On the Yard
by Malcolm Braly
On This Page
Description
Fiction. Literature. Mystery. HTML:A major American novel, and arguably the finest work of literature ever to emerge from a US prison, On the Yard is a book of penetrating psychological realism in which Malcolm Braly paints an unforgettable picture of the complex and frightening world of the penitentiary. At its center are the violently intertwined stories of Chilly Willy, in trouble with the law from his earliest years and now the head of the prison’s flourishing black market in drugs show more and sex, and of Paul, wracked with guilt for the murder of his wife and desperate for some kind of redemption. At once brutal and tender, clear-eyed and rueful, On the Yard presents the penitentiary not as an exotic location, an exception to everyday reality, but as an ordinary place, one every reader will recognize, American to the core. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
Excellent book!
En el patio es una de las mejores novelas salidas de una prisión de los Estados Unidos. Su autor, un asiduo huésped de cárceles como Folsom y San Quintín en la década de los cincuenta, la empezó a escribir entre rejas y la terminó a escondidas por la amenaza de las autoridades de revocarle la libertad condicional. Finalmente publicada en 1967, En el patio reconstruye de forma magistral, siguiendo los pasos de una impresionante galería de personajes, el día a día de San Quintín. En su epicentro, el gran patio, se entrecruzan las historias de guardas, criminales encallecidos como Sociedad Rojo, Nunn o el temido y respetado Hielo Willy; criminales ocasionales e instruidos como Juleson, Manning o Lorin; y sociópatas como show more Gasolino o Palo, líder de una banda imaginaria y actor principal de un intento de fuga surrealista. show less
Jul 19, 2022Spanish
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Author Information
10+ Works 345 Members
Some Editions
Awards and Honors
Notable Lists
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- On the Yard
- Original publication date
- 1967
- Epigraph
- As general rule. people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. -Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazon
- First words
- The mind flinches from the fact of prisons - their prevalence, squatting in the midst of towns and cities, their role in so many lives, and in the history and everyday life of our country. And when the mind does find its way ... (show all)there, it wants the whole subject covered in hysteria and overstatement. Let prisons be one simple thing - either horrific zoos for the irretrievably demented and corrupt, or inhumane machines which grind down innocent men. Let them stand apart as raw cartoons of black-and-white morality, having nothing to do with the rest of us - we who live in the modulated, ambivalent civilized world "the novel" was born to depict. We might secretly feel prison doesn't need a novel, that it instead needs a miniseries or the Op-Ed page. -Introduction, Jonathan Lethem
Society Red was the first man on the yard that morning. He sidled out of the south cellblock, turning up the collar of his faded denim jacket as he squinted resentfully at the cold gray sky, - Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.54
- Canonical LCC
- PS3552.R28 O5
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 258
- Popularity
- 124,958
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (4.21)
- Languages
- English, Italian, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 4
