ari_ormstunga (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ari_ormstunga) wrote2022-01-25 02:24 pm
ari_ormstunga) wrote2022-01-25 02:24 pm
Pimp: A Book Review
I probably wouldn't recommend "Pimp" by Iceberg Slim to most people. It is full of violence, misogyny, and profanity. It is the autobiography of a pimp. It is a brutal tale.
I decided to read Pimp because it was mentioned in a Dave Chapelle comedy special a few years ago. I think Dave is a funny stand-up comedian. I liked him before he became wildly controversial recently. I like him still. He skewers many different groups and ideologies in his sets, including groups I am a member of and ideologies I hold. He's still a funny guy. I think that comedians have a very important role in society. They can enable people to have conversations about difficult, taboo topics and even laugh about them. This can help heal divisions and bring people together, which is why our current elites are grim, dour, humorless scolds.
Dave used Pimp as a way to discuss capitalism and things that happened to him when he left his successful show. His bit was funny and made me curious about the book. I finally decided to give it a read.
I found Pimp valuable because it gave me a window into a way of thinking that is largely, but not completely, foreign to me. Iceberg Slim is a traumatized youth, scarred by horrible racism and abuse, who goes on to brutalize other people. He learns to regard people only in terms of what they can offer him, and easily discards them when they have nothing left he can use. Violence, lies, and gaslighting are tools he uses to get what he wants. The ends always justify the means, and the ends are profit and material success.
I found it interesting that, in a world that was technically post-slavery (the book was set before and during World War 2), the "pimp culture" of that time basically recreated slavery, with the black male pimp becoming a cruel "master" to women he exploited, controlled, and physically abused. In one memorable scene, Iceberg beats one of his prostitutes bloody with a wire hanger shaped into a whip.
I have certain social deficits that impair me in understanding the inner lives and motivations of other people. I consider myself to be a fairly cynical person, but it is still difficult for me to wrap my mind around the fact that there are people like Iceberg Slim out there. In all professions, in all walks of life, there are psychopaths and sociopaths who think of people only as objects to be taken advantage of and victimized.
Pimp was a useful foray into the mind of a criminal. Iceberg Slim wasn't completely evil, in that he eventually reformed himself and started a family and a "square" life after doing time in prison and losing his mother. The book had some similarities to and reminded me a bit of the Autobiography of Malcolm X.
At one point near the end of the book, Iceberg makes an interesting comment that resonated with me from an esoteric point of view. He seems to be discussing karma, and his book does chronicle that what goes around comes around in the criminal underworld he describes.
"A good pimp has to use great pressure. It's always in the cards that one day that pressure will backfire. Then he will be the victim."
I think that books are, in the sense of causing changes in consciousness in accordance with the author's will, magical, some more so, and some less. There have been a few books that have introduced me to a mindset that I consider to be very uncomfortable and unpleasant. Pimp was one of those books. A few others include the Rules of Attraction by Brett Easton Ellis and The Game by Neil Strauss. These books are disturbing to me because they illuminate a very banal sort of evil, the sort that reduces other humans to resources to be exploited and discarded. They make me face the dark places inside myself, where I have to admit that, to a lesser extent, I've done the same thing.
I decided to read Pimp because it was mentioned in a Dave Chapelle comedy special a few years ago. I think Dave is a funny stand-up comedian. I liked him before he became wildly controversial recently. I like him still. He skewers many different groups and ideologies in his sets, including groups I am a member of and ideologies I hold. He's still a funny guy. I think that comedians have a very important role in society. They can enable people to have conversations about difficult, taboo topics and even laugh about them. This can help heal divisions and bring people together, which is why our current elites are grim, dour, humorless scolds.
Dave used Pimp as a way to discuss capitalism and things that happened to him when he left his successful show. His bit was funny and made me curious about the book. I finally decided to give it a read.
I found Pimp valuable because it gave me a window into a way of thinking that is largely, but not completely, foreign to me. Iceberg Slim is a traumatized youth, scarred by horrible racism and abuse, who goes on to brutalize other people. He learns to regard people only in terms of what they can offer him, and easily discards them when they have nothing left he can use. Violence, lies, and gaslighting are tools he uses to get what he wants. The ends always justify the means, and the ends are profit and material success.
I found it interesting that, in a world that was technically post-slavery (the book was set before and during World War 2), the "pimp culture" of that time basically recreated slavery, with the black male pimp becoming a cruel "master" to women he exploited, controlled, and physically abused. In one memorable scene, Iceberg beats one of his prostitutes bloody with a wire hanger shaped into a whip.
I have certain social deficits that impair me in understanding the inner lives and motivations of other people. I consider myself to be a fairly cynical person, but it is still difficult for me to wrap my mind around the fact that there are people like Iceberg Slim out there. In all professions, in all walks of life, there are psychopaths and sociopaths who think of people only as objects to be taken advantage of and victimized.
Pimp was a useful foray into the mind of a criminal. Iceberg Slim wasn't completely evil, in that he eventually reformed himself and started a family and a "square" life after doing time in prison and losing his mother. The book had some similarities to and reminded me a bit of the Autobiography of Malcolm X.
At one point near the end of the book, Iceberg makes an interesting comment that resonated with me from an esoteric point of view. He seems to be discussing karma, and his book does chronicle that what goes around comes around in the criminal underworld he describes.
"A good pimp has to use great pressure. It's always in the cards that one day that pressure will backfire. Then he will be the victim."
I think that books are, in the sense of causing changes in consciousness in accordance with the author's will, magical, some more so, and some less. There have been a few books that have introduced me to a mindset that I consider to be very uncomfortable and unpleasant. Pimp was one of those books. A few others include the Rules of Attraction by Brett Easton Ellis and The Game by Neil Strauss. These books are disturbing to me because they illuminate a very banal sort of evil, the sort that reduces other humans to resources to be exploited and discarded. They make me face the dark places inside myself, where I have to admit that, to a lesser extent, I've done the same thing.