Pimp: The Story of My Life Author: Visit Amazon's Iceberg Slim Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1451617135 | Format: PDF
Pimp: The Story of My Life Description
Review
''Iceberg Slim was the godfather of a genre.'' -- K'wan, #1
Essence bestselling author
''One of the greatest black writers in American history.'' --Ice-T
''
Pimp is an eye-boggling netherworld documentary, a (--) tale of ferocious emotion, expressed through action.'' -- Q
''The best-known pimp of our time.'' --
Washington Post --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Iceberg Slim, also known as Robert Beck, was born in Chicago in 1918 and was initiated into the life of the pimp at age eighteen. He briefly attended the Tuskegee Institute but dropped out to return to the streets of the South Side, where he remained, pimping until he was forty-two. After several stints in jail he decided to give up the life and turned to writing. Slim folded his life into the pages of seven books based on his life. Catapulted into the public eye, Slim became a new American hero, known for speaking the truth whether that truth was ugly, sexy, rude, or blunt.
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- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Cash Money Content; Reprint edition (May 10, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1451617135
- ISBN-13: 978-1451617139
- Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
- Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
I think this Iceberg Slim's writing debut alongside with his "Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim" are monument classics to the extreme. Iceberg Slim, all BS aside tells the bitter truth about the pimp life during the 40's and 50's in the Black concrete reservation called Harlem. It shows the candid realities of the ghetto life and about the struggles of a man, frustrated with the setbacks and oppressions of a prodominately white society and despairingly turns to pimping and drug pushing as a way out. Now, I must further comment to some of the youngbloods out there that read Iceberg is dead in his grave, but if he were alive today, and read some of the entries here, he would not be flattered but pissed, to put it bluntly. When 'Berg meant for people (particularly young African-American males to read "Pimp", he intended to give you insight on the pimp game in order for you to see just what a hellish life he really lead as a pimp. It was not meant as a rule book, but a discouragement from the game.Oh, sure, there was the easy money, the power over women, and the false sense of respect as you ride down the street in that Cadillac. But what about the other dangers, like having to look over your shoulders for the police, f--king up your mind with that powder (although today we have crack, even worse). And the women, when they get older and more resentful, they'll cross you and set you up one day, so you have to constantly make sure that they stay mostly ignorant of your weaknesses as not just a player, but a man. If Ice were alive, he would tell you that the pimp life ain't so f--king glamourous, but it's hell, that's why he later settled down with his wife and kid and turned straight.
I've got two completely different opinions about _Pimp_ and Robert Beck himself. One is glowing, the other terrible. Maybe that's what makes Beck and his books so interesting. First, the glowing opinion. Beck's style is like nothing I've ever read before. He claims to have a 175 I.Q. I don't doubt it. No one less brilliant could conjure up the metaphors and images he casually slings as if they were off the top of his head. The book is written in a loose, story-telling style, as if it was never revised, typos and all. Beck makes you feel as if you were standing on a street corner listening to a "fast track pimp" weave his life's yarn. Many times, I would read a sentence several times simply to admire the unique vision Beck gave to an action as simple as getting in or out of a car (a "hog") or thinking about his mother. The terminology is another, brilliantly colorful language (complete with glossary in the back!).Although the story dotes on his early years and then cruises through a couple of decades in a matter of pages, Beck's tale was never slow or anything less than gleaming. That is the glowing opinion. Now the terrible one. I'll try not to seem sanctimonious. To me, Robert Beck is (was) an alarmingly vicious hypocrite and psychopathic criminal. The book begins and ends with his tepid claims that he has seen the error of his ways and regrets his former life. These meager claims are ridiculous when you read the pride, nostalgia, and admiration with which Beck recounts his former life. In one passage in particular, his role model and mentor teaches him an unbelievable method to keep his whores in line. Whip them bloody with a wire coathanger. Beck eagerly tests the method.
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