Not long ago, I wrote a book. I didn’t mean to – I had to. Somehow, I had managed to snub a minor deity, and I had to set things right.
I knew I didn’t have what it takes to write a novel. I’m missing a few essentials: a plot, a plan, intimacy with a bunch of interesting characters, vocabulary, discipline, talent.
No, I wanted to write something less dramatic, something more useless, something that lets me get away with gross grammatical gaffes like, for example, the previous paragraph. I wanted to write a weekly commentary and then find some newspaper to carry it, so I could get out of the numbing habit of actually working.
And so, for a while, I tried writing stuff and contacting newspapers all across America. But the newspapers kept telling me to get out of the way so they could finish dying.
So it didn’t go well, and now I focus on writing other things: online columns, long parole violation rationalizations, extended grocery shopping lists. Continue reading “Sorry, We Can’t Use Funny by Barry Parham”
JEW IN JAIL is the true story of the nearly six years that I spent incarcerated in various correctional facilities throughout the state of New York. It deals with my attempts at recovery from past addictions to alcohol, drugs and gambling, as well as my efforts to turn my life around in hopes of becoming a solid citizen and successful member of society upon my release. In addition, my book also provides insight into how I, as a minority in prison, was forced to fend for myself against all of the mistreatment at the hands of the powers that be from the Department Of Correctional Services in this “world within the real world,” as well as the daily grind of doing time with hardened criminals, many of whom I felt no close connection to, all the while continuing to fight for the true justice I strongly felt I wasn’t afforded during my lower court proceedings. 
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