A New Podcast Chronicles the Violent Crimes of Literary Greats

Writing about crime is one thing a number of authors have achieved over time. Committing crimes, then again, is rather less of a well-liked exercise among the many literary set. However in New York Metropolis in 1981, the lives of three writers unexpectedly converged when one in all them stabbed a person to demise. The writers had been Norman Mailer, Jerzy Kosiński and Jack Henry Abbott, and the primary season of a brand new podcast hauntingly paperwork their lives and the horrors every left of their wake.

The podcast is Penknife, hosted by writers and booksellers Corey Eastwood and Santiago Lemoine, and narrated and edited by Ramona Stout. (Full disclosure: I’ve recognized Eastwood for a number of years.) Its first two episodes give attention to Jack Henry Abbott’s life — the majority of which was spent incarcerated — in addition to his launch from jail on parole and the next publication of his memoir Within the Stomach of the Beast.

What appeared like a triumph for rehabilitation and the humanities shortly grew to become a nightmare for all concerned. One morning, Abbott stabbed an actor and playwright, Richard Adan, to demise at a restaurant on the Decrease East Aspect following an argument over the toilet. From there, the scope of Penknife expands in a variety of methods, tracing the literary rises of each Mailer and Kosiński — and documenting the horrific acts that they dedicated.

“It’s cliché, however we made Penknife as a result of it was the podcast we needed to listen to,” Eastwood tells InsideHook. “I had no curiosity in any respect in making a podcast, however as a podcast listener, I’d actually googled ‘books/literature/true-crime’ a dozen instances and by no means discovered something that appealed to me.”

When Lemoine advised beginning a real crime podcast, Eastwood eagerly got here on board. In early 2020, each had been residing underneath lockdown in Valencia, Spain — which meant that a lot of their analysis was achieved on-line. (Eastwood cites his New York Public Library card as a vital part of constructing the podcast a actuality.) And the primary season covers a variety of media, from interview clips to reconstructions of sure occasions within the lives of its topics.

The result’s usually thrilling, even because it stays thought-provoking. Listening to Kosiński banter with David Letterman, or watching Mailer attempt to fail to grapple with feminism at a stay occasion, is each gripping audio and infrequently chilling in its implications.

The collaborators famous that Abbott’s case was what initially drew them in. “After we first began researching prison authors for season one, Abbott instantly caught out as a really fascinating case — prison who wrote, author who dedicated crimes, victimizer, sufferer, and so on. — and his life and crimes led us to the opposite two,” Lemoine explains. “We didn’t even know the total extent of Mailer and Kosiński’s prison careers after we began wanting into their biographies.”

A few of their acts are higher documented than others. Mailer’s horrific assault on his spouse Adele Morales in 1960 has been written about in quite a few venues; Kosiński’s offenses are much less well-known. That doesn’t imply that he didn’t do some horrible issues, nonetheless. There’s a gasp-worthy second late within the season when the total scope of Kosiński’s deeds comes into focus. As for public perceptions of the three writers on the middle of Penknife season one, that additionally affected the best way the podcast got here collectively.

“To be trustworthy, I believe the truth that [Mailer] is for essentially the most half rightly vilified nowadays made it simpler to jot down about him and his overrated books and dangerous conduct,” Eastwood says. “We’re already engaged on Season Two, and an early snag we hit is that lots of the writers equivalent to Jean Genet or Miguel Piñero who we’re contemplating as topics had been really actually cool, sympathetic individuals whose constructive impacts on society far outweigh their unfavourable.”

The connection between the creators and their topics is one which advanced over the course of the method of constructing Penknife. “I used to be undoubtedly essentially the most sympathetic with Jack Henry Abbott by the tip of modifying and studying,” Stout says. “Jerzy Kosiński fascinated like a specimen may. And I by no means actually took to Mailer, not at the same time as a main specimen of ‘poisonous masculinity.’” 

“What we tried to do was to color a full image of those sophisticated, flawed and infrequently horrible human beings with a view to attempt to higher perceive: A) human nature itself, B) a number of the methods we work as a society and C) U.S. tradition and historical past in the course of the second half of the twentieth century,” Lemoine explains. “It took us lots of analysis and lots of rewrites, however we hope we managed to painting them in a good and trustworthy manner.”

Speaking to the creators of Penknife additionally entails speaking concerning the podcast’s relationship to its style. “Whenever you take an in depth have a look at the narrative construction of the true crime style, the strain of almost each story relies upon upon framing the perpetrator as a ‘dangerous individual,’ even when it then zooms in and offers context by exploring the motivations of their crimes,” Eastwood says. “This concept of violent criminals as ‘dangerous’ or ‘others’ is one thing we attempt to problem and choose aside in Season One.”

Whether or not or not that’s potential stays to be seen. “[S]until, our narrative depends on the identical ‘dangerous guys’ framing as nearly each different true crime podcast,” he continues. “Whenever you cope with individuals whose crimes had been clearly the results of poverty, racism, sexism, homophobia or some other societal oppression (because it may very well be argued that Abbott’s had been), the attitude modifications and it will get lots tougher to take care of the strain.”

And, as Lemoine factors out, Penknife does make lots of area for the multifaceted components of its topics. “Persons are many issues: Mailer was one of the public intellectuals and revered American authors of the twentieth century, and he was additionally a wife-stabber who usually used bodily violence to get his manner and spouted essentially the most horrific opinions to get underneath the highlight,” he says. “Kosinski (partially) wrote one of the necessary novels concerning the Holocaust, he was humorous and loveable, and he was additionally a violent rapist, a creep, a thief and a plagiarist. Abbott was a cold-blooded assassin, however he was additionally a sufferer, and he wrote one of the highly effective books in jail literature. Persons are sophisticated.”

For now, the collaborators have arrange a page on Patreon and have begun engaged on a second season. What is going to that be about? Each Eastwood and Stout acknowledged that content material would dictate type, moderately than the other. “Consider it or not, there are literally fairly just a few writers who dedicated homicide,” Eastwood stated. “Season Two appears to be gelling round a few of them.”

Lemoine added that the second season “will most likely have a thematic axis, permitting us to cowl extra floor and discover the lives and crimes of writers from the world over.” It’s unnerving in its implications, but in addition makes for a gripping and thought-provoking pay attention.