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Autobiography of Jack Woodford

Not a conventional autobiography, Woolfolk (better known by his pen name Jack Woodford) performs a long stream of consciousness piece that he breaks into chapters of roughly associated themes. Weaknesses of this type of writing include the tendency to ramble and errors in fact (and memory). Woolfolk’s book suffers from both of these problems.

Some of the content is riveting, such as his first-hand account of the Eastland disaster in Indiana where a ferry rolled over at its mooring in 1915 killing 841 passengers. Woolfolk gave the first account to be published in the Chicago Harold-Examiner.

Woolfolk pulls no punches when he describes his year-long addiction to heroin in 1914 when it was still cheap and legal. When the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act went into affect in 1915, the price of the heroin tablets skyrocketed. Rather than pay the outrageous prices, Woolfolk simply stopped using the drug and in this book he describes the withdrawal process. He then explains his belief that heroin doesn’t do any true medical harm and the drug was demonized for control reasons by the powers-that-be.

While Woolfolk’s autobiography can be fascinating at times, it also has tiresome passages of screed that rail against the government, regulations, literary critics, and a variety of other oppressors of various forms of freedom and transcendence. For most of his views minus the politics, check out “Trial and Error” by Jack Woodford. All in all, this autobiography will appeal mostly to Woodford fans.