To Read, To Redeem

I ran across this story a little earlier today:

NEW YORK — Like so many wiseguys before him, Lou Ferrante finally got pinched. After years of hijackings, beatings and other violent crimes, he was busted for armed robbery and sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison. Life behind bars was a shock to the smart-aleck kid from Queens who had joined the Gambino crime family. But even more shocking was how he spent his time.

While other prisoners slept, Ferrante would rise early to daven, reciting prayers of his newfound Jewish faith. He wore a yarmulke in the exercise yard and followed kosher dietary laws. He spent months in an upstate prison writing a Torah commentary but shoved it under his mattress when the Sabbath began on Friday night.

Desperate to pass the days, Ferrante began reading books for the first time. He took up writing and cranked out a 1,200-page novel that he now admits is terrible. As his sentence ended, he told anyone who would listen that he was a changed man and that Judaism was his rock.

“I figured that with Judaism, you don’t go through a middleman, you go right to the top guy and talk to him,” Ferrante said. “That’s how I used to handle business on the streets. It made a lot of sense.”

Released from prison two years ago, Ferrante, 38, began writing about his experiences. That memoir, “Unlocked: A Journey From Prison to Proust,” will be published in March by HarperCollins. When he sent a copy of it to “Sopranos” star Lorraine Bracco — contacting her through friends of a friend — he hoped to get a blurb. But she called him immediately after reading it and made a pitch for the film rights.

An argument can be made that reading renews the soul as much as the mind, and I don’t mean reading just the Good Book.

I almost laughed when I read this further down in the article, because it’s true:

Some might be tempted to dismiss Ferrante’s book, because the image of a tough guy reading the Talmud invites obvious jokes.

Yet read further, and one can see why a reader/writer like Ferrante has a story worth hearing:

“I thought about my life,” he wrote. “Why did I end up here, living with animals? I beat men up. I shoved guns in their mouths. I even bit people. I lived like an animal on the street. I didn’t realize it until I was placed in this zoo. I hated myself for being one of them.”

~ by RhiGirl on January 24, 2008.