There used to be a lot of nonsense written about black writers being outside the mainstream of American literature. This was because, for the most part, their work followed the protest tradition, and resisted the fads which sought to obscure the realities of history, economics, and the distribution of political power. Black writers, with varying degrees of success, clung stubbornly to the conviction that the black experience in America was worth exploiting. Now we know that it is worth more than most of us imagined, that it is integral to the American experience, not a marginal back street, and that the nation's survival may depend on how quickly it understands this and changes accordingly.

These thoughts are prompted by a remarkable book, Soul On Ice…. [Cleaver is] no stranger to violence, but neither are any of us any more. I feel more like a war correspondent as I sit down to review this book, for there are riots and fires raging in more than 100 of our cities and towns in the wake of the Memphis assassination. So I am only vaguely shocked when a friend telephones to say that Eldridge Cleaver has just been shot, and a fellow Black Panther member killed while attempting to surrender to the Oakland police. If that doesn't put our young writer into the American mainstream, which is violence, I don't know what will.

First it must be said that Soul On Ice is beautifully written by a man with a formidably analytical mind. His talent might have gone undiscovered and undeveloped had he not been busted by The Man at an early age and thrust into prison society, which really is just American society in microcosm, stripped naked. (p. 638)

Eldridge Cleaver, like all engaged artists (LeRoi Jones, the early [Jack] Kerouac, the early [Norman] Mailer, the early [James] Baldwin) makes you twist and flinch because he is no damned gentleman. He throws light on the dark areas that we wish he would leave alone. He is definitely not for everybody, and as much as I go for Soul On Ice, I realize that not all of him is for me. For example, I think that altogether too much space and soul-searching is devoted to the black male-white female hangup, a subject on which he can be maddening, but, I am sorry to say, terribly accurate. I doubt if many of his readers will care that he fell in love with his lawyer (happily a woman and presumably white), and they will wonder why in heaven's name he wants us to read their love letters. I didn't….

This brilliant book is only the first by Eldridge Cleaver. If he somehow survives the California cops for another year or two, God only knows what he will come up with next. Whatever it is, it won't put anybody to sleep. (p. 640)