If it is possible to be obligated to agree with a book, then no book commands our agreement more than Ted Conover=s Newjack. Conover has built a career around Aexperiential journalism,@ which is essentially undercover reporting. The subtitles to Conover=s first three books , Coyotes, Rolling Nowhere, and Whiteout, are instructive, A Journey Through the Secret World of America=s Illegal Aliens, Riding the Rails with America=s Hobos, and Lost in Aspen, respectively.

    Conover had decided to write an article on the training of prison guards. When he was refused access, Conover, like a retired superhero reluctantly donning his tights again, chose to apply for a guarding job himself and, upon succeeding in his application, entered the training academy. After graduating the author worked a one year detail in Sing Sing.

    The appeal of experiential journalism is clearly complicated in that voyeurism and a genuine interface with profound social issues are necessarily intermingled . In Newjack these two elements are particularly difficult to disentangle. The difficulty and danger of Conover=s work is itself a complex intermingling of moral and physical fibres, a complexity which he constantly reinforces in the reader.

    Without question Conover has a fascinating, visceral story to tell. Indeed, a person with five hundred words at his disposal hardly knows where to begin. To the inmates at Sing Sing, a population in which inner city minorities overwhelming predominate, prison is both a microcosm and an extension of society, and even history at large. This state of affairs is highly reinforced by the fact that the guard population is conversely made up overwhelmingly of a white rural population.

    The world Conover narrates into being is one of toxic stasis which results in an atmosphere of moral erosion whose toxicity affects everyone involved, guards, prisoners and administrators.

    Conover graphically represents the warped power relationship between guard and prisoner, the morbid results of infantilizing grown men. At the same time Conover=s relationship with the reader also reflects an imbalanced power relationship, his genuine experience counterposed with the enforced voyeurism of the reader , give his perspective a moral ascendancy which, though far more subtle, is as distorted as a guard prisoner relationship.

    The author=s emphasis on humanity is obviously well placed, and his pleas to bring education to prison as the only real ameliorative solution, hits home. Conover is right, we feel, and so we deceive ourselves into the placid security of agreement.