You Can't Win is (...) an autobiography of a reformed criminal. It points a sufficiently obvious moral, yet one that too many at the present day are prone to forget. A deeper question is also raised, and that is regarding the validity of the practical aims and ideals of the majority of people in our modern world.
The Builder Magazine, January 1927 - Volume XIII - Number 1
Jamboree author Black is a graduate of five penitentiaries, was pried loose from a 25-year prison term and helped to overcome his addiction to narcotics by mustachioed Editor Fremont Older of the San Francisco Call-Bulletin. This play is a dramatization of Black's book You Can't Win. "Every character in this play is drawn from the personal experiences of Jack Black during his years as a criminal or as a prisoner. The types are real and these people actually lived."
Time Magazine, Dec. 5, 1932
Books
"Let me recommend this book--one of the most remarkable ever penned." Mr. Sherlock Holmes (The Sign of the Four)
"The good red book"
William Burroughs
The big break at Folsom- San Francisco Bulletin Jan. 1917
Out of prison- San Francisco Bulletin Feb./March 1917
You can't win- Macmillan, October 1926
What's wrong with the right people - Harper's Monthly Magazine June 1929
A burglar looks at laws and codes - Harper's Monthly Magazine February 1930
Jack Black's Tales of Jail Birds - N.Y.World December 21, 1930
Jamboree-Jack Black & Bessie Beatty, Elizabeth Miele, producer, 1932
Heroes
Frank and Jesse James
Jack Black, reconstructed Yegg's Details
Status:
Single
Hometown:
New Westminster, B.C., Canada
Religion:
Catholic
Zodiac Sign:
Capricorn
Smoke / Drink:
No / No
Occupation:
Author, Librarian, Ex-convict
Jack Black, reconstructed Yegg is in your extended network view more
About me: Born ca. 1870 New Westminster, B.C. Canada- Missing/Died >1932 New York City, Jack's body was never found.
" My name is William Brown, from Pocatello, Idaho"
"Jack had been a sort of a reign of terror...just before the earthquake and fire of 1906. Every crime committed in San Francisco during the first three months of that year was ascribed to Jack Black." (R.L. Duffus)
"He returned to New York and Fremont thought Jack did what he always said any down-and-outer should do, “fill his pockets with rocks and take a header into the bay.” (Mrs. Cora Fremont Older)
"To cut a long story short," said Jack, "I left it all."
"Enough of this "I" and "me" stuff. I must get to the point. You have a big, true story with one hundred thousand readers. Tell them all how to help the under dog. They are willing, but they don't know how. "
"He is in a class by himself. That is why he is so interesting." (Fremont Older)
Who I'd like to meet: Members of the Johnson family, 'Salt Chunk Mary' Howard, 'Foot-and-a-half George' Howard, The Sanctimonious Kid, who was hung in Australia for killing a police constable, the kindly old priest at the Sisters' Convent School, Fremont Older, Judge Frank H. Dunne, the unnamed friend who sawed me out of the San Francisco jail, and that dirty, drunken, disreputable, crippled beggar, 'Sticks Sullivan', who picked the buckshot out of my back -under the bridge- at Baraboo, Wisconsin.
Jack Black, reconstructed Yegg's Friend Space (Top 1)
The copy I have is the same one as "Emily" has pictured under your comments.
The red one pictured directly beneath my comment here, (which Hanuman Books scored, after an arduous ten years of searching, I'm happy to say congrats and a good find)...must be the one which WSB referred to in the foreword of my copy of "You Can't Win," as "the 1926 edition bound in red cardboard."
I'm now on my quest to find an original edition of this landmark book...then to procure each edition printed thereafter. And then, I'd like to do a cross-country steppin' out to each place Jack visited.
Thanks for having this site. Marvelous!!! I hope it, like Jack Black's life, will go down in history as being influential and for its "One of a Kind...Of a Special Breed" status.
![[EmmaNulle]](http://c3.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/112/s_f07712f5d867464ca5a46fdbe51c49e2.jpg)
