Doom Fox by Iceberg Slim

(pb; 1978, published in 1998)

From the back cover:

"Doom Fox is the last in Iceberg Slim's legendary series of underground novels. Written in 1978 and unpublished until now, Doom Fox is a tale of the Los Angeles ghetto that begins just after World War II and spans the next thirty years. In the no-holds-barred tradition of Chester Himes, Doom Fox captures a violent, vivid world of low-riding chippie-catchers, prizefighters, prostitutes, and smooth-talking preachers."


Review:

In Doom, Slim -- a.k.a Robert Beck -- once again serves up a wild-flavored brew of hardwired cynicism, sex, savagery, greed and street-level racism which pepper his characters' often explicit slang verbiage.

Doom centers around Joe Allen, Jr, a naive boxer, and the events and people that grace or curse his life (as well as those around them). The decades-traversing cyclical tragedy that defines their hardscrabble lives colors their outlooks, which are often expounded upon, in thought, action and politically incorrect dialogues.

Because of that latter element -- the characters' dialogues -- Doom runs a bit long, but it does not ruin this mostly entertaining read: it does, however, downgrade it from excellent to good. That said, this is worth purchasing, as good Slim writing is always distinctive and often better than many authors' best works.

Death Wish by Iceberg Slim

(pb; 1977)

From the back cover:

". . . greedy Don Jimmy Colucci. . . wants nothing less than to rule the 'honored society,' dedicated warrior Jessie Taylor. . . is driven to destroy it. . . Vividly real, these powerful implacable figures and their stubbornly loyal underlings stalk each other through pages teeming with life, love, lust, and death."



Review:

Slim, aka Robert Beck, serves up an inebriating brew of cynical sex, savagery, greed and street-level racism, peppering his explicit slang verbiage with a diverse array of characters, whose often labyrinthine plots drive them (and everyone around them) to extreme, inevitable betrayals and bloodbaths.

Slim also spices up this Chicago-set, ghetto Shakespearean mix with "voudoo" [voodoo], an instance of bizarre bestiality, and briefly-mentioned necrophilia, with many of the characters laying down "psychodramas" [traps, as Taylor's fellow guerilla militants, The Warriors, call them] for those around them.

Stirring this potboiler even further, Slim's occasional bits of awkward-phrase, jagged urban poetry are thrown in for good measure (e.g., "The sex-fiend squealing of city death wagons sodomized infant day. Chicago, the gaudy b**ch, had banged another carnal night away. Now the fake grand lady lay uglied in her neon ball gown. Sleazed in merciless light. Her bleak drawers hung foul with new and ancient death.").

This last trademark element of Slim's writing is a blessing or a curse, depending on which of his books you read. In Death Wish, it's a blessing.

Worth owning, if you like raw, blaxploitative, don't-give-a-f**k writing.

Mama Black Widow, by Iceberg Slim

(pb; 1969)

From the back cover:

"Mama Black Widow tells the story of Otis Tilson, a comely and tragic homosexual queen adrift with his brothers and sisters in the dark, labyrinthine world of pimping, tricking, violence, and petty crime. Written in the jagged, vivid, and always authentic language of the homosexual underworld and the black ghetto, Mama Black Widow is a tour of a predatory urban hell. . ."

Review:

Alternately harsh, heartbreaking, explicitly violent and sexual, tender, and occasionally hyperbolic, Mama Black Widow is one of Slim's best books. It has a cohesive storyline and solid emotional base: the reader sees the unfolding dramas through the eyes of a forty-year old homosexual cross-dresser, Otis Tilson, who's trying to rein in what he feels is his perverse alter-ego, "that bitch Sally," while keep his sh*t together, which is damn near impossible with what's going on around him.

As the novel transpires, one of Otis's brothers (Junior) and one of sisters (Bessie) succumb to the corrupting, fast-cash draw of the streets by turning to crime and prostitution; Otis's clean-cut sister, Carol, courting an adoring white boy, suffers greatly at the hands of their manipulative, cold-hearted mother (Sedalia Tilson, aka "Mama"), who's trying to sell Carol (as a wife) to a hideously-scarred, wealthy thug, Lockjaw Hudson.

Frank Tilson (aka, "Papa"), good-hearted, hard-working father of Otis, Junior, Bessie, and Carol, fares no better than his children: Sedalia's public belittlement of him, coupled with other situational factors, eventually turns him into a pathetic drunk.

The above descriptions may read like spoilers to the book, but they're not. The characters, consistent and fated, are the main draw here -- along with the coarse, sometimes tender, intensity of Slim's writing.

Minor nit: a couple of his characters -- usually male -- speechify about Black politics and society in a forced, uncharacteristic manner. Their outlooks are consistent with their barely-reined-in rants, but their word choices are too educated, or "high-fallutin'," for these characters, who, for the most part, possess little book learning.

That nit aside, this is a wow-worthy read. The ending's not happy, but then, given what precedes it, any reasonable reader wouldn't expect it to be.

Check it out.

The resulting film is scheduled to be released stateside in 2011. Will De Los Santos scripts; Darren Grant is set to co-produce and direct.

Brian J. White is rumored to be playing Otis Tilson. Mos Def is scheduled to play Papa Tilson. Anthony Anderson is scheduled to play Lockjaw Hudson. Rihana is rumored to be playing Carol Tilson. Macy Gray is scheduled to play Jonnie Mae Hudson.

The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim, by Robert Beck

(pb; 1971: biography)

Review:

Pimp-turned-author Robert Beck (aka, Iceberg Slim) eschews semi-autobiographical novel writing for a series of honest, confessional and redemptive essays about street life and what he calls “Black” politics.

Despite the dramatic title, the writing is largely straight-forward. Beck clearly has talent, one that Beck says saved his life. The few pimps and cons that survive into old age rarely do well, as Beck notes several times in Naked.

The biographical collection opens with “From A Steel Box To A Wicked Young Girl,” in which Slim recounts hitting the street after a short, final stretch in a Chicago jail. He has one whore left in his stable, and he has to find a way to free himself of her, without pissing her off. (A pissed-off, pimp-dumped whore can turn her pimp into the F.B.I.; the F.B.I. can charge the pimp with “white slavery,” a beef that was an especially big deal, taking into account that this was 1960, and Slim is Black.) As if Slim doesn't have enough problems, his mother, who lives in another state, is dying, and only has a short time left – Slim wants to see her before she goes. Slim must figure out a way to make the whore think that it's her idea to leave... Excellent, perceptive essay about how people play each other.

“Letter To Papa” is, as one would guess, a heartfelt, regretful missive Beck writes to his father, whom he hasn't seen in ten years. Good, to the point.

“Rapping About The Pimp Game” covers ground already written about in Slim's first book, Pimp: The Story of My Life. Set in 1970, Slim tells about a young man who approaches Slim and asks his advice about pimping. Bitter, wise and eventually hopeful, this essay. One of the best in Naked.

Other essay subjects include: befriending a future Hollyweird starlet (“Baby Sis”); the first girl he fell in love with (at age fifteen), and her later years (“A Goddess Revisited”); other people he met while in the game (“Vignettes: Conqueror Jackson,” “Vignettes: An Old White Slave And Shield,” “About Rain And Rapping With Sweetsend Pappy Luke,” et cetera); and Black politics (“Vignettes: The Black Panthers,” “Melvin X,” “Racism And The Black Revolution,” “Uncle Tom And His Master In The Violent Seventies,” among others).

Another stand-out essay is “An Open Letter To Iceberg Slim,” in which a young Black Vietnam Vet asks Slim about how to go about becoming a writer, and how to deal with the psychological baggage – much of it furious, born of the war – that he (the would-be writer) is dealing with. Despite a few political asides, this is one of the better essays, as Slim replies in a truly concerned way.

When he's writing about less political stuff, the tone and language of his essays is down-to-earth, tender, and romantic (especially “A Goddess Revisited”). When he's writing about politics, the tone is usually hyperbolic, abstract, weary and angry.

If I have one bitch about this biography, it's that much of his political stuff comes off as hot air; it seems like he could've condensed his ideas – steeped in a lifetime of racism and the volatile nature of the sixties and seventies – to two uber-potent essays, instead of dissipating them into six or seven.

My favorite entry in this fifteen-essay collection is the closer, “Iceberg Adrift: Musings, Lamentations,” where Slim talks about people he knew and misses, things he wishes he'd done, how he's mellowed over the years, and his gratitude to still be alive. This is the perfect bookend for this biography, summing up all the best ideas and moods of the earlier essays, minus the political bullsh*t.

For the most part, this is enjoyable, if generally sad and roiling stuff. Ultimately, though, it's – as Slim notes throughout Naked – about hope.