It is indicative of both the explosive nature of Goines's subject matter (his works include Whoreson
; Dopefiend
and Black Gangster
) and the timidity of the academy that Goines's achievement—selling more than five million books of utterly uncompromised fiction—has received little scholarly attention. Critic Allen's thorough and well-documented study will do much to change that, placing Goines's life and work in a coherent critical, historical and social frame. This book is clearly a labor of love, all the more creditable because Goines is often hard to like. A hustler, pimp and junkie who rejected his hard-working father's middle-class ethos, Goines hardly stood out from any number of doomed young men until, during a prison term, the spreading fame of Iceberg Slim reached him. The old story of redemption by art is vividly retold here, and the sense of Goines's growing awareness and ambition is well caught, as are the exigencies of paperback publication. Tragically, Goines could leave neither his addiction nor his violent past behind, and he was murdered—a case that remains unsolved—at the age of 35, in 1947. This work argues not only for a serious assessment of what Goines did achieve, but makes us mourn what he never got the chance to. Photos. (Oct.)
