A PERFECT CHILDHOOD Book

This book covers, in a series of vignettes, that magical juvenile era dramatized by intense relationships with friends, with God and the government, in this instance represented by priests and nuns, the police and the problematic authority of parents.

These juvenile episodes filter through a prison experience the author had in the early 1950's, and the title of the book, intended to be ironic, was suggested by the contrast of the title's theme with the histories of the cross section of the convicts that the author talked to and worked with during his stay at the prison. These prisoners and their stories ignited specific memories from the author's childhood, memories of violence and camaraderie, of sexual awakenings and confusions, of absurd and bigoted nicknames, of the glamour of prize fighting, of schemes to make money through petty crime, and the numerous small things that can tip the fate of a child in one direction or another. These memories began with the onset of The Great Depression and ended with the unwelcome transition between a fading juvenilia and the necessity of growing up.

The prison experience of the author began shortly after the outbreak of the Korean war at which point the jobless author managed to obtain an internship at a maximum security California prison. His fellow workers in the psychiatry department of the prison - three psychologists - offered him, in the surreal prison context of a supposed program of rehabilitation and re-education, the same kind of support about his competence and his future that that his long ago friends had offered. Indeed the author came to view their support as a recapitulation of that long ago life.