Street Poison: The Biography of Iceberg Slim - Hardcover

Gifford, Justin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385538340 ISBN 13: 9780385538343

Publisher: Doubleday, 2015

Synopsis

The first and definitive biography of one of America's bestselling, notorious, and influential writers of the twentieth century: Iceberg Slim, né Robert Beck, author of the multimillion-copy memoir Pimp and such equally popular novels as Trick Baby and Mama Black Widow. From a career as a, yes, ruthless pimp in the '40s and '50s, Iceberg Slim refashioned himself as the first and still the greatest of "street lit" masters, whose vivid books have made him an icon to such rappers as Ice-T, Jay-Z, and Snoop Dogg and a presiding spirit of "blaxploitation" culture. You can't understand contemporary black (and even American) culture without reckoning with Iceberg Slim and his many acolytes and imitators.

Literature professor Justin Gifford has been researching the life and work of Robert Beck for a decade, culminating in Street Poison, a colorful and compassionate biography of one of the most complicated figures in twentieth-century literature. Drawing on a wealth of archival material—including FBI files, prison records, and interviews with Beck, his wife, and his daughters—Gifford explores the sexual trauma and racial violence Beck endured that led to his reinvention as Iceberg Slim, one of America's most infamous pimps of the 1940s and '50s. From pimping to penning his profoundly influential confessional autobiography, Pimp, to his involvement in radical politics, Gifford's biography illuminates the life and works of one of American literature's most unique renegades.

About this title

Review:

An Amazon Best Book of August 2015: You might not know who Iceberg Slim is, but there's no escaping his influence. Born Robert Beck in 1918, at the height of the "Great Migration" that brought millions of African Americans out of the South and into northern cities, he spent the formative years of his life practicing various street hustles in the "black belt" of Milwaukee. His initial trial-and-error approach resulted in several prison stints, where he completed his education with a master class in pimping under the tutelage of the more accomplished inmates. (He also studied Freud, rounding out his talents as a manipulator.) His training served him well, as it were, as evidenced by a notorious 25-year criminal career punctuated by several more trips to the cooler. Following his last incarceration in 1961, Beck gave up the game, joining his ailing mother in Los Angeles while turning his energy toward writing. And this is why you might know who Iceberg Slim is: His books--notably his epic autobiography, Pimp--became unlikely underground bestsellers, with millions read or purchased seemingly anywhere but where books are sold. Inspiring generations of writers and performers who followed--including Donald Goines, Dave Chappelle, Ice-T, and Ice-Cube (the latter two choosing their pseudonyms as homage)--Iceberg Slim codified a unique American subculture, transforming it into popular culture in the process.

But what to make of Justin Gifford's biography? It's certainly not a redemption story. Robert Beck was not often a good man, and the straightforward descriptions of his repugnant, businesslike brutality--often in his own words--are difficult to read. The tragic figure of Beck's mother orbits the story, providing a kind of moral gravity (albeit weak) that occasionally and eventually pulls him away from his illicit lifestyle, but he's mostly a source of devastating pain for her. This isn't hagiography either; while addressing the gaudier aspects of pimp culture--again, popularized by Slim--Gifford is careful to avoid sensationalism or glorification, despite the occasional foray into Slim's own streetwise vernacular. Ultimately, Street Poison is a compulsively readable story of an unseemly man, whose legacy was as unforeseeable as it was impactful. --Jon Foro

About the Author:

Dr. Justin Gifford is an Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of Nevada, Reno. His teaching and research focus on American and African American literature. His book, the first literary and cultural history of black street fiction, Pimping Fictions: African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing, was a finalist for both the Edgar Allan Poe award for literary criticism and Phi Beta Kappa's Christian Gauss Award for scholarship.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0385538340
• ISBN 13: 9780385538343
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288