August 2019 - Dopefiend

[Melki, Femme fatale]

Donald Goines, the African American writer who turned out 16 novels under his own name and his pseudonym "Al C. Clark" during his brief literary career, was born in Detroit in 1937. In 1952, Goines enlisted in the US Air Force at the age of 17, lying about his age to get in. During his three-year stint in USAF, he became a heroin addict while stationed in Korea and Japan. Unable to get straight, Goines turned to crime to support his habit. In addition to theft and armed robbery, he also engaged in bootlegging, numbers running and pimping. In and out of jail, he was incarcerated for a total of six and one-half of the first 15 years after he left the service. He wrote his first two novels while in prison.

Inspired by writer Iceberg Slim's book Pimp: The Story of My Life, Goines wrote his semi-autobiographical Whoreson, which was published in 1972. Our August selection, Dopefiend, was his second novel. His style was unpolished, and rough, and his words liberally dependent on the language of the streets.

Between five and ten million of Goines books have been sold, though his work did not receive much critical attention until the hip hop generation, which he influenced, became a cultural phenomenon. Goines' books have inspired gangsta rappers from Tupac Shakur to Noreaga as a new generation of rap-influenced African Americans adopted the long-gone writer as part of their cultural heritage. Goines' works reflect the anger and frustration of African Americans as a people. The hip hop generation was sympathetic and accepting of Goines' rejection of the values of white society.

Donald Goines and his wife were shot to death on October 21, 1974 under circumstances that remain a mystery. Some people believe they were killed in a drug deal that went wrong.

Thirty years after his death, Donald Goines's novels are as relevant as they were in the early 70s, offering a picture of a lifestyle immersed in violence, sex and drugs.*

Dopefiend is his classic descent into the junkie's harrowing nightmare...

*Adapted from the IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood - https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0324786/bio

[Lawrence]

Looking forward to this.

[Melki, Femme fatale]

Lawrence wrote: "Looking forward to this."

My copy is at the top of my teetering stack one of my teetering stacks.

[Tom]

I listened to about half of this relatively short novel but decided I had to stop. Not that it is badly written, quite the contrary, but it is such a gut-wrenching description of a young woman's descent into addiction that it sucked all joy out of my life while I was listening to it. It's not what I call entertainment.

[Lawrence]

Tom wrote: "I listened to about half of this relatively short novel but decided I had to stop. Not that it is badly written, quite the contrary, but it is such a gut-wrenching description of a young woman's de..."

Not that I relish this sort of thing, but your description intrigues me even more. Waiting for the book to be transferred to my library.

[Melki, Femme fatale]

Starting this one tonight, with some trepidation, I might add, after Tom's comment. I already have my super-happy-funtime-followup book picked out to chase the blues away when I finish.

[Melki, Femme fatale]

Done!

While not the feel-good novel of the year, this was certainly an excellent read, and well worth your time.

I'm willing to send my copy to a group member (sorry - US residents only) who wants to participate in the discussion. For a book that was only printed in 2004, it's in terrible shape - yellowed pages, and obviously perused by many - but it's a perfectly readable copy. PM me your address, and I'll trot on down to the post office.

[Lawrence]

I'm a mere 40 pages in. It will not be everyone's cup of tea. It is harsh, it is graphic, it is real.

[Lawrence]

I enjoyed this book and i'm not sure if that makes me a little twisted. If I had more available free time, I would have finished this in a day or two. What a bleak look at lives that spiral out of control into an abyss that few are able to escape. Terry had no chance once Porky engineered the addiction.

Quite often we think of noir having a central criminal caper. This book is riddled with crime and unspeakable activity all centered around the needle. Wow.

[Samantha]

I listened to this one on audiobook and breezed through it. I work in a courthouse and we see the effects of heroin daily. It is pretty safe to assume that if someone gets a bunch of theft cases in a short span of time they're feeding a habit. If you compare mug shots of people over the span of a few years, the people devolve into elderly people with bad skin, missing teeth, dead eyes because of the drug. We hear about babies born addicted and how it affects their lives. We see women in prostitution controlled by their pimps through drugs. This book depicts this world amazingly well, which makes sense since the author was part of that world himself.

[Girard]

I don't have anything new to add to what's been written, but wanted to say that I enjoyed this book, if "enjoyed" is the right word. It is well-written in a plain, just-the-facts style, that captures a slice of mean & brutal life. I picked up a few other Goines books, and will add Iceberg Slim's Pimp: The Story of My Life to my too-long TBR list.

[Melki, Femme fatale]

Girard wrote: "I don't have anything new to add to what's been written, but wanted to say that I enjoyed this book, if "enjoyed" is the right word. It is well-written in a plain, just-the-facts style, that captur..."

I agree with your sentiment - "enjoy" is probably NOT the right word, but I DO want to read more Goines.

[Lawrence]

Girard wrote: "I don't have anything new to add to what's been written, but wanted to say that I enjoyed this book, if "enjoyed" is the right word. It is well-written in a plain, just-the-facts style, that captur..."

I did the exact same thing adding the two books you mentioned...

[Still]

Melki wrote: "Donald Goines, the African American writer who turned out 16 novels under his own name and his pseudonym "Al C. Clark" during his brief literary career, was born in Detroit in 1937. In 1952, Goines..."

Read it and thanked Melki.
Wouldn't have ordered the book from Amazon had I not read her review.
So -you know- thanks.
The book?
Yeah. It addled me.

[Melki, Femme fatale]

Still wrote: "The book?
Yeah. It addled me. "

It's good to be shaken up, and taken out of our comfort zones now and then.

[Jay]

Goines’ publisher, Holloway house, in the late 60s published classic erotica, anthologies of stories from men’s magazines, sexology, erotology, and African-American interest books, including Iceberg Slim and Goines.

This was the period when paperback original crime, horror, adventure, and westerns morphed into soft-core erotica, first in 1959, after _Lady Chatterley_ was “de-censored” and then, in 1968, when the courts decided that a newsstand hardcore materials would no longer be prosecuted in federal courts. So paperback publishers no longer needed to relegate explicit sex to one ingredient in genre novels. They could specialize in sex, serial killers, horror, and various kinds of perverse underground criminality. Holloway House’s version was the ghetto hard man’s adventures.

There are some similarities between Goines’ novel and pulp crime of the 50s. Violence, urban downscale setting, a pervasive ethos of inadequacy and bitterness, a struggle to escape, brutal fights to the point of death. The chief difference is in this pulpish world, there will be no help from an unexpectedly generous source of any kind, nor any sense of justice or concern for the “common good.” Even so, the endings suggest some kind of revival of self-respect.
_Dopefiend_ is a revelation. It describes not only the horrors of addiction but the total helplessness of users who live in poverty and squalor. They have no one to help them. Teddy and Terry turn on each other, under the influence of the unearthly need for the fix. Goines describes the puss, blood, collapsed veins, skeletal appearance as flesh collapses into bare bone. The search of a place to hit a vein is painful to read. But he does not do so melodramatically. The writing is not only precise and colloquial (as pulp had to be), but clinical.

And yet, he achieves compassion. Terry and Teddy fight and cheat, but they still feel for each other. It is submerged in the need for the needle. Even the villainous, sexually insatiable, grossly cruel mountain of flesh, Porky, has a kind of need, however degraded, for Smokey. The scenes with Terry and her middle class family are deeply affecting. Deftly, Goines paints for us the clean interracial Detroit neighborhood they have made their home. She asks herself how she can lie to them as she does, and at the same time bow to her god, the smack. Finally, her father discovers her addiction, and this is a powerful , unique confrontation. Further, she has used the n-word, which he had vowed to respond to with hate.

Thanks to Melki for suggesting this novel. It is definitely a variety of pulp crime fiction from the end of the classic period, and Goines, like Iceberg Slim, are among the best of the genre’s artists.

[Girard]

Jay, thanks for the background on Holloway House, and your thoughtful comments on Dopefiend. And yes, thanks to Melki also for putting it on the list. Goines is an author who has been on my TBR list for too long.