Nothing, however, prepared the world for his next boundary defying leap. The art dragged from the sewer becomes more pronounced in 1972, as Trick Baby hit the silver screen as we entered into the era of Blaxploitation classics.īeck’s first two published novels dragged you into his gritty past existence, holding it up in front of the reader and asking the same reader to make judgements on the right or wrong of the behaviour. However, the backdrop of rawness makes this essential reading. This, of course, leads to a life of hustling and crime, though the character of Johnny ( White Folks) is one who is likeable, and at times even warming. The character of Johnny is caught between both worlds of colour, accepted by neither and rejected by both. At the same time the aspects of racism are pronounced with a subtlety that is, at times, overpowering. Johnny’s mother goes on to raise him on her own, but descends into mental illness. She marries Johnny’s father, an Irish man and a drunk who soon left after getting pressure from his family. Trick Baby centers on Johnny’s black mother, a woman who had no regard for black men. Born to a mixed race couple, a man who could pass as being of either white or black. The novel follows a man, Johnny O’ Brien, nicknamed White Folks. Here, Robert Beck, once more, takes the reader onto the streets of Southside Chicago. Where Pimp gave you a peek into the world of crime, Slim’s follow-up, Trick Baby (again 1967), launched a very personal attack on the American mindset of the day. The account of my brutality and cunning as a pimp will fill many of you with revulsion, however, if one intelligent, valuable young man or woman can be saved from the destructive slime then the displeasure I have given will have been outweighed by that individual’s use of his potential in a socially constructive manner. I will lay bare my life and thoughts as a pimp. In this book I will take you, the reader, with me into the secret inner world of the pimp. In all, Pimp is delivered with the Shakespeare from the ghetto approach, a literary work that is both genius and subversive. Of course, with two ingrained traits which Beck cannot separate himself from, one is not to squeal on any of his acquaintances, the second changing names to protect the people he knew. A submergence into the sex trade with Iceberg Slim as your guide. Every word was dragged from the well-worked Chicago streets and served up without any filter to its audience. The influence of his first masterpiece was not the typical African-American work, it was more desolate of hope, staring directly into the abyss of underworld culture. Of course being a creature from the undercurrent of society, both led to, and inspired Robert Beck’s first great work, the semi-autobiographical Pimp (1967). All those sentences describe perfectly the prowess of the late Iceberg Slim, Robert Beck (Aug– April 30, 1992). The other, the illegal sale of the female form, an enforcer, the emotionless beings chasing the American dream. One of which includes works of artistic genius, blended with a social commentary, and revolutionary ideals. In fact, it is two ends of a very different spectrum. Putting the words together, literary genius and former pimp does not seem like a practical simile. One of the most influential writers of our age.
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