THE General Manager of Corrective Services, Mr Ben Marris, sent me a letter telling me not to write a book. So much for free speech. This is what it said:
Dear Mr Read, ‘I refer to your letters of 7.1.94 and 19.1.94, in which you request permission to write a book. It is in the policy of this department that a prisoner should not, while under sentence, profit in any way from his crime. I am advised that your previous books have been concerned with crime and it would seen probable that any future book that you wrote would attempt to capitalise upon such notoriety as you have achieved through crime. For this reason permission to write a book is refused.’ – Yours sincerely, Ben Marris.
The letter was headed Department of Justice, Corrective Services Division. Well, I guess that calls a halt to my literary career. Oh well, I will put the matter to my lawyers, but to be quite honest I’m getting a bit sick of banging my head up against a brick wall.
I’ve got too much on my mind to cope with this shit at the moment.
What really got up my nose is when he said he was advised that my previous books had been about crime. It would have been nice if he had popped down the road and bought a couple. I could do with the royalties. I have a hungry family of lawyers to feed.
This book has been put together under great difficulty, letter by letter, page by page, under the nose of prison security.
They have banned me from writing a book. No doubt I will be punished when this comes out. I think the chances of getting the prison governor to launch this particular volume are very skinny. The authorities have told me they have banned me from writing because they think it is not right for me to ‘profit from crime’. Here am I, trying to clear my name, using some of the country’s highest paid lawyers and the state is banning me from paying my way.
If I had sat on my arse, watching the soapies on the TV and doing nothing, I could have got legal aid and the taxpayers would have had to pay my legal bills.
But I have paid every cent, myself, from my book royalties. I am now broke, and the government wants to stop me doing the only thing I can to make an honest dollar. They condemn me when I shorten the shoe size of drug-dealing vermin, yet they stop me from writing.
I work in the prison laundry for a few bucks a month. A lawyer would tip a waiter more than I get paid in jail each week, yet the authorities stop me from trying to earn enough to pay lawyers instead of being a drain on the public purse.
I am told I could fight the decision to stop me writing by going to the international court in the United Nations. But what would be the point. No-one wants to fight for the rights of a former headhunter who wants to write for a living. The truth is that people like to read what I write. Modesty forbids me from saying that my first three books have all been bestsellers. Why should a few prison guards and Government shinybums stop me from doing what I do second best?
They have always told me that the pen is mightier than the sword, and at last I’m getting the idea. So instead of fighting them in the courts I have had to use other, sneakier, less costly methods.
Letters have been sent to various addresses and then forwarded on to my publishers. Every letter I write and send out has been held up by prison security, and read and re-read to decide if that particular letter could be used for a book. It was my writing letters in relation to Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson that finally convinced prison staff that my mail was just harmless stuff not meant for any book. And I know that because one particular security officer – who is in no danger of becoming a brain surgeon – said to me, ‘I am getting a bit sick of reading your bloody mail, Chopper. If it’s not about Henry Lawson you are on about Banjo Paterson, but at least we can see that you are not trying to write a book.’ Everyone’s a critic, hey? Ha ha.
I must confess that some of my letters and a lot of photos have gone out of the jail in a covert manner. Once the fourth book is published I doubt I will ever be able to get away with a fifth while I am still in jail. So, dear reader, if this fourth effort appears somewhat insanely put together, please forgive me and remember that it has been written by the only writer in Australia today who has been prohibited from writing books, by the light of a television set late at night.
In saying goodbye may I quote the immortal words of Bob Dylan:
Mama put my guns in the ground, I can’t shoot them any more,
That long black cloud keeps coming down,
I feel I’m knocking on heaven’s door.
So my writing upsets the toffs, the politicians and the cops,
But when ya jump on the horse, ya flog her till she drops,
And I guess now I will have to call it quits,
It’s hard yakka brother, and I must say it’s giving me the shits,
I’ve written about mugs and molls and ladies of easy persuasion,
About the poets of old, and the cultural yank invasion,
I’ve written about the pros and cons of every bloomin’ thing,
Knocked up songs no man will ever sing,
And every word’s been done with just a touch of comic malice,
And all from my little cell in the old Pink Palace.
But the time has come to turn it up, ’cos it’s messing up my mind,
And as my old Dad used to say, ‘Stop it son, or you’ll go blind’,
So this is it, I swear to God, and of that I am quite certain,
I’ve written down my last verse, reached my final curtain,
It’s time to toss my pen and paper in the fire.
But you and me both know that I’m a shocking liar,
And it’s easy to see if you look at me,
And all the times I’ve been busted,
That when I say I’ll walk away …
You know I can’t be trusted.
Ha ha.