A Hole In My Life
At the age of 20, Jack Gantos went to a maximum security prison for smuggling drugs into the United States. Those
15 months were a wake-up call for Gantos, who refused to allow prison to destroy his life even further. It was the months
in prison that awakened the rest of Gantos's life.
Without glamorizing his crimes, Gantos candidly tells his story of sailing a boat from the Virgin Islands to New
York. While Gantos didn't set out to be a drug traficker, he also didn't use all of his intellect in avoiding it.
His young life seemed to be a series of falling into things without a lot of thought. His memoir shows, however, that
it is never to late to learn from - and take action on - one's mistakes. Gantos turns his mistakes into something, and
his writing conveys this in a realistic way.
One of the best aspects of Gantos' biography is the straight-forward, no nonsense approach. He tells a great story,
but he is also honest. This passage takes place right before Gantos is sentenced for his crimes:
"I was living off the voices of other people's pain. Those writers had been worse off than I was now, and still
they survived to write about it. I knew my fear was as real as theirs, but my words were still submerged. It was
easier to pick the scabs on my face than put pen to paper. Like those other writers, I figured I'd have to wait until
the pain subsided and left the words behind."
You can hear, in Gantos' voice, a push to write - a desire, even a desperation. Gantos had a lot of motivation
in his youth, it was just misdirected. He knew what he wanted to do, but he didn't think he was either qualified to
do it or had anything interesting to say. This internal battle will be familiar to so many (if not all?) young readers.
Biographies provide excellent reading opportunities because they offer readers a chance to identify with the writer - to put
themselves exactly in the other person's shoes. According to Cart, "His [Gantos] examination of the process
- inclucing his unsparing portrayal of his fears, failings and false starts - is brilliant and breathtaking in its candor
and authenticity" (2002).
Gantos went to prison before he realized what he had to say was worth writing about. In the end, Gantos found his
voice. Particularly poignant is Gantos returning to Central Park where he hid the drugs before he entered prison.
At this point, he has a real choice and the choice he makes will really determine if he has changed and survived his mistakes.
Gantos says, "I would not let myself make that kind of mistake again. No matter how desperate for money I was, I
knew giving in would reveal that I was desperate on the inside in an even worse ay --- and I wasn't, not anymore."
Gantos, Jack. Hole in my life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. ISBN 0374399883.
