sedonagrace

Low Road: The Life and Legacy of Donald Goines By Eddie B. Allen, Jr. WHEN EDDIE B. ALLEN, JR.'S new biography of Donald Goines was slipped under my cell door, I was stoked. When word got around the block, my fellow cons were stoked too, so much that they threatened to snatch the book away from me if I didn't read it at once. Ever considerate, I did as I was threatened. I read, and I read, and I read some more. Then I asked myself: Where the fuck is Donald Goines, the American Gulag's number-one chronicler? Really. In a book about Goines, Goines is barely there. Allen is there though, as are pages upon pages of irrelevant instruction. I don't read bios to find out about the biographer, and I don't need any lessons in the most elementary of civics. I may be locked up, but I'm not stupid—nor are the free folk that make up the rest of Donald Goines' fans. Allen seems to think we are. Why else come at us with digressions on Scottsboro, Emmet Till and the Little Rock Nine? Why else define "jones" or "turning out" or "recidivist"? Just because Allen can't get a bead on his subject doesn't make his subject bad, just badass—apparently far too badass for Allen. Pimp. Junkie. Gunman. Convict. Wordslinger. That's the Life of Donald Goines. There are a few formative details to the life behind the Life—middle-class kid looking for excitement hits the streets, flunks out of school, works his way into the Air Force, finds hookers and heroin in the Far East, comes back itchy—but these facts are not the Life. The Life is tricks, numbers, spikes, hammers. The bitchslap. The stable. Dope. Loot. Blood. Lies. Loyalty. The Life is the Wayne County Jail, the state pen at Jackson, the fed pen at Terre Haute. The Life is two to the head and three to the heart. Few wrote the Life like Donald Goines. Dopefiend hit first. A blood-soaked saga of a perverted pig of a dealer named Porky who reigns over his vomitous shooting gallery like some Caligula of the streets, it made dope about as glamorous as late-stage cancer. Next came Whoreson, an ode to bastards everywhere. Then, like a habit, titles such as Black Gangster, Daddy Cool, Eldorado Red, White Man's Justice, Black Man's Grief, written as the need required. And there was some need—Goines dropped an astonishing 16 books in four years. So much for the unproductive junkie. Goines' books were meant to feed, full of stories urgent, desperate and cruel. This needs to be stolen, that needs to be copped, he needs to be taken off, she needs to be put in her place. Bad things need to get done now. And bad wills out with not a word wasted. In the posthumous Kenyatta's Last Hit, Goines kills his alter-ego: "[W]ith half his head shot away, Kenyatta tumbled forward and fell onto the superb shag rug." Superb. One can taste the syntax. Which makes Eddie B. Allen's poor performance all the more puzzling. Given the Life, he too often chooses another. A chapter entitled "Publisher" begins with a few points on Sydney Poitier before bandying about blaxploitation (which he defines!) in characters like John Shaft. When at last Allen sees fit to hit on Holloway House, the pulp mill behind the pulpist, he mentions that "the young woman handler [who?] had briefly attended Tuskegee Institute at the same time as Ralph Ellison." So what? Then our peripatetic pal gets to Goines with some of the most pitiful clichés unimaginable: women "flocked to him like sheep being herded"; "prison was an obvious place where the men inside had lots of time to reflect and consider the opinions about the world outside." Sometimes Allen gets just plain meaningless: "He became a fascinating figure, whose very presence was intriguing." And if "[t]he cultural aesthetic of L.A. had changed, of course, by the [time Goines got there]," why waste nearly six pages mentioning it? In the end, though, Allen comes through. The final chapter "Prodigal Son" is the kind of exposition Goines deserves: a look at the life that ties the Life to the work. This is what we've been waiting for: an investigation into the composition of a con. Why it was saved for a summation is anyone's guess. Despite the straight-to-video release of Crime Partners (with Snoop Dogg and Ja Rule), and the nearly similar fate of the DMX vehicle Never Die Alone, Goines' Hollywood day may yet come. Meantime, we have the texts—heavy-duty, action-packed pitch-black pulp. If you've got to take the Low Road to get there, take it. So long as you know what you're in for. (Originally published on November 23, 2004 in NY Press. Now available here: http://therealjohnhood.com/bookem/low...)

2022-11-14 16:42