ABSTRACT
I DON 0 T look back at prison as either a lark or as justified pun-ishment. I have tried to tell the truth about it, and to give the federal prison system credit for its intelligent handling of one of the darker spots on our civilization. The forces in government that took me there, I recall with anger and disgust. The business of putting writers in jail is an ancient and obscene practice, one of the habits of the Soviet government hat disgraced the name of socialism, and one that is still alive in China. It is of course normal behavior in any and all of the dirty little dictatorships that are sprinkled through the Third World, many of them our client states.
