Pimp: The Story of My Life

Iceberg Slim - 1967

"I turned my back to the sunlight. I felt old Morpheus slugging his velvet hammer against my eyelids. ...I woke up in darkness."

Culturally influential autobiographical novel by retired pimp Iceberg Slim, (a.k.a. Robert Beck). The book details his hardship-riddled childhood before moving on to his successful career managing prostitutes in New York City in the 1940s and 50s. The story is compelling on its own, but Slim’s deadpan writing style – a talent he discovered and developed after completing a prison term in the 60s – is what gives the book its alternately chilling and satirical tone. As in a Kubrick film, events are sometimes so hopelessly horrifying that you can only laugh at the absurdity of it all. Even though he claims to be sharing a cautionary tale, there is unmistakable pride in Slim’s descriptions of his own sharp intellect, his bella figura, and his sexual prowess, and the book famously became a Bible of sorts for young men seeking success in pimping and other vocations. Slim claimed to be reformed and was happily married for the rest of his life, but the most glaring theme that pops off every page is a deep-seated and nearly psychotic level of misogyny. In the world Slim operated in, women are thought of as almost subhuman, barely more intelligent than chickens, and can only be managed by being treated like livestock. Not even pets, but livestock. If you can compartmentalize that aspect of the book, you can’t help but be impressed by Slim’s clipped literary style and flair for turns of phrase. Although there is a glossary in the back, the task of wading through the tangle of arcane street slang throughout the book is downright brutal at times, especially when so many phrases aren’t even included in the glossary. All the interruptions to look things up make reading the book take about twice as long as it should, but I do admit this is part of its strange appeal as well, being comically frustrating. It’s almost like Anthony Burgess’ invented futuristic vernacular in A Clockwork Orange.