ebook img

Pimping Fictions: African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing PDF

217 Pages·2013·8.04 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Pimping Fictions: African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing

Pimping Fictions Pimping Fictions African American Crime Literature and the Untold Story of Black Pulp Publishing justin gifford Temple University Press philadelphia Temple University Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122 www.temple.edu/tempress Copyright © 2013 by Justin Gifford All rights reserved Published 2013 library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Gifford, Justin, 1975– Pimping fictions : African American crime literature and the untold story of Black pulp publishing / Justin Gifford. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4399-0810-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4399-0811-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4399-0812-9 (e-book) 1. American fiction—African American authors—History and criticism. 2. Detective and mystery stories, American—History and criticism. 3. Urban fiction, American—History and criticism. 4. African Americans in literature. 5. Crime in literature. 6. Pulp literature, American—Publishing—History. 7. Holloway House Publishing Co.—History. 8. Himes, Chester B., 1909–1984—Criticism and interpretation. 9. Goines, Donald, 1937–1974—Criticism and interpretation. 10. Iceberg Slim, 1918–1992 Pimp. I. Title. PS374.N4G485 2013 813’.087209896073—dc23 2012032598 The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—P ermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48–1 992 Printed in the United States of America 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 A book in the American Literatures Initiative (ALI), a collaborative publishing project of NYU Press, Fordham University Press, Rutgers University Press, Temple University Press, and the University of Virginia Press. The Initiative is supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. For more information, please visit www.americanliteratures.org. Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 1 “He Jerked His Pistol Free and Fired It at the Pavement”: Chester Himes and the Transformation of American Crime Literature 14 2 Pimping Fictions: Iceberg Slim and the Invention of Pimp Literature 40 3 The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Donald Goines, Holloway House Publishing Company, and the Radicalization of Black Crime Literature 68 4 Black in a White Paradise: Utopias and Imagined Solutions in Black Crime Literature 97 5 “For He Who Is”: Players Magazine and the Reimagining of the American Pimp 127 6 The Women of Street Literature: Contemporary Black Crime Fiction and the Rise of the Self-Publishing Marketplace 152 Notes 183 Index 199 Acknowledgments Every intellectual endeavor is the product of many contributors; this project is no different. I first owe a debt of gratitude to Ross Posnock and Kenneth Warren, early mentors who transformed my understand- ing of race, literature, and American culture. Many teachers and schol- ars at the University of Virginia shaped my work and helped me clarify my thinking, including Deborah McDowell, Rita Felski, Marlon Ross, Ian Grandison, and especially Jennifer Wicke, the toughest and fairest critic I have ever encountered. My peers at Virginia, Michael Lundblad, Sarah Hagelin, Andrea Stevens, and Jolie Sheffer, taught me what a sup- portive intellectual community could be. Many of the arguments in the book were tested at Dartmouth’s Futures of American Studies Institute, Harvard’s English Institute, and the Cultural Studies Now Conference in London. Special thanks to those who asked probing questions and provided helpful advice in the early stages of developing the project. I am particularly grateful to Eric Lott, the chair of my dissertation committee, whose friendship, guidance, and unflagging support over the years have been a source of inspiration throughout my intellectual journey. This book would quite simply not exist in its current form without the contributions of a number of people whom I interviewed over the years. Many thanks to Bentley Morriss and Diane Beck, who shared their knowledge of Robert Beck and Holloway House Publishing Com- pany. Thanks to Roland Jefferson, Odie Hawkins, Zola Hawkins, Emory Holmes, and Wanda Coleman, all of whom spent many hours talking with me in interviews and helping me understand the art and business viii / acknowledgments of black crime literature. Their insights were crucial to the development of many of the main arguments of this book. Special thanks to Betty Mae Shue, Camille Beck, and Misty Beck for sharing their memories of Robert Beck in interviews. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to Eddie Allen, who shared with me important primary documents owned by the late Donald Goines. Finally, I would like to thank Jorge Hinojosa and Ice-T, who invited me to participate in their documentary film, Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp, and who provided me access to many primary documents, interviews, and manuscripts. Furthermore, this project could not have been completed without the help of librarians, private book collectors, and street vendors. The library staff at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and the Ned Guymon Mystery and Detective Fiction Collection at Occidental College provided me with invaluable assistance. Special thanks to the owners of the Magazine in San Francisco, Black and Nobel Books in Philadelphia, and Black Star Line Music and Video in Harlem for helping me track down rare and out-of-print books and magazines and for sharing their knowledge about the contemporary African American literary scene. I completed this project with the financial and intellectual support of my home institution, the University of Nevada, Reno. A Junior Faculty Research Grant and several Scholarly and Creative Activities Awards furnished me with the resources to create my database of African American novels and magazines. To my colleagues in the Department of English, I owe thanks for their comradeship and scholarly insight. For their mentorship and critical comments on various drafts of the manu- script, I owe a great deal of thanks to Scott Casper, Eric Rasmussen, Mike Branch, and Jen Hill. I am grateful for all my junior faculty colleagues, whose stimulating and supportive friendship over the years gave me the strength to finish this book. Thanks in particular to Lynda Walsh, whose professionalism has been inspirational to me, and to Cathy Chaput, my friend and ally in the struggle for radical egalitarianism. I want to give special recognition to Erin James, who read and commented on mul- tiple drafts of the complete manuscript and who always asked the right questions. My students have been an ongoing source of encouragement and research assistance for this project. They have found rare and out- of-print books, helped me construct my database of black crime nov- els, and challenged my thinking about black popular culture through many exciting conversations. Although there are far too many people on this list to acknowledge, I would like to thank Vanna Nguyen, Linda acknowledgments / ix Kay Hardie, Jamie Farley, Katie O’Neill, Rachel Baez, Brianna Thomp- son, and Brad Nelson. I am particularly grateful for my many talented graduate students, as their energetic collegiality and sincere personal investment in literature and cultural politics is what this profession is supposed to be all about. Thanks especially to Josh Culpepper, Tom Her- tweck, Sylvan Goldberg, Jessica Fanaselle, and Kyle Bladow, who read drafts of the manuscript and offered insightful comments or who influ- enced my understanding of African American crime literature through thought-provoking discussion. Special thanks to Emily Katseanas for always serving up realness in our conversations. Additionally, I would like to thank Laurel Griffiths for her exceptional editorial work and for creating the index for this book. Many thanks to my agent, Matthew Carnicelli, for believing in this project and placing it with a major university press. I would like to thank Temple University Press for its professional treatment of my manuscript. I want to acknowledge the work of my three anonymous readers, who offered a number of insightful comments to help improve the manu- script. I also appreciate the tireless work of my editor, Mick Gusinde- Duffy, who brought this book to completion. Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to my family and friends. My best friends, Johann Sehmsdorf and Beckett Senter, have been sup- porters of my writing for over two decades now. Blythe Kladney pro- vided love and encouragement during the most difficult stages of the writing process. I am grateful for the friendship of Rei Magosaki, my co-conspirator and partner in crime for many years. Madeline Chaput, your smiling face has brought magic to the world. Finally, my parents, Larry and Karen, and my sister, Jessica, have been the greatest source of inspiration for my work. Thank you for teaching me how to take joy in fighting the good fight.

Description:
"Lush sex and stark violence colored Black and served up raw by a great Negro writer," promised the cover of Run Man Run, Chester Himes' pioneering novel in the black crime fiction tradition. In Pimping Fictions, Justin Gifford provides a hard-boiled investigation of hundreds of pulpy paperbacks wri
See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.