9009 (Heathen Edition)
James Hopper (1876-1956) was an American footballer, journalist, and author, penning some 450 short stories and six novels, one of which he co-authored with fellow journalist and author Frederick Ritchie Bechdolt (1874-1950). Inspired by true events, their unsentimental "fact-story" tells of John Collins, 9009, a convict fully deserving of his sentence, who enters prison with the sincere hope that he can make good. What he discovers, however, is a wholly corrupt system hell-bent on breaking him little by little, injustice by injustice, until he erupts with a calculated, bloodthirsty vengeance.
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"It is painfully realistic." -The New York Times
"Almost too terrible in its realism is the story of a convict '9009' by James Hopper and Fred R. Bechdolt. It is the kind of story which makes the reader on fire against the injustice of justice." -The Graphic
"Put into commonplace language, without hysteria, it is a protest against the American penal system." -The Saturday Review
"Very real, very dramatic, and most tragical in its ending." -The Book News Monthly
"Achieves a bone-chilling effect by consistently using '9009' as the name of the protagonist." -H. Bruce Franklin, Prison Literature in America
"From cover to cover, a book of horror and grim, relentless realism. A fact-story, 9009 might have been a collaboration of Poe, Hugo, and Oscar Wilde." -Sunset
"The book is the heaviest blow the has been struck the prison system since Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol." -Newark Call
"A story of prison life, authentic as to fact, that will prove a great sensation in its startling revelation of the present management of prisons." -The Publishers' Weekly
"A book decidedly out of the ordinary . . . a remarkable story. It is an intricate psychological study of an imprisoned man and an appalling indictment of our prison systems. Aside from the artistic value of the book, the sweep of the facts which it presents is staggering. As has been well said, 9009 is a question which must be answered." -Janet B. McGovern, The Los Angeles Times
