Groove Press 1998 Paperback 240 pages

Review by Dr Jimmy Mahonahan

Iceberg Slim was true to where he came from. He ruled the streets of Chicago for twenty-five years and he chose not to write about what he didn't know. He knew pimping. He knew hustling. He knew the streets….Two decades after he wrote it, Doom Fox remains fresh to the game. What he calls 'The Life' is still the same roller-coaster ride it has always been."

Propelled by the story of Joe "Kong" Allen and his treacherous but gorgeous wife, Doom Fox is the last in Iceberg Slim's legendary series of underground novels. It was written in 1978 and unpublished until 1998. Doom Fox takes place in Los Angeles ghetto and the story starts after World War II and then spans the next Thirty years. Doom Fox captures a violent world of low-riding chippie-catchers, prizefighters, prostitutes (our favorite at Lowbrow), smooth-talking preachers and jive talking fools.

Iceberg Slim detailed life among the hustlers in the inner city and reinvented the concept of cool. His books became underground classics, advertised and circulated by word of mouth. Iceberg was born Robert Beck. He published his first book in 1969 (our favorite year at Lowbrow), an autobiography called Pimp. When Pimp became a best seller, he began to earn his living legitimately as an author, lecturer, and performer whose spoken-work pieces anticipated rap. Iceberg died in Los Angeles in 1993.
-From the Introduction from Ice-T
-From the back of the book

 

Ice-T writes in his introduction that in order to enjoy any Iceberg Slim novel you must first open your mind and be ready to appreciate three things:

  1. The life he describes is real. Attempting to believe otherwise is a denial of street reality.
  2. Iceberg Slim was an actual pimp who turned into one of the greatest black writers in American history.
  3. The dialog will sound like another language from another planet-in the same way the words of the Bible or Shakespeare may be hard to decode. (I think Ice-T means this for us white folk)
So to all you squares: Welcome to the Game. To all you players: Kick back, pour some Crystal, and enjoy Doom Fox. Iceberg-rest in peace.
-Ice-T. Los Angeles, Feb. 1998.

When I started to read this book I was by no means a player. I was a wannabe player at best. So I decided to get myself some Crystal and enjoy Doom Fox how my two Ice buddies would want me to. I jumped in the bucket and jetted to the corner liquor store. To my surprise they had no Crystal. I went back to my days as a "Gansta Rap" fan and purchased a 40oz bottle of 8-ball. On my way home I decided that a $10 whore would be nice to read too. So I pulled up to some bitches in biker shorts, and offered to "read" to them. After I was released from my cell and my belt and shoe laces were returned to me, I sat on my porch, pulled my Raiders cap down low, enjoyed my cool 40oz and fell in love with my new respect for freedom.

If you like 70's Black Cinema like Shaft, Superfly, and Dolemite, you will enjoy this book. The storyline is not very riveting, but the language that the author uses is more then enough to keep your attention and entertain the reader. I continued to read to find the next crazy piece of jive talking. I would bask in its glory, try to memorize it, and then continue on.

"She showers, applies thick makeup to her inner thighs to camouflage a scabrous network of needle tracks. She colognes herself, brush-flogs her six-inch forest of pubic silk into butter-fly wings that hover above her liver-lipped snare"

"Talk that get down shit to your daddy, sweet freak bitch star".

This book was not published until 1998 because this must have been his worst writing effort. If it wasn't, why would I say it was? They waited until he was dead to publish it. I'm looking forward to reading other novels by Iceberg Slim. I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to any one that likes Blaxploitation movies. I give this book three pimps out of five.

These are some of the things I learned reading this book.

  1. 40oz. beer bottles get warm.
  2. Jail is no fun.
  3. Livin' on da streets ain't no fun.
  4. Bein' a ho ain't glamorous.
  5. It is hard to read jive talk.
  6. Cops look good in biker shorts.
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