In another lifetime, Lerner was a middle-aged middle-management type; his cubicle at the phone company literally faced that of Scott Adams, the man who would eventually chronicle the dreary workaday life in Dilbert. But then the 47-year-old father of two befriended a drug addict and their twisted relationship ended in a drunken night of rage. Lerner was sent down a two-to-twelve sentence for voluntary manslaughter at a Nevada state penitentiary. Its nightmare of violence and noise is a familiar one, as seen in any brutal hour of Oz, but the book also depicts the remnants of humanity that lie within, like the lifer who keeps a cat and a chess board in his cell. In the epigraphs that begin the book's three sections, Lerner quotes Dante and Nietzsche. But the ''dawgs'' he meets in prison have their own sense of hell-bound poetry, a language drenched in anger and the fear of regret. B+
Add your comment
The rules: Keep it clean, and stay on the subject or we might delete your comment. If you see inappropriate language, e-mail us. An asterisk * indicates a required field.