I wonder how many people will end up here because of Dave Chappelle's Netflix special.Interesting book, the language is coarse and rather offensive to women, but that was the times they lived in.I wonder if the pimp game today is still as complex as it was back then. I'd recommend it to everyone to read, especially if you enjoy the show Boondocks and the character A Pimp named Slickback.

I bought this as an impulse purchase because it was displayed right next to the cash register at Shakespeare & Co. I'd seen it in the AK Press catalog before, and that is probably what made me pick it up. Pimp is entertaining in a kind of trashy way. It's a biography about a part of life that many middle class suburban folks like me don't know anything about. I have no idea how truthful the book is, or if it is sensationalism, or maybe even utter bullshit like those 'confessional' books written

Iceberg Slim didn't invent the great American pimp archetype in 1969 but he codified it, he exposed it to mass culture, so he's an influential writer. Everything from Slick Rick to blaxploitation to the pathetic "pickup artist" scene owes a debt to him. So when Robin Kelley writes for the New Yorker, "I'm always amazed when I encounter well-read people unfamiliar with Iceberg Slim," I kinda get it. But then, does influence equal value? I mean, is this a good book? Are you going to like it?It's n...

The thing about Robert “Iceberg Slim” Beck, the reason he is so magnetic, is that he is actually not the “Iceberg” he pretended to be. In this memoir of his life on the streets, he revels in his successes but also agonizes over his failures. He seems to tell us straight: this worked, that didn’t. He concludes it is necessary to hide one’s feelings behind an icy exterior, hiding his fear and doubt and empathy from his stable of whores and from other con men on the street who would double-cross hi...

Goddamn, this shit so raw I caught salmonella.This is acute American capitalism (perhaps embellished) at its finest. This shit makes the Merrill Lynch CEO look like a socialist who tucks his long underwear into his socks.

"Any good pimp is his own best company. His inner-life is so rich with cunning and scheming to out-think his whores."- Iceberg Slim, Pimp: The Story of My Life Iceberg Slim dances on that thread between unapologetic and remorseful. He loves and hates his mama. He loves and hates the game. This isn't a book you read because you want eroticism. This isn't Les Miserables. There isn't much at the end that redeems the story or the storyteller. HOWEVER, Iceberg Slim can write. His narrative is sharp....

Okay, so I think we don't have to discuss that the exploits that Iceberg describes in his autobiographical novel are, you know, immoral, to say the least (lying to women and gaslighting them, severe physical and mental abuse, hooking them on drugs, taking all their money, throwing them away when they can't work anymore, etc.). What's interesting to consider here are different aspects:1. The documentary characterThis novel is set in the 40s and 50s, but what is described is still going on. You do...

On Proxenetism and Pandering as Metaphors for Book-ReviewingFrom a feminist/post-colonial viewpoint, the activities of book-reviewing and pimping have much in common. Operating within a patriarchal structure, the reviewer-pimp claims power over the essentially female text (recall Derrida's useful concept of "invagination"), and offers it to the reader-john as part of a quasi-commercial transaction where he is paid with "likes" or "comments". Just as the pimp symbolizes dominance over his girls

This is not a book you can "like." It is a repulsive book you can learn something from and hope desperately that conditions have changed since its publication. You'll find cultural commentary and insights into the psyche, but you'll also find vile, unimaginable misogyny and disregard for humanity in general. I suppose I learned something, but the urge to vomit accompanied that awful education. Why the four stars, you say? Old Iceberg Slim's tale, in the most (for lack of any other way to say it)...

“Pimp” is fantastic. For about a decade now this has been one of my favorite books, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. Granted, I should immediately admit that I probably like this book for all the wrong reasons; I’m sure that the ‘correct’ grounds for appreciating “Pimp” (if such standards have been established) are to ponder the struggles of the black man fighting to rise up in American society and to look at the infelicitous lot he’s been subjected to and to carefully inspect the in...

You can try to sanitize this book, as Ervine Welsh has done in the introduction, and treat it as report on the social conditions of the racist America of the 1940’s and 50’s and one Black man’s attempt to break out of the cycle through the only way he found possible, blah blah blah. I couldn’t be bothered with any of this. I picked up this book to read some cool pimp talk. Pimp daddies and their bitches going about their binniz. Mindless degenerate entertainment. Like watching rap videos of the

Think of the worst crimes a person can commit: murder, rape, child molestation, pandering drugs, torture, slavery. It doesn't matter which of those you think might be worse than any other. Take your pick. And then consider:The pimp engages in all those things. They are, in fact, his routine.I picked this book up after having stumbled across the documentary Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp produced by Ice-T. Here's the trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCbLh...That film was interesting enou...

I have to admit, I gave up on this book at about page 155 (out of 240). The book started off hot! The first pages were electric. I picked up this book because I heard it mentioned in a Dave Chappelle stand-up bit. I was hoping to read something fresh and something that gave me a unique perspective on power. The book started off well. It was raw and honest, and Slim has an obvious talent with words, but as the book wore on and it delved further and further into the world of pimping, the book beca...

091118: brutal, ugly, honest, energetic. not a world i know, have ever known, this is written in 1967, set throughout twentieth century. so maybe bad things have happened to me in early years, but i also grew up comfortably, i had good parents, good brother, good travel, good schooling, some friends, some girls, book intelligence if not street, rewarded art inclinations, did not ever much suffer racism, poverty, deceit, stupidity, cruelty, assault, or any of the many ways that the author has suf...

where to start with this book? some of the most gruesome scenes i've ever read, but i couldn't resist it. about three pages in, i had to put it down and take a deep breath. anyway - gut-wrenching account of life as a pimp before it became gangster rap fodder. i know there's a big debate - at least at the academic level - about whether slim wrote this book or it was ghostwritten. i'm not sure that matters to me - the story still needs to be told. it's interesting that despite the fact that slim e...

What does it mean to be a hero in an antagonistic universe?This book is a thoughtful and brutal examination of the choices one is forced to make in a world turned against the individual. In prose reminiscent of a street-wise Dostoyevsky, the author recounts the story of his life through various moralistic phases. These tend to impress upon the reader a recurring theme, not of the universe's intense silence to human cries, but of openly ambivalent laughter and playfulness that voices itself most

“[A] pimp is really a whore who has reversed the game on whores. So... be as sweet as the scratch, no sweeter, and always stick a whore for a bundle before you sex her. A whore ain’t nothing but a trick to a pimp. Don’t let ‘em Georgia you. Always get your money in front just like a whore.” ---Iceberg Slim, “Pimp: The Story of My Life”Robert Beck, a.k.a. Iceberg Slim, was born in 1918 to a single mother. He never knew his father, who left town before he was born. His mother worked several jobs t...

Entertaining to the core, but that doesn't mean Iceberg brushes over the nuance and complexity surrounding his situation. "The Skull Book on Pimping" concisely covers issues that sociologists have prattled about in dense and meaningless jargon for decades. Slim is among the few honest autobiographers in his embrace of his contradictions. The book is neither self-glorifying nor moralizing. Nor is it, and it does not pretend to be, simply the facts. Like the hip-hop music it would influence severa...

I tried this on a recommendation from Dave Chapelle's comedy special. It's probably an important piece of American culture, from a sociology perspective. That said, I just couldn't make it through it. I almost never give up on a book for cursing or sex, so I think it's just how much the character hates women and how dirty I felt reading it that made me put it down. Not that Iceberg Slim would be offended.