You Got Nothing Coming: Notes from a Prison Fish

by Jimmy A. Lerner

Book Overview

A memoir of astonishing power-the true story of a middle-class, middle-aged man who fell into the Inferno of the American prison system, and what he has to do to survive. It is your worst nightmare.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0767909186
• ISBN13: 9780767909181
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Broadway Books
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.53 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.4" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Not a Fake Memoir

I found this on Wikipedia written by some one who personally knew the author. "Don't think fabrication of facts surrounding the crime were intentional, he either blanked it out or didn't remember Jimmy Lerner was basically a good. coomplicated, intelligent person on a higher level that lacked a lot of common sense with a touch of magical thinking. Magical thinking is what helped create this excellent book. Remember this is a man who was not violent is or would hurt a fly and if the New York Times article is accurate, the whole thing was so out of control substance abuse wise that is more than possible that he may not have remembered the turn of events and just wrote what he wished or even thought had happened. However it is important to note that the excellent description of his life in prison is the non-fiction portion of the book. For people to accuse him purposefully doing this after all he had lost, all he had done - they are relating to the events as a person that had had the space of time to ponder and plan to write a book of lies in order to make ends meet. He went directly to prison and later wrote what he probably were his characterization of the events or he filled in the blanks like he had wanted them to be. This is not a tough guy. I don't think he was ever able to accept the horror of what he had done. Most people would have drowned in self-pity but it is amazing that he was able to churn out this book on a typewriter while in prison, not after he had been released and had had time to fabricate this purported scheme to publish a book. What transpired between the two during this was a total abomination. What people say in a multi-drug induced rage sometimes has severe consequences. The mind blocks this information out or in layman terms the person may have a "black out" you don't need a psychiatrist or psychologist to know that these things happen. Ever an optimist, he had fallen many times but always picked himself up again and tried and tried again even if he fell he would try to find a solution be it Tony Robbins, meditation, AA, getting an MBA; he never gave up. He always tackled problems with enthusiasm. Most people would not have the persistence to write a book this long on a manual typewriter while in prison page by page in 2001. It would seem that a purposefully fabricated non-fiction accounts are written after some separation between the event and the writing and publication of a book although I am by no means an expert on this subject. He just wrote this as he either remembered it or his mind filled in the blanks this way. He never thought it would get publshed so I personally think he was just trying to sort things out in his head. The reason I believe this is that having visited him in prison, I know something about it and he was writing that portion as it went along, basically a chronicle of prison life from his perspective and I had heard these stories personally. I just want people to know that he may have had to make

I am down wid dis, dawg!

This is a sad, funny and diabolically authentic memoir about his life in prison (and how he got there) by a natural born, sideways-talkin' wordsmith writing with skill, verve and a kind of disarming warmth replete with a lot of "out of the side of his neck" irony. Lerner, a one-time nice Jewish boy from New York finds himself the cell mate of Kansas, a six-foot-six, three-hundred pound "Nazi Low Rider" with a swastika tattooed on his neck, a prison con who can bench press something like four-hundred pounds, a guy who controls the inner prison culture and enterprises with an iron fist. What's a fish to do? Lerner uses corporate skills, honed during 19 years at Ma Bell, to make friends and influence people. A nice irony throughout is the way Lerner compares the culture of the corporate structure with that of the prison, finding them similar except for the terminology. Lerner manages to weave corporate gobbledygook about "market repositioning" and the "pursuance of outside opportunities" into the prison narrative. He sees that the rake the "Yard Rats" and the "skinhead Phone Posse" charge the fish for using the public phone as "the same economic principle we employed at the phone company by charging customers for both access...and usage." (p. 152)As far as the structure of this book goes I believe it was originally written in a straight-forward manner beginning with the earliest events and ending with the latest. But somewhere during development it was decided to begin in the middle as Lerner enters prison. This was an effective and tantalizing change for two significant reasons. One, the utter shock of being immediately immersed into convict culture carries the narrative practically by itself, and Two, we are enticed to read on to the end wondering just how such a person as "O.G." Lerner ever got himself to manslaughter in the first place.Lerner's ear for the language of the convicts is something close to amazing. His absorption of their largely primitive and tribal culture is so complete that as the book ends we see him as one of them in action, inclination and loyalty as he bangs on his cell and yells out on command his blood curdling cat's meow to the disconcertion of the attack dogs of the "Dirt" (that's "Disciplinary Intervention and Response Team, and they ain't nothin' nice") and to the joy of his fellow "dawgs."But Lerner's story is fascinating in itself. He is an alcoholic and a drug imbiber who after being attacked by "the monster" (as he calls his drug-addled, "Soldier of Fortune"-reading "friend" Dwayne Hassleman) fights back and through righteous rage and superior adrenaline flow manages to subdue and then kill his adversary. The Monster is such a degenerate beast of stupidity and animalistic hate and rage that we strongly identify with Lerner and are entirely pleased that Dwayne is no longer with us. However, this is to accept Lerner's version of the crime which is not a twit removed from self-defense, a version that the

We Are Definitely Not In Kansas Anymore!

Jimmy Lerner takes us on journey to a dark place beyond the imaginations of most of us. This true account of prison is nothing like what we see in the movies, read in books, or even watch the HBO show, OZ. It is infinitely worse. Gangs, Nazis, teenaged crank addicts that kill their families, relentlessly sadistic guards, and, for comic relief, charaters like Scud, who have a talent for propelling a snot missiles from their nose into the chow hall soup cannister.The author pulls us into his tiny cell with him, this 8 x 6 concrete and steel box that he is forced to share with Kansas, the Nazi skinhead gang leader. Kansas can't read his neo-Nazi literature because he is illiterate. No problem. Mr. Lerner, a former Corporate executive and a Jew (which he wisely keeps to himself) reads it to him. And even explains it. Lerner even manages to win the confidence and friendship of this maniac and this makes for a fascinating and hilarious sub-plot.The satirical accounts of our 12-Step culture and his skewering of Alcoholics Anonymous are both politically incorrect and delightfully accurate. I only hope the author survives to provide us with a sequel!!This is without a doubt one of the best books I have ever read!!

In The Literary Footsteps of Swift, Twain, Vonnegut, Heller

Jimmy Lerner's astonishing and entertaining memoir as a "reluctant guest" of the Nevada State Prison system reveals not just his MBA and corporate background, but his clear familiarity (and mastery) of a long literary tradition - that of the outsider using humor and a razor-wire (pardon the pun) wit to demolish the pretentions and inherent deceit of the system in power. Lerner thematically weaves in the grand Establishments of Corporate America (The Phone Company - AT & T), The Military (he was a sergeant in the U.S. Army) and the Nevada State Prison to illuminate the essential aburdity and moral bankruptcy of these hierarchial monstrosities that thrive on bureaucratic paralysis, infighting, trivia and endless procedural inanities. Most importantly, Mr. Lerner tells an absolutely riveting tale, for after all,to paraphrase The Bard, the story is the thing! His nightmarish (gives new meaning to Irony!) situation of being a middle-class, highly educated Jew forced to share a cell with a hardened convict and neo-Nazi (swastika tattoo included) makes for a fabulous dramatic tension that does not release us until the very end. We follow this new inmate's, this Fishes progress from trembling newcomer to the O.G. - Original Gangsta - who teaches skinheaded murderers the finer points of European geography and how to use fractions to facilitate drug deals. Lerner withholds until near the end the circumstances of his crime and his timing is exquisite. The final section of the book serves to ratchet up the tension and drama even further, a not inconsiderable accomplishment for a memoir that demands your attention and earns your feverish interest one sentence, one page at a time!Bravo, kudos and bravissimo, Mr. Lerner!

Wow

Mr. Lerner has found his true calling in life: story-teller. This is a true, gut-wrenching, extraordinarily witty, hard-hitting account of Mr. Lerner's first year or so in the Nevada State Penitentiary. When sentenced there in 1998 for voluntary manslaughter (he explains all this and is open in discussing his alcohol and drug problems that lead to the crime that put him in prison), he was a 47 year old, MBA-toting, cubicle-occupying solid member of the middle class with a recently divorced wife and two adolescent daughters. The shock -- cultural and physical -- that comes with the destruction of that world and the entry into the off-world character of prison life is wonderfully portrayed in this true-story account. How he survives and copes and learns the lingo in prison, and his accounts of daily life there, are riveting. Mr. Lerner's sense of humor pervades his account, and it delights. Nonetheless, this isn't just a funny prison story. It's a story about the human condition, the ability to survive great adversity, and the pathos of human suffering. I could not put down this book.