Cool Hand Luke (novel)

First edition (publ. Scribner)

Cool Hand Luke is a novel by Donn Pearce published in 1965. It was adapted into the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke.

The story is told in a first-person narrative from the perspective of a convict in a central Florida prison. He works on a chain gang maintaining the berms of highways. He recounts the story of a "legendary" fellow inmate whose nickname is Cool Hand Luke.

The novel is based on Pearce's personal experiences in a Florida prison road gang.

History[]

Donn Pearce was busted for burglary and served two years at Raiford State Prison in central Florida, from 1949-1951, working hard labor on a road gang. At night, he began writing down some of the stories he saw and heard. He also began reading more seriously, such as Faulkner's Sanctuary. According to Pearce, about a third of Cool Hand Luke is his own story, a third is based on the stories he heard while doing time at Raiford, and another third is pure fiction. In 1959 after gaining freedom, Pearce broke a leg in a motorcycle accident and with time available decided to begin writing the novel based on his prison notes and memories. He wrote it over a six-year period, and rewrote it as many times. He had trouble finding a publisher, Fawcett Books finally agreed to publish the novel as a 'paperback original', paying Pearce $2,500. Scribners then published it as a hardback.^[1]

Style[]

The writing style is unusual in that although there is dialogue, and all quotes are indented paragraphs, they are not encased in quotation marks as is typical in English-language literature.

The most oft-repeated quote from the film, "What we've got here is a failure to communicate", never appeared in the novel. Pearce said the guards were "100% redneck" without multi-syllable vocabularies who would have never said such an intellectually astute phrase.^[1]

Reviews[]

A contemporary review in Kirkus Reviews called it "A kind of classic small tall story (in latrine language)".^[2]

Adaptations[]

The novel was adapted to film in 1967, based on a screenplay by Pearce. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Stage and screen actor performed an audiobook rendition in 1991 for Recorded Books.^[3]

A stage adaption by Emma Reeves produced by and starring Marc Warren and Richard Brake, based on the novel not the film, premiered at Aldwych Theatre in London in 2011.^[4]

References[]