traveler about an Irish-American finding his family in County Kerry piqued my interest in genealogy again. So in my spare time, I'm back at it. The National Geographic Traveler piece had a little sidebar as a place to start. The piece, "Ancestry 101, We are family," said, "To start your Irish family history, the first thing you need to know is what part of the island your ancestors came from. If you already know, start rummaging through the 1901 and 1911 census records, free at censusnationalarchives.ie. Otherwise, try www.irishtimes.com/ancestor. Interactive maps show the precise locations of households of every surname recorded between 1847 and 1864. For Kerry church records, look up www.irishgenealogy.ie.
I'm sure each country would have church records in other counties and in Scotland and England. And I know Robert Elliott, Samuel's father, came to the Eastern Shores of Delaware or Maryland from Northern Ireland in 1840. Many of the clans, the Elliots, Grahams, Russells in my family and that of my children's mothers and others were broken up and sent to Northern Ireland from Scotland at the time of the Pacification of 1603. The clans are well documented genealogically as well as are the other family surnames. Most of my ancestors have come most recently from the British Isles, although my wife has European ancestors—her grandparents were first-generation Americans whose parents came from Norway, Germany, Italy and Czechoslovakia. And there are some Native American ancestors in my family. DNA test are available to see where we have roots. I've taken the DNA and am connected to the Elliots in the Borders area of Scotland and plan to take a more comprehensive one.


Email me at talespress@talesspress.com with your genealogical experiences and suggestions.