Along the way, Gifford drops in concise histories of con artistry, the U.S. The narrative is rich in memorable characters, including Albert вЂњBabyвЂќ Bell, the notorious criminal strongman who served as BeckвЂ™s mentor, and No Thumbs Helen, the gifted pickpocket who became BeckвЂ™s first common-law wife. Gifford vividly depicts the underworld where Beck learned and plied his trade: the black ghettos of Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee. When his mother left Upshaw for a smooth-talking, abusive hustler from Wisconsin, the young manвЂ™s chances of avoiding trouble were all but ruined. вЂњI wanted to become a pimp so that I could have all these beautiful clothes and the diamonds and the women,вЂќ Beck later told an interviewer. With UpshawвЂ™s assistance, his mother started a beauty shop whose clientele included prostitutes, and it was there that Beck first encountered pimps. For a time, Beck knew the comforts of stable middle-class life and even joined the Boy Scouts. They soon divorced and, when Beck was 4, his mother remarried Henry Upshaw, a businessman from Rockford, Ill., who was a good father to the young boy. H'Shetani's Sister' by Iceberg Slim (Vintage Crime/Black Lizard)Д«eckвЂ™s parents were part of the Great Migration, moving from Tennessee to Chicago not long before his birth in 1918. But GiffordвЂ™s greatest achievement is placing BeckвЂ™s life within the context of larger social, political and economic changes. Writing of the life of a celebrated memoirist can be a daunting and thankless task, but Justin Gifford handles the job with aplomb in his new book, вЂњ Street Poison.вЂќ A decadeвЂ™s worth of research allows him frequently to correct the record where вЂњPimpвЂќ and BeckвЂ™s other autobiographical writings may have fudged the facts. It simultaneously mythologizes the pimp and dissects him as the product of an unjust society that abuses and exploits its minorities, especially black women. The book is lurid and lyrical, a confession wrapped in an account of the societal blight that afflicted AmericaвЂ™s black neighborhoods from the Depression to the civil rights era. Rap music and the blaxploitation movies of the 1970s owe a clear debt to вЂњPimp.вЂќ Ice T, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg and Jay Z have all paid tribute to BeckвЂ™s memoir. (Irvine Welsh, author of вЂњ Trainspotting,вЂќ said that Iceberg SlimвЂ™s works were now вЂњ as essential reading as William Shakespeare.вЂќ) Beck published five streetwise crime novels during his lifetime, influencing writers such as Donald Goines and Andrew Vachss, but it is his memoir, вЂњ Pimp: The Story of My Life,вЂќ that has had the most enduring and, for some, the most problematic cultural legacy. His mission was to chronicle, in fiction and memoir, the sordid world in which he had lived.Д«y the time he died 30 years later, BeckвЂ™s works had sold more than 6В million copies, making him, according to his first publisher, Holloway House, the best-selling African American writer of all time. Then in his 40s, Beck no longer had the strength or stamina to be a pimp, the vocation that he had pursued with unyielding vigor for more than two decades. He had nearly lost his mind while imprisoned in what he called the вЂњsteel casketвЂќ in Chicago, and he vowed to change his life upon his release. A career criminal, Beck had been incarcerated numerous times from age 14, including an 18-month stint in the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kan.

In April 1962, Robert Beck, who later achieved lasting fame under the pen name Iceberg Slim, was released from the Chicago House of Correction after serving 10В months in solitary confinement in a cell not much bigger than a coffin.

Iceberg slim