Jack Black (1871-1932) was a late-19th-century/early-20th-century hobo and professional burglar. Born in 1871 near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, he was raised from infancy in the U.S. state of Missouri. He wroteYou Can't Win a memoir or sketched autobiography describing his days on the road and life as an outlaw. He gained fame through association withWilliam S. Burroughs and his writings had a profound effect on the writings and lives of all the Beat Generation.
Your capable beggar on the street does not say "please." He rips off his spiel in such exact and precise language that he gets your dime without it. You so admire his "art" that you do not miss the "please" because he knows you do not use it except when you want the mustard.
Chapter Two
To say I was shocked, stunned, or humiliated on entering the penitentiary would not be the truth. It would not be true in nine cases out of any ten. It would be true if a man were picked up on the street and taken directly to a penitentiary, but that isn't done He is first thrown into a dirty, lousy, foul-smelling cell in some city prison, sometimes with an awful beating in the bargain, and after two or three days of that nothing in the world can chock, stun, or humiliate him. He is actually happy to get removed to a county jail where he can perhaps get rid of the vermin and wash his body. By that time, convicted, and sentenced, he has learned from other prisoners just what the penitentiary is like and just what to do and what to expect. You start doing time the minute the handcuffs are on your wrists. The first day you are locked up is the hardest, and the last day the easiest. There comes a feeling of helplessness when the prison gates wallow you up - cut you off from the sunshine and flowers out in the world - but that feeling soon wears away if you have guts. Some men despair. I am sure I did not.
Chapter Nine
I fell in with a wolfish-eyed girl of the streets, hungry and shivering in a doorway, so shabby that men would not throw an appraising glance at her. Like Julia she was almost “ready for the river.”
You Can't Win is (...) an autobiography of a reformed criminal. It points a sufficiently obvious moral, yet one that too many at the present day are prone to forget. A deeper question is also raised, and that is regarding the validity of the practical aims and ideals of the majority of people in our modern world.
The Builder Magazine, January 1927 – Volume XIII – Number 1
Jamboree author Black is a graduate of five penitentiaries, was pried loose from a 25-year prison term and helped to overcome his addiction to narcotics by mustachioed Editor Fremont Older of theSan Francisco Call-Bulletin. This play is a dramatization of Black's bookYou Can't Win. "Every character in this play is drawn from the personal experiences of Jack Black during his years as a criminal or as a prisoner. The types are real and these people actually lived.
Time magazine, Dec. 5, 1932
Jack had been a sort of a reign of terror...just before the earthquake and fire of 1906. Every crime committed in San Francisco during the first three months of that year was ascribed to Jack Black.
R.L. Duffus,The Tower of Jewels
He returned to New York and Fremont thought Jack did what he always said any down-and-outer should do, "fill his pockets with rocks and take a header into the bay.
