You Can't Win, Complete and Unabridged by Jack Black

My background is crowded with robberies burglaries and thefts too numerous to recall. All manner of crimes against property. Arrests trials acquittals convictions escapes. Penitentiaries! I see in the background four of them. County jails workhouses city prisons Mounted Police barracks dungeons solitary confinement bread and water hanging up brutal floggings and the murderous straitjacket. I see hop joints wine dumps thieves' resorts and beggars' hangouts. Crime followed by swift retribution in one form or another. I had very few glasses of wine as I traveled this route. I rarely saw a woman smile and seldom heard a song. In those twenty-five years I took all these things and I am going to write about them. And I am going to write about them as I took them - with a smile.