Holloway House and the rise of Black urban literature

By Lee Linn

While the Harlem Renaissance in the first third of the twentieth is considered a golden age in African American culture, including literature, music, stage performance and art, by the mid 1960s another Black literary phenomenon had surfaced, paperbacks aimed at a Black working class market, featuring hit men and detectives, pimps and prostitutes, drug dealers and addicts, coming not out of Harlem but Chicago and Detroit, and published by the Los Angeles publisher, Holloway House.

These Holloway House first editions are now a significant collecting genre, sought by private collectors and university libraries alike.

Founded in 1959 in Los Angeles by Bentley Morriss and Ralph Weinstock, Holloway House first published an eclectic mix of high-and low-brow material, including skin magazines Adam and Knight, biographies about Jayne Mansfield and Ernest Hemingway, and the literature of Casanova and the Marquis de Sade.

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However, following the Watts uprising in 1965, and the focus on Black writers created by the Watts Writers’ Workshop, the company switched gears and began to focus on black urban literature. a niche filled by no other publisher. These were all paperbacks. Their authors included Iceberg Slim (Robert Beck), Joseph Nazel, Leo Guild, Roosevelt Mallory, Odie Hawkins, Robert DeCoy and Donald Goines. One of their early editors was Wanda Coleman, a well-respected poet involved with the Watts Workshop.

Iceberg Slim, whose legal name was Robert Beck, is probably best known for Pimp, an autobiographical look at the seamy underworld of the Chicago sex trade in the middle of the 20th century. He went on to write several novels, including Trick Baby, The Long White Con and Mama Black Widow, as well as The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim. Trick Baby was made into a movie. Iceberg Slim sold more than six million books before his death in 1992, and is one of the two most important writers at Holloway House. The other is Donald Goines.

Donald Goines was from Detroit, where he lived most of his life. During his time in the Armed Forces he developed a heroin addiction, which led to a series of crimes to support his addiction. He began writing while serving a sentence in Michigan’s Jackson Penitentiary. Goines attempted to write Westerns, but after reading Pimp, turned to Black urban fiction. He wrote at a frantic pace, some books taking only a month to complete. According to his sister, he did so to prevent his returning to a life of crime, relying on the profits from his books to support his drug habit. His first book was Dopefiend, published in 1969, and followed by 15 more. This included four Kenyatta novels, published as Al C. Clark. Bentley Morriss had Goines publish under a pseudonym to first quarter 2024 book lovers’ paradise magazine avoid having the sales of his books suffer due to too many. coming out at once. He was murdered, along with his common-law wife, in their apartment in Detroit in 1974. After his death, Holloway House re-released all of Goines’ books, using the first edition text blocks, the same front cover, but a blurb on the back about his murder. This can make identifying first editions tricky if one is not aware of this.

Joseph Nazel was probably the most prolific of the Holloway House writers. By the time of his death in 2006, he had written more than 60 books, most of them published by Holloway House, many under pseudonyms, including Dom Gober (Gober was his middle name.) One of Nazel’s HH associates, Emory Holmes III, wrote, “Joseph could write a novel – some of them glorious, some of them god-awful, some under his own name, some under one of his dozen or so pseudonyms – in six weeks flat. And he did it as he was working full-time as an (underpaid) editor.” Nazel was also a mentor to many writers, including Holmes. His output included, as Holmes put it, “thrillers, biographies, histories and sappy romance.” The six volumes of Nazel’s Iceman series are his most popular books.

Roosevelt Mallory appeared on the scene in 1973 with the first of four Radcliff novels, Harlem Hit. Joe Radcliff was a “professional hit-man whose ruthlessness and expertise has earned him the title ‘Hit-Maker’ in international crime circles.” But after the four books, Mallory pretty much disappeared from the literary universe. Greg Phillips, writing in Crime Reads in 2019, tracked Mallory down and “revealed that Mallory, a IT director in their (Hewlett-Packard) Data Systems department, had been a high school dropout, though a top student and football player. He joined the Army, then the Coast Guard, where he became an electronics first quarter 2024 book lovers’ paradise magazine technician and then an instructor in electronics. When he was discharged, he entered the growing field of computers and in 1966 joined Hewlett-Packard as their first computer instructor. Mallory said he started writing the first Radcliff novel after seeing a blaxploitation flick about a hit man. “There were all these tough things going on but no continuity,” he said.

Leo Guild, has been called “the greatest hack ever,” and his books are evidence of the veracity of that statement. Guild’s promise to the stars was a simple one: Fill 50 one-hour audio tapes talking with me, and I’ll write your memoir. Jayne Mansfield, Bob Hope and Liberace are a few of the Hollywood stars receiving the Guild treatment. His career with Holloway House produced such “classics” as The Studio, Street of Ho’s and Black Shrink. While Guild’s writing skills may be in doubt, his name does appear on Some Like it Dark by Kipp Washington as told to Leo Guild. This book was Holloway House’s entry into the urban Black market. This book, which purports to be the work of a Black call girl, was published almost by chance and sales skyrocketed.

Odie Hawkins, is the author of more than 30 novels, screenwriter, original member of the Watts Writer's Project, known as The Underground Master. At the time his first novel, Ghetto Sketches, was published by Holloway House Hawkins was a screenwriter on Sanford and Son. Hawkins’ career has included novels, short story collections, screenplays, radio plays, theatrical plays, essays, newspaper columns, and teaching.

Robert DeCoy is best known for The Nigger Bible, first published in 1967. It is considered one of the true classics of the literature of the American Black experience. It is also first quarter 2024 book lovers’ paradise magazine perhaps the most elusive of Holloway House books, with the rare copy of a first edition going for more than $800. DeCoy is also the author of The Big Black Fire and Cold Black Preach’.

These are just a few of the Holloway House books and authors. When The Ridge Books began collecting HH about 15 years ago, a nice first edition copy of Dopefiend could be found for $30. I recently bought a copy for $200 and felt like it was a bargain. Prices for Goines, Iceberg Slim, DeCoy, Nazel and Mallory have increased with growing interest in the books partly fueled by generous endowments for the development of African American collections by university libraries

Because the books were so cheaply printed, it’s hard to find copies in very good condition, and nearly all have significantly tanned pages. But increased interest has also led to previously hidden copies being listed, so it is still possible to find first editions of many of the titles.

And if reading copies are what you want, the more popular Holloway House books have been reprinted a number of times and are fairly easy to find. Kensington Publishing acquired Holloway House in 2008 and began releasing Holloway House Classics.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Here at The Ridge Books, we try to keep a fairly good inventory of Holloway House books, but the more popular titles sell quickly. While it has been sold, our most prized HH book was a first of Goines’ Dopefiend, signed by Goines and presented to William S. Burroughs!

The Ridge Books was started in 1998 by my husband Bob Linn and I to reduce the number of books amassed by Bob, an English teacher. You can guess how well that worked! A first quarter 2024 website, a database, workshops and seminars followed. Books that sold were quickly replaced by many others, book fairs fueled both sales and acquisitions, and after Bob’s retirement, he devoted more and more time to the books. After Bob’s death in 2020, I continued with the business, branching out into the new virtual book fairs.

Odie Hawkins, whose first novel was Ghetto Sketches, (above left) was a screenwriter for Sanford and Son when his book was published. Iceberg Slim is best known for Pimp, which influenced Donald Goines to begin writing Black urban fiction.

There is a saying that the aim of a bookseller is to die with first quarter 2024 no books left, but most of us in the field don’t see that happening. “St. Peter, I’m expecting a shipment of books any day now – please be sure I get it. I can’t wait to have Shakespeare sign a copy of Macbeth.” first quarter 2024

Iceberg Slim, whose real hame was Robert Beck, sold more than six million books before he died in 1992.

Lee Linn owns The Ridge Books in Calhoun, Georgia. She is a cohost of Rare Book Cafe, a streamed video program devoted to rare and collectible books, and related items. It is available on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, and is made possible by the Florida Antiquarian Book Fair and Biblio.