The Prison Book Club (23 page)

Frank evaded arrest for six years, though he'd been hiding in plain sight: in the Toronto Reference Library, where he often spent the daytime hours. At one point during that six-year stretch, he was on Toronto Crime Stoppers' most-wanted list. At trial, he was acquitted of attempted murder but was sentenced to eight and a half years for aggravated assault and weapons charges (including three and a half years for time served). A successful appeal by the Crown resulted in an increase of the sentence to ten years.

The following two hours were among the richest experiences I'd had with members of the prison book clubs. We became, that afternoon, a book club of three—chatting with the kind of informality that governs so many book clubs on the outside. We spun off topic constantly, but then whatever we discussed reminded us of other books we'd read. There seemed to be a stream of books that had become embedded in us like past experiences: memories, reference points.

I started off by asking Graham and Frank about
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin
, Erik Larson's non-fiction account of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, told largely through the eyes of U.S. ambassador William Dodd and his naive and boy-crazy daughter, Martha. I'd missed the Beaver Creek Book Club's December meeting when they discussed
In the Garden of Beasts
because I had been at Collins Bay that day, so I was keen to find out how the discussion had gone. It was the book that everyone in my circle in Toronto was talking about that literary season. Larson portrays Martha as captivated by the Third Reich officers and the ideas of the period. He describes her affair with Rudolf Diels, chief of the Gestapo, and her rendezvous with Hitler, when a Nazi party official was seeking a romantic match for the German chancellor. Her father was slow to convey to Washington that something was not right in Berlin. Although the SA, also known as Brownshirts, controlled the streets of Berlin, and the Dodds witnessed Americans and Jews being persecuted, it wasn't until a year after the family arrived in the city, when the Night of the Long Knives played out gruesomely and Hitler eliminated his rivals in the SA, that Dodd expressed forceful concerns to Washington.

To my disappointment, most of the Beaver Creek Book Club members hadn't liked the book, according to Frank and Graham. There were too many dead ends, said Frank, like the unfinished story of the Jewish couple who lived upstairs in the ambassadorial residence. But the men nevertheless had a “great” two-hour discussion about it. You don't have to like a book to have lots to say about it.

“What did the men think of Martha?” I asked.

“She was a—” Frank began.

“Careful, careful,” cautioned Graham, who was over at the coffee machine pouring himself a cup.

“Tramp,” said Frank.

Frank said the book club members could have spent the whole meeting talking about her misbehaviour. But Frank framed his view of Martha through the lens of Malcolm Gladwell's book
Outliers
, which talks about the role that opportunity plays in success. It was the book we were all reading for their book club the following week. “When you're looking at Martha, it goes something like that book
Outliers
,” said Frank. “I think it was maybe a bit of luck that she met all these people. Her father was the ambassador and she was taking advantage of it. I don't blame her. I didn't dislike her. I thought she was a good person.”

“One of the interesting conversations was how Dodd was getting it on all fronts,” said Graham. “The people in the State Department thought he was an idiot. The Germans thought he was an idiot.” As portrayed in the book, the frugal Midwestern values Dodd had assimilated in his time as a University of Chicago professor put him out of sync with official Washington and the more lavish traditions of the U.S. Foreign Service. He came across as dull and monkish. Graham, Frank and I talked about how Dodd abhorred overspending and drove around Berlin in an old Chevy rather than an elegant ambassadorial vehicle.

“Dodd wasn't doing himself any favours by focusing on this question of people spending too much at the embassy,” I said. “He was acting like a fussy accountant.”

Graham said the best example of that was Fritz, the German butler at Dodd's ambassadorial residence. Instead of Dodd confronting the fact that Fritz was probably a spy, it was, as Graham riffed: “Fritz, count the cutlery.”We guffawed. Graham rocked back in his chair and clapped his hands with delight at his own joke.

From that point on in our conversation, we ricocheted between history and books—books that weren't even on the book club roster. Graham spoke about how the winners of a given war write its narrative, and cited Al Gore's
The Assault on Reason
on the lies that countries tell themselves to justify entering wars. As we were exchanging facts about North American ports turning away a boat of Jewish refugees in World War II, I urged them to read
None Is Too Many
by Irving Abella, a Canadian book on that episode. When I was enthusing about Hans Fallada's 1947 novel,
Every Man Dies Alone
, about an ordinary couple in Berlin who mount a resistance against the Nazis, a book I'd just bought my husband for Christmas, Frank knew all about it. He'd read it, even though it had just recently been published in English for the first time, thanks to a translation by Michael Hofmann. Then when Graham got into American isolationism and Russia's effort to insulate its borders, both he and Frank got sidetracked by their enthusiasm for David Benioff's novel
City of Thieves
, which they both had just read.

“It's about the siege of Leningrad and a general's daughter is getting married and he needs a dozen eggs to bake the wedding cake,” said Graham.

“The general had arrested two people and so he sent them out on this mission to find the eggs,” continued Frank. “They get tied up with partisans and so they get into all these adventures until they find these eggs. I read it in one night. Or a day and a half.”

“That was a good book,” said Graham.

The men's knowledge of World War II was impressive. Frank had a strong grasp of German discontent over the crippling economic effect of the Treaty of Versailles. Graham raised the point that Hitler could have wiped out the British Expeditionary Force early in the war, but he inexplicably halted the German troop advance at Dunkirk. And when Graham turned to the topic of American isolationism in the 1930s, he noted that the United States had observed the same ground rules as inmates in prison who want to stay safe. “If it don't involve you, don't get involved,” he said. “Stay out of it.”

By the end of the afternoon, Graham was yawning and Frank seemed to be developing a sniffle.We said goodbye and I walked out into the sharp cold, my boots squeaking on the packed snow.

Just seven days later I was back for the January book group meeting on
Outliers
. Graham was away on an approved UTA, so he couldn't help lead the discussion. But Frank was more than prepared for it. He'd read it and two of Gladwell's other bestsellers:
The Tipping Point
and
Blink
. Carol had introduced him to Gladwell's earlier books back at Collins Bay.

When I walked into Beaver Creek for the meeting, I noticed one of Canada's best-known white-collar criminals sitting in the reception area, conferring with a group of his visitors. His green designer pullover and snow-white New Balance running shoes struck me as out of place amidst the Cookie Monster T-shirts and baseball caps of some of the other inmates. But perhaps it helped him feel comfortable in his new surroundings and normalize his get-together with old friends or business associates.

I spent about half an hour with Frank before the meeting and he said the opening of Gladwell's book had made him think about his own hometown in Italy. Gladwell talks about the Italian town of Roseto, whose residents immigrated en masse to Pennsylvania, where they proceeded to astound medical researchers with their low levels of heart disease. Frank was from another small town in Italy down near the toe of the boot: Vallelonga in Calabria. Like the Rosetans, his townsfolk favoured local produce, which Frank believes is essential to good health.Although he left there at age three and a half, he had a few memories of his hometown. “I remember we had a little square there and I remember wagons going up the street with horses pulling them,” he told me. “I remember an old lady poking a big key into my stomach and pretending to open my belly button.” Ninety percent of the town's population emigrated from Italy to the Toronto area in the 1950s in search of economic opportunity, according to Frank, leaving their houses locked up and empty.

Frank had first heard about Roseto when he boxed with a guy from Pennsylvania. Frank was involved in boxing for a decade, from ages nine to nineteen. Since reading one of Gladwell's other books, he had wondered whether boxing blows to his nose had impacted his brain, damaging his judgment faculty. “I'm thinking, gee, maybe that's why I did what I did,” he told me. “I knew what I did was wrong, but I didn't really have any control over it.”

Just before book club convened, I was startled to see Raymond, the white-collar criminal in the green pullover, ask Frank where the book club was meeting. “I invited him,” said Frank after Raymond left. “He's written books. I told him he'd be an asset to the book club. And we can kick him out, just like anyone else.” Frank had just been telling me that there were so many lifers in the book club, it meant spots for newcomers would be slow to open up. Perhaps something had changed.

The thesis of
Outliers
is one that would be encouraging for any inmate. Gladwell argues that it isn't just intelligence or innate talent that determines a person's success. Rather, as Frank summarized in his journal, hard work and luck play an even greater role, provided, as Gladwell would have added, a person also has a natural aptitude. As inmates, they might be in jail now, but assuming some degree of talent and a willingness to work very hard, coupled with a bit of luck, they had a shot at success.

Two memorable findings in Gladwell's book have become part of the modern zeitgeist. One addresses the role of luck or opportunity in determining which talented individuals get to be successful. Gladwell found research that shows that more top hockey players are born in the early months of the year. The reason is that those born soon after the January 1 cutoff date for eligibility in their age grouping are likely to be physically bigger than other players in the grouping who are born later the same year.That slight advantage, when kids start playing hockey at the age of five, leads to more coaching attention and more opportunities throughout their childhood and adolescence, which widens their advantage.

The other finding that has captured readers' imaginations is that individuals who possess innate ability in a given field can achieve mastery in that endeavour if they devote about ten thousand hours to practice. Gladwell cites the example of the Beatles' marathon gigs in Hamburg clubs from 1960 to 1962. The Fab Four played two hundred and seventy nights for up to eight hours a night, clocking more than two thousand hours toward their requisite ten. It occurred to me that any inmate with a five-year jail sentence automatically has ten thousand hours (at forty hours a week) to get good at something like yoga, writing or a foreign language. If he is also naturally gifted in that occupation, he could be a success.

We began the meeting by talking about the ten thousand hours. Tom, his long hair resting on the collar of his outdoor jacket, said that if he hadn't had to divide his time between playing catch with his father and practicing the piano for his mother, he might have had ten thousand hours on the piano, which must have been his preference. Earl said ten thousand hours sounded about right to him to be an excellent hockey player. He was from Brantford, a noted hockey town. “When we grew up there, every ice surface was rented every hour of the day. There was pond hockey, river hockey, road hockey. There was parking lot hockey! You go out as soon as it's light and you don't come back until it's dark again and when you take your skates off you can't even feel your feet.” Brantford, of course, had produced Wayne Gretzky, known as “the Great One” in professional hockey.

Doc reminded the others that it wasn't just the ten thousand hours and the talent, but also opportunity that determined success. “You got groomed along the way,” he said. “It was that stepping stone.”

But Bookman, the inmate librarian, wasn't sure. He told a story about moving to Alberta as an adult and discovering that he had a gift for free climbing—rock climbing without ropes or other equipment. “I didn't do it growing up,” he said. “I didn't get groomed. I just decided to do it on my own. I was thinking I never really had any talent for anything but after six months I was doing just as good as the guys that did it quite regularly. Not to blow my own horn, but I was really good at climbing walls.” That news would not have thrilled the warden of a medium-security prison.

It was Dallas, the tall, dark-haired inmate, and probably one of the youngest men around the table, who brought the two ingredients of talent and hard work together in the most novel way. “There was something innate that made you
want
to put in the ten thousand hours,” he observed. I wish I'd thought of that. Perhaps passion, interest and drive were innate. It appeared to set everyone thinking. Could drive be considered a talent?

It wasn't until about halfway into the meeting that Raymond spoke up. He hadn't read the book because he'd just arrived at Beaver Creek, but he observed there wasn't much consensus around the table about whether the book was good or bad. “It would be fascinating for me, given the socio-economic strata that is represented around the table and so forth, if you would rate the book on a one-to-ten scale and tell me whether you agree with the quote on the front of the book,” he said. The blurb talked about the book being “explosively” entertaining, with “riveting” scientific information, and elements of self-help. The quote was attributed to
Entertainment Weekly
.