Street Poison

May 4, 2015
Gifford follows his essential study of street lit, Pimping Fictions, with a thoroughly engrossing biography of Robert “Iceberg Slim” Beck (1918–1992), “black America’s bestselling writer, the literary godfather of hip-hop, and definitive icon of pimp cool.” He follows Beck from his working-class Chicago roots to the streets and prisons that served as his crime schools, and then to his phenomenal sales and influence as the author of the groundbreaking 1967 memoir Pimp: The Story of My Life. Beck, having spent the 1950s alternately incarcerated and working as a pimp, was released from prison in 1962 and found himself “past forty with counterfeit glory in past, and no marketable training, no future,” setting the stage for his new path as a writer. This biography is informed by interviews and archival research (school, prison, and historical society records; contemporaneous press accounts), as well as by Gifford’s judiciously applied skepticism of Beck’s own recollections. In addition to lucid critical assessments of Beck’s published and unpublished works, Gifford offers a flavorful account of African-American cultural and social history. He makes an entertaining, informing, and most persuasive argument that a writer “practically unknown in the American mainstream... is arguably one of the most influential figures of the past fifty years.” Agent: Matthew Carnicelli, Carnicelli Literary Management.

Starred review from May 15, 2015
The first biography of Robert Beck, aka Iceberg Slim, (1918-1992), builds a compelling case that the pimp-turned-popular author provided the foundation for gangsta rap, Blaxploitation movies, and so much of the underground culture that became mainstream. Gifford (English/Univ. of Nevada; Pimping Fictions: African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing, 2013) transcends the opacity of academic writing in this lively account of a subject he even admits "might at first glance seem like an appalling choice for a biography...he abused hundreds of women throughout his lifetime, and he is practically unknown to the American mainstream." Yet his autobiography, Pimp, has sold millions of copies since its publication in 1967, though it was never reviewed in the literary press nor widely available in bookstores. Pimp and Slim's subsequent novels and essay collections could be more commonly found in inner-city newsstands, taverns, and barbershops. Such seminal rappers as Ice Cube and Ice-T took their names to honor him, and Mike Tyson considered him a father figure. To Gifford, he's an exemplar of the ambiguous complexity of the pimp in ghetto mythology, a flashy man who has been corrupted by a racist society and who has been able to triumph over white prejudice by exploiting black women who had too few options. The "Street Poison" of the title was the term favored by Slim to describe the insidious effects of ghetto life on an impressionable young man attracted to the worlds of sex, drugs, and glamour and who would deaden his soul to attain all of them. It shows complicated relationships with his mother and a series of father figures, accounts occasionally at odds with Slim's own writing, and it shows how he transitioned from a life of crime to pulp literature. "This is not a story without tragedy....But it is a story of redemption and breathtaking creativity, too," writes Gifford, who not only tells the story well, but shows why it's so significant.

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Starred review from June 1, 2015
There is an alternative realm of African American writing beyond the work of such historic luminaries as Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Richard Wrightthe black pulp underworld, ruled by a tall, lanky ex-con and former pimp from Chicago's South Side who called himself Iceberg Slim. After a decade of intense research, Gifford presents the first full biography of Robert Iceberg Slim Beck (191892), diligently chronicling his brutal and redemptive experiences at the epicenter of twentieth-century urban black America and zealously establishing Beck's standing as an influential antiestablishment writer, who inspired gangsta rap, hip-hop, and street lit. Discouraged by the limited opportunities for African Americans, especially during the Great Depression, Beck succumbed to street poison and the false glamor of pimping. Gifted with a steel-trap memory, he absorbed the oral mythology and codes of conduct for whorology during his frequent incarcerations (under appalling conditions), material he brazenly put into practice, then mined to write the scorching memoir that ignited his literary career, Pimp: The Story of My Life (1967). Beck then published gritty crime novels (the newly discovered Shetani's Sister is due soon), and as his books sold in the millions (and his publisher ripped him off), he spoke out against racism, violence, and the exploitation of women. Gifford's dramatic, hard-core, contextually dynamic, and powerfully affecting biography is sharply relevant to today's civil rights struggles.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

May 15, 2015

Gifford (English, Univ. of Nevada, Reno; Pimping Fictions) has written a remarkably researched, fascinating life story of popular writer Robert "Iceberg Slim" Beck (1918-92). Author of the memoir Pimp and several novels, Beck was the original gangster figure, giving birth to such other urban fiction icons as Donald Goines, Odie Hawkins, and Clarence Cooper Jr., as well as rappers including Ice-T and Ice Cube. Gifford conducted interviews with many of Beck's associates and family members and utilized his access to the writer's archival material to provide an in-depth, highly engaging study. He not only offers insights on Beck's writings but also sheds light on the exploitative relationship between Beck and his publisher, Holloway House. Beck's personal failings and his tortured experiences with women (particularly his mother), drugs, and the penal system are fully explored. The author's material is not high literature, and his life can be difficult to read, but Gifford makes a strong case for the enormous popular appeal and the continuing widespread influence of Iceberg Slim. VERDICT Recommended for readers of popular fiction and African American literature. [See Prepub Alert, 2/9/15.]--L.J. Parascandola, Long Island Univ., Brooklyn

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2015

A professor of American Literature and African American culture at the University of Nevada, Reno, and an Edgar nominee for Pimping Fictions: African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing, Gifford tells the life story of Iceberg Slim (born Robert Beck), author of the multimillion-copy-selling memoir Pimp and the progenitor of street lit. Gifford's sources range from interviews to Beck's prison records, with a detour into his radical politics. Coinciding with the publication of a newly discovered Iceberg Slim novel, Shetani's Sister (see above).

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.