num_pages: 204
description: Hemingway said, "A man should never write what he doesn't know." In the mid-fifties, Harlan Ellison--kicked out of college and hungry to write--went to New York to start his writing career. It was a time of street gangs, rumbles, kids with switchblades and zip guns made from car radio antennas. Ellison was barely out of his teens himself, but he took a phony name, moved into Brooklyn's dangerous Red Hook section and managed to con his way into a "bopping club." What he experienced (and the time he spent in jail as a result) was the basis for the violent story that Alfred Hitchcock filmed as the first of his hour-long TV dramas...This autobiography is a book whose message you won't be able to ignore or forget. "Harlan Ellison is the dark prince of American letters, cutting through our corrupted midnight fog with a switchblade prose. He simply must be read." --Pete Hamill "Ellison writes with sensitivity as well as guts--a rare combination." --Leslie Charteris, creator of The Saint
language: English
title: Memos From Purgatory
titlecomplete: Memos From Purgatory
genres: Crime, History, Biography, Memoir, Autobiography, Essays, Biography Memoir, Journalism, Nonfiction, Speculative Fiction
ratings_count: 450
publisher: Ace Books