TRICK BABY - ICEBERG SLIM
Let’s be controversial for a second: this book is better than PIMP. I know, I know, Iceberg Slim is basically synonymous with his debut novel/autobiography and it’s justifiably famous. PIMP is an amazing book. The lingo and vibe is unmatched, it’s a truly unbelievable historical document (while “fiction” most of the main characters are easily ID’d figures from the Chicago Black underground) and is the bedrock of so much art in the last 50 years. However, due to it’s status as a pseudo-autobiography, I’ve always felt the ending was lack-luster. In PIMP Iceberg Slim goes to prison as an older man (in his 40’s I believe) and decides he’s too old for the game and retires to be a writer (and to write the book we are now reading, like the end of THE HOBBIT). Obviously, this was great for Robert Beck, the actual person, but as an ending to the novel it’s a little lack-luster. TRICK BABY solves these problems. It’s very similar in set-up to PIMP. The framing device is that Iceberg Slim, the character from PIMP (in real life, Robert Beck’s street handle was “Cavanugh Slim”) , is in jail, considering suicide, when White Folks, the main character of TRICK BABY becomes his cellmate then, as in PIMP, he recounts his life story with an emphasis on the lurid details of street life. Unlike Iceberg, Folks is not a pimp, he’s a con-artist. He comes to Chicago, meets a bunch of older con men, like Blue, and lives the high-life as a criminal. White Folks gets his name from his YT father. He’s constantly teased and called “Trick Baby” tho we learn that his mother and father were in a long-term relationship before his YT dad couldn’t handle the 1920’s miscegenation shame anymore. TRICK BABY is lesser than PIMP during the middle sections where the older hustler explains the game (conning or pimping respectively). In PIMP this part is fascinating and profoundly bleak. In TRICK BABY this section is confusing since the scams they’re running, during the 30’s and 40’s (the narrator draft dodges WWII and continuously refers to FDR as a “fantastic cripple”) are hard to understand in detail. Often they seem to involve setting up a fake storefront, which seems impractical, or rely on the details of getting a check cashed, something I don’t know too much about. But while the details are complicated the gist of the scams is that Blue approaches YT marks and convinces them to help him rob the YT White Folks or, if the mark is YT, White Folks convinces them to rob Blue out of money. The racism of the mark backfires, it leads them to trust someone they shouldn’t and their greed blinds them to the red-flags, and Blue and White Folks walk away. Unlike PIMP, this book has a more narratively satisfying final section. White Folks gets obsessed with a YT woman who doesn’t know his true identity. He eventually attends a party with the girl’s father and a chief of police (both YT, obviously) where the dad goes on a big rant about how the YT man has to control the Black population, not through brute force, like the ignorant police captain advocates but rather by cultivating and subverting a Black leadership class. Additionally, White Folks struggles with alcohol addiction in a way I found believable and engaging. All things considered, this book is easier to take that PIMP (mostly because the victims of the hustler are less sympathetic, both books are pretty violent and brutal) and while not as shocking and revelatory on first read, it’s more cohesive and put together as a book. I believe White Folks is the main character in another Iceberg Slim book, so when (if?) the libraries open again, I’ll have to grab that. I think I’ve now read 4 out of the 10 Iceberg Slim books. 92 long cons. As always, here’s a list of the street names from the book. I’m partial to Precious Jimmy and Trapeze Willie:
-White Folks/Trick Baby
-Old Blue
-The Memphis Kid
-St. Louis Shorty
-Dot
-Mose
-Felix the Fixer
-Nino
-The Vicksburg Kid
-Butcher Knife Brown
-Rev. Josephus
-Livin’ Swell
-One Pocket
-Precious Jimmy
-Old Man Mule
-Dirty Red
-Sweeny the Snake
-Slew-Foot Frank
-Princess Tanja
-Helga the Swede
-Black Kate
-Buster Bang Bang
-Trapeze Willie
-Hasting Street Harvey
