Iceberg Slim: the real shit is the real shit

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forclosure

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Honestly surprised this man hasn't had his own thread in here we know about his legacy, have a general understanding of his life but he's genuinly an unusual writer an "outside artist" back when you could argue that was still a thing like Philip K Dick, Charles Willieford,Edward Bunker and Jack Black(the guy who wrote you can't win)

Most people's experience with his books(outside of his intended audience who from what i've seen have read all his books) begins and ends with Pimp but he is a odd writer direct and raw,colourful but at the same time trashy and in some places weirdly Victorian (i think about the way he describes "manhoods" etc) but i've read 5 of them(might read Death Wish) and their all interesting in one way or another but the only one i'd say i flat out disliked was Mama Black Widow


But enough about me what do you no good trick honkeys have to say?
 
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here's a spoken word album that he did in '76 smokey vibes all around and not losing any of the rawness, somebody in the comments described Slim's voice as sounding like Vincent Price if he smoke XXL Newports


great cover too
 
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btw i say outsider artist in the sense that all the names i've mentioned clearly had the chops but they had no way to get into any kind of traditional writing industry

as for Mama Black Widow it is a bleak book and it's a story involving a queer character from a time when they tended to be written in a certain way and if you're familiar enough and know the history you know how it's going to end. Aside from that there's something about the way it addresses fatherhood specifically black fatherhood and how the dad is depicted in a way where he's SO kind especially compared to the mother and what is insinuated about her. That it's comments on "the black family" reminds me of the kind of shit that you hear from conservative ends of the black community the kind of statements that have been repeated long enough that they just get taken as fact.

so when i pieced that together along with the meaning of the title(also up till a certain point the dialogue is written out phonetically so at times it does get tough to read) it just left a really bad taste in my mouth.

The sadness is there probably even more so than Pimp but that's how i came away from it
 
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catalog

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I've read quite a bit by him, years ago mainly, although I read some of his short stories very recently, I wrote about them on here.

The one I liked the best was called trick baby, with the main guy white folks who can pass for white. Theres a good scene early on in that where there's some convoluted long con trick. It's a well plotted novel in general, I read it at a time I was also reading Jim Thompson and they went together well.

I sort of know what you mean about a victorian style, he does these quite elaborate descriptions of people and some of the dialogue feels theatrical.
 
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forclosure

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catalog said:
I've read quite a bit by him, years ago mainly, although I read some of his short stories very recently, I wrote about them on here.

The one I liked the best was called trick baby, with the main guy white folks who can pass for white. Theres a good scene early on in that where there's some convoluted long con trick. It's a well plotted novel in general, I read it at a time I was also reading Jim Thompson and they went together well.

I sort of know what you mean about a victorian style, he does these quite elaborate descriptions of people and some of the dialogue feels theatrical.
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true but i was more so talking about like for a guy who lived the life he did you get these really shocking graphic descriptions of sex acts and then he's using all this innuendo to talk about physical anatomy
 
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reading Pimp was interesting cause so much of the books rep is about the high life that comes with it but it's so brief and fleeting

nobody ever brings up the regret he had and his description of what the 2nd time he went jail was like just the smallness and the coffin feeling of that cell

also Sweet James Jones explaining where the real origin of the pimp game came from really made sense to me why they say the game is meant to be sold not told
 
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version

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WebEschatology said:
That it's comments on "the black family" reminds me of the kind of shit that you hear from conservative ends of the black community the kind of statements that have been repeated long enough that they just get taken as fact.
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I remember there being some uneasiness around this sort of thing re: Nipsey Hussle a few years back and it never really being directly addressed.

He was getting praise for trying to build things, set up businesses in his community, but then he came out with this stuff about people trying to "feminise" black men and destroy the family and whatnot.
 
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version said:
I remember there being some uneasiness around this sort of thing re: Nipsey Hussle a few years back and it never really being directly addressed.

He was getting praise for trying to build things, set up businesses in his community, but then he came out with this stuff about people trying to "feminise" black men and destroy the family and whatnot.
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yeah and all the Dr Sebi shit

alot of people like to think these kind of things are just "old head opinions" but you hear rappers like that RXK Nephew breh practically bellow that shit on tracks

but yes guys like Tommy Sotomayor,"Dr" umar johnson, sa neter and the red pill people,Doggie Diamonds was really into all this stuff and talking about how the industry makes rappers take part in "rituals" so they can become megastars which always boils down to they did something gay, i mean shit if you really want to take it back this is what alot of the talk about reclaiming black masculinity in the 70s basically boiled down to
 
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which to bring up the panthers its funny Slim had alot of respect for the Panthers and in Naked soul of iceberg slim saw them as the liberators of the future cause they were the generation who did what his lot didn't do he said they were "cowards" but despite that they wanted nothing to do with him because of his reputation.

Yet in the copy of Pimp i had there was this essay that i read i forget the womans name but she said that book for her was a big deal because it confirmed alot of things that regarding the treatment of black women that certain liberators and revolutionaries swore didn't happen and how we needed to praise the black woman while everybody knew this type of ting was going on.
 
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version

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WebEschatology said:
Yet in the copy of Pimp i had there was this essay that i read i forget the womans name but she said that book for her was a big deal because it confirmed alot of things that regarding the treatment of black women that certain liberators and revolutionaries swore didn't happen and how we needed to praise the black woman while everybody knew this type of ting was going on.
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I remember reading criticism of Fanon along those lines. Not that he personally mistreated women, but that there didn't seem to be any room for them in his work.
 
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version said:
I remember reading criticism of Fanon along those lines. Not that he personally mistreated women, but that there didn't seem to be any room for them in his work.
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yeah i feel like all even now certain people like Elaine Brown who spoke up about the mistreatment in the panthers suffered greatly for it and still do
 
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@version i feel like you could find some interesting similarities and contrasts between Slim and Eldridge Cleaver too, Cleaver was a big deal once upon a time
 
william_kent

william_kent

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I've only read Pimp and Trick Baby, which makes me poorly equipped to say anything about his work, but it is thanks to those that I ended up reading Dopefiend by Donald Goines, who was inspired to write it after reading Pimp during one of his many prison stints. I've read plenty of skag / smack novels / memoirs, and Dopefiend has to be one of the most memorable, and maybe the only one that does not glamourise addiction in the slightest. The opening scene in a digging den contains one of the grossest descriptions of injecting I have ever read - needle plunging into abscess in groin, pus running down thighs... it may be "pulp", but the imagery refuses to fade from my memory. Detroit, the hardest city. Unrelenting grimness.

Machiavelli was my tutor, Donald Goines my father figure.
-Tupac Shakur
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The only other novel by Goines that I've read is Whoreson, which some say is a rip-off of Pimp, but I'd say it is closer to Trick Baby ( mother is a sex worker, son grows up in "the life" ), although I found Whoreson to be a better read ( as far as I can remember, it's been years since I've read either ). Some may consider these pulp, but I have to admit that they led to introspection on my part, as I had to consider whether by the act of reading "am I participating in poverty tourism, vicarious living, or educating myself in the realities of life faced by people who come from a completely different background?"... probably a combination of all three...
 
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forclosure

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william_kent said:
I've only read Pimp and Trick Baby, which makes me poorly equipped to say anything about his work, but it is thanks to those that I ended up reading Dopefiend by Donald Goines, who was inspired to write it after reading Pimp during one of his many prison stints. I've read plenty of skag / smack novels / memoirs, and Dopefiend has to be one of the most memorable, and maybe the only one that does not glamourise addiction in the slightest. The opening scene in a digging den contains one of the grossest descriptions of injecting I have ever read - needle plunging into abscess in groin, pus running down thighs... it may be "pulp", but the imagery refuses to fade from my memory. Detroit, the hardest city. Unrelenting grimness.



The only other novel by Goines that I've read is Whoreson, which some say is a rip-off of Pimp, but I'd say it is closer to Trick Baby ( mother is a sex worker, son grows up in "the life" ), although I found Whoreson to be a better read ( as far as I can remember, it's been years since I've read either ). Some may consider these pulp, but I have to admit that they led to introspection on my part, as I had to consider whether by the act of reading "am I participating in poverty tourism, vicarious living, or educating myself in the realities of life faced by people who come from a completely different background?"... probably a combination of all three...
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there's an audiobook of Dopefiend that i've listened to a little bit and you're right the den described in that is just filth. Its just as grim as any of the stuff that gets described in works by transgressive favs like say Dennis Cooper or Yukio Mishina but none of the romanticism or artistic/experimental leanings.

I've only read a little bit of Black Gangster and for Goines retains the misery of slim but doubles down on the more trashy aspects of his writing, that introspection is definitly a combo of all the 3 then again i suppose you could ask the same question of me being a black brit reading about like youts in the suburbs and dead end towns (like in my provincial town/village ting) about whats going on in those parts of England i've got next to no connection with. i think for me its like i'm aware of these places and i know these kind of things happen but i don't feel like i'm engaging in any real kind of tourism maybe because they're from a similiar working class background or they live one social stratum above me and chances of me getting to even speak to some of these people feel slim to say the least
 
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They're pulpy yes but there's something within that pulp that's made their literature something of a right of passage for certain people if you haven't read it you don't know you're not part of the group, alot of people get accustomed to these names because of rappers and funny enough somebody like Irvine Welsh talking about Slim cause he could see something in his writing about 1930s Chicago that he could apply to 80s Scotland its a strange link but its there also especially cause Welsh's stuff for how raw it is has been turned into movies ,plays and the like. Goines as far as i know is still mostly read by black men in incarceration.

Pimp all even now i've seen stories from people who talk about finding it in their parents or relatives shelf reading through it and getting caught and left a stern message along the lines of "you're not ready for this kinda book"
 
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