[In the following review, Hunter outlines the principal themes of Soul on Ice.]

Eldridge Cleaver is a 33 year-old black man, an ex-convict and former Muslim whose book, Soul on Ice, strongly affirms what the Commission on Civil Disorders just told us about our country. In Cleaver's words: "Old funny-styled, zipper-mouthed political night riders know nothing but to haul out an investigating committee to look into the disturbance to find the cause of the unrest among the youth. Look into a mirror! The cause is you, Mr. and Mrs. Yesterday, you with your forked tongues."

Without the report, it is easy to imagine that Cleaver's statement—a collection of essays written in prison—would probably have been written off by the inattentive uncommitted as the rantings of still another extremist. But Cleaver has an answer for that anyway: "We are a very sick country—I, perhaps, am sicker than most. But I accept that. I told you in the beginning that I am an extremist by nature—so it is only right that I should be extremely sick." Chances are good, however, that both Cleaver and the Commission on Civil Disorders will have a hard time gaining ground, particularly since the general consensus is that the people with the power to do anything simply are not listening.

Unlike this particular Commission, Cleaver started to sense that something was wrong in 1954. He was 18 years old and had just been sentenced to prison for the possession of marijuana. The Supreme Court school decision was a month old. But the decision itself was not what sparked Cleaver. "Prior to 1954," he writes, "we [Negroes] lived in an atmosphere of novocaine. Negroes found it necessary, in order to maintain whatever sanity they could, to remain somewhat aloof and detached from 'the main problem.'" But, he says, what moved him was the ensuing controversy over the decision—"what to do with blacks." "I was soon aflame with indignation over my newly discovered social status, and inwardly I turned away from America with horror, disgust and outrage."

From that point on, Cleaver is caught up in a slow, sometimes twisted, always fascinating process of becoming. Early on, he is released from prison, only to be returned again, this time for raping a white woman. "I did this consciously, deliberately, willfully, methodically—though looking back I see that I was in a frantic, wild and completely abandoned frame of mind. Rape was an insurrectionary act. It delighted me that I was defying and trampling upon the white man's law, upon his system of values, and that I was defiling his women—and this point, I believe, was one of the most satisfying to me because I was very resentful over the historical fact of how the white man had used the black woman. I felt I was getting revenge."

This last appears in an essay which is the first of the "Letters From Prison" section of the book; all of the "letters" were written in 1965. Here is one of the places that those who would cure the ambiguous ills of society must look to find the root causes, as well as the barriers that conceal these causes:

"Many whites," Cleaver writes, "flatter themselves with the idea that the Negro male's lust and desire for the white dream girl is purely an esthetic attraction, but nothing could be further from the truth. His motivation is often of such a bloody, hateful, bitter, and malignant nature that whites would really be hard pressed to find it flattering. I have discussed these points with prisoners who were convicted of rape, and their motivations are very plain. But they are very reluctant to discuss these things with white men who, by and large make up the prison staffs. [My italics.] I believe that in the experience of these men lies the knowledge and wisdom that must be utilized to help other youngsters who are heading in the same direction. I think all of us, the entire nation will be will be better off if we bring it all out front. A lot of people's feelings will be hurt, but that is the price that must be paid."

Cleaver is what might be called an involuntary participant-observer. A child of the South, and then of Watts, he is on easy terms with most of the other black prisoners whose backgrounds are, in one sense, similar to his own. In his letter on Watts, he talks about their shared identity and vicarious participation in the riot: "It was a cleansing, revolutionary laugh we all shared, something we have not often had the occasion for." And yet, unobtrusively, he is also set apart from them: his cell is in the honor block, where he spends approximately 17 hours a day; he takes his showers in the bakery—"to avoid the crush"; his reading list is formidable; and he writes about himself and them, as well.

He is critical of laggardly Negro spokesmen, and yet, he is not a nihilist like so many of his contemporaries who share his revolutionary zeal more than his sense of history. He can tear the system apart, but, unlike them, he has a few ideas about how to put it back together again. "The white youth of today are coming to see, intuitively, that to escape the onus of the history their fathers made they must face and admit the moral truth concerning the works of their fathers…. When speaking of juvenile delinquency, or the rebellious attitude of today's youth, the elders employ a glib rhetoric…. The foundations of authority have been blasted to bits in America because the whole society has been indicted, tried, and convicted of injustice. To the youth, the elders are Ugly Americans; to the elders, the youth have gone mad …" Cleaver applauds the white youth, "now taking the initiative, using techniques learned in the Negro struggle to attack problems in the general society."

His other essays, sometimes more formal, sometimes less clear, but still highly readable and often witty, cover a wide variety of subjects including black and white prisoners' reactions to the assassination of Malcolm X; a highly critical piece on James Baldwin; good words for, among others, Norman Mailer, Thomas Merton, Muhammad Ali and a sympathetic prison teacher named Chris Lovdjieff; and a particularly interesting point of view expressed in his essay "Rallying Around the Flag": "What the Negro now needs and consciously seeks is political and economic power. And ultimately we shall witness the merging of the Negro revolution with a broader movement demanding disarmament and conversion of the economy to peaceful purposes. This prospect, of an alliance between the Negro revolution, the new left and the peace movement, fills the power structure with apprehension: witness the furious reaction provoked by Martin Luther King when he called for the cessation of American bombings of North Vietnam, negotiations with the National Liberation Front, and admission of China into the UN."

Soul on Ice is not a book about the prison life of a black man, although a very good picture of prison life does emerge secondarily. The book is about the imprisonment of men's souls by society. This, of course, can happen outside prison walls too, but if you're a black man in this country, you stand an excellent chance of having as your ultimate frame of reference a jail cell.