Some of these stories preceded The Blackboard Jungle and some followed it. In my own mind, however, all of these stories are related to it — all were provoked either by research done for the novel or by subsequent research inspired by the novel.
“To Break the Wall,” for example, was my first attempt to voice some of my feelings about the vocational high school. Many months later, I expanded this story into The Blackboard Jungle, using it — with minor revisions — as the climactic chapter. “...Or Leave It Alone” has much the same history in connection with my novel, Second Ending. I had always been interested in the problem of drug addiction, and it came up briefly in many of the stories I wrote. This story, though, was my first attempt to enter into the mind of an addict.
For the most part, however, the stories in this collection were written for magazine publication, intended originally and exclusively as expression in the short-story form. All of them are fictional. Many of them are based on firsthand experience; on talks with policemen and detectives and lawyers and troubled parents; on visits to the line-up; on discussions in bars and candy stores, in hallways, on street comers, with average citizens, with criminals, with addicts, with teen-age gang members in some of New York’s worst slum areas.
All of these stories deal with violence.
Many of them are based on firsthand experience; on talks with policemen and detectives and lawyers and troubled parents; on visits to the line-up; on discussions in bars and candy stores, in hallways, on street corners; with average citizens, with criminals, with addicts, with teen-age gang members in some of New York’s worst slum areas.
I make no apologies for the violence I present. The violence was, and is, there in the streets. But I have tried, in these stories, to present much more than a bloody canvas.
— EVAN HUNTER