It is his most personal work of political fiction, an epic tragedy where no one escapes from the deadly orbit of the drug crisis and the police repression that follows. Set on L.A.’s meanest, toughest streets and never published until now, Night Train to Sugar Hill is one of Iceberg Slim’s two final novels. Innocent and damned alike fall victim to the artificial allure of the drug - a teenager accidentally overdoses, junkies smoke crack laced with cyanide, a gang member is shot down in the streets, a mother is murdered by her alcoholic husband, and a major drug dealer is killed by an ordinary man fed up with the drug game. Beck wrote seven more novels and has sold over six million books prior to his death in Montmorillon in 1992.1980s Los Angeles. The book has been translated into several European languages. By 1973, it had been reprinted 19 times and sold nearly 2 million copies. Pimp sold very well, mainly among black audiences. Of his literary contribution, a Washington Post critic claimed, “Iceberg Slim may have done for the pimp what Jean Genet did for the homosexual and thief: articulate the thoughts and feelings of someone who’s been there.” His work tended to be based on his personal experiences in the criminal underworld, and revealed a world of seemingly bottomless brutality and viciousness. Beck’s vision was considerably bleaker than most other black writers of the time. In 1969, his first autobiographical novel, Pimp: The Story of My Life, was published. Slim moved to California in the 1960s to pursue writing under the Iceberg Slim pen-name, but in normal life changed his name to Robert Beck, taking the last name of the man his mother was married to at the time. At that point he decided to write about his past instead. Taking “ Iceberg Slim” as an assumed name, Robert started pimping at 18, and continued until age 42, when he decided against it after a final 10-month prison stretch in solitary confinement. It is estimated that during his 67 years in show business, Zip entertained more than one hundred million people.īorn Robert Lee Maupin, in Chicago in 1918, he spent his childhood in Milwaukee and Rockford, Illinois until he returned to Chicago. He is buried in Bound Brook cemetery in New Jersey. On holiday in Montmorillon William Henry caught bronchitis and died in 1926. Finally, he was given the name, “Zip the Pinhead,” the “What-Is-It?”. A furry suit was made to fit him, and his hair was shaped to a tiny point that further accented his sloping brow. Barnum.īarnum purchased the right to display William Henry Johnson from the circus and gave him a new look. He was a popular draw and his success led young William Henry’s agent to show his charge to P. He was billed as a missing link supposedly caught in Africa and displayed in a cage. William Henry’s parents agreed to allow Van Emburgh’s circus to display him in return for money. His unusual appearance caused many to believe that he was a “pinhead”, or microcephalic. As he grew his body developed normally but his head remained small. Johnson was born one of six children to a very poor African-American family. He was an American freak show performer famous for his oddly tapered head. Zip the Pinhead, real name William Henry Johnson was born around 1842 in New Jersey.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |