[In the following essay, Nower discusses literary and historical antecedents of key themes of Soul on Ice, emphasizing the national hypocrisy of white Americans in reference to freedom, justice, and personal and political self-determination among black Americans.]

[The following excerpt was taken from an interview with Cleaver conducted by Hentoff for Playboy Magazine.] PLAYBOY: You have written [in Soul on Ice] that "a new black leadership with its own distinct style and philosophy will now come into its own, to center stage. Nothing can stop this leadership from taking over, because it is based on charisma, has the allegiance and support of the black masses, is conscious of its self and its position and is prepared to shoot its way to power if the need arise...

[In the following excerpt, Reid-Pharr analyzes several homosocial incidents in Soul on Ice as evidence of Cleaver's unsuccessful attempt to define a universal black masculine identity.]

Reviewing Eldridge Cleaver's second book, Post-Prison Speeches and Writings, demands a critical license like that of reviewing the aspects of a man's life which consigned him to purgatory. Moreover, the review itself can offer little promise of comfort and less in the way of advice to the man in question, whose likely response would be: "If I could live life all over again, I'd do the same thing." There is, then, but one legitimate line of investigation, since we already k...

[In the following obituary, Kifner details Cleaver's literary career and traces the achievements and disappointments of his life.]

[The following essay was first published in The New Republic, March 9, 1968.] There is a growing body of black writing which is not to be thought of simply as writing by blacks. It is not something susceptible of being democratized and assimilated in the same way that writing by Jews has been. The movement there was, very roughly, from Jewish writing to Jewish-American writing to writing by authors "who happen to be Jews." But the new black writing I am talking about isn't the work of a...

[In the following obituary, Warren recounts the "often perplexing, often tragic series of zigzags" in Cleaver's life.]

[In the following review, Hughes situates the themes of Soul on Ice in the context of American race relations at the middle of the twentieth century.]

The movement of Americans of African ancestry to fulfill the vision of a necessary, if unpromised, land boasts its ranks of orators, defenders spiritual and real, legal philosophers and paralegal militants, prophets, and martyrs. So much is to be expected. But is it not strange that this movement has produced no satirist, no one to do for black and white what [Jonathan] Swift did for Ireland and England?… Why is there nobody but the Smothers brothers to whip out the moral dilapidation at the base of ...

[In the following review, Hornak compares Soul on Fire to Cleaver's previous writings, perceiving a distinct change in his literary style and tone.]

[In the following obituary, Barnes provides an overview of Cleaver's life and career.]

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

The political transformation of Eldridge Cleaver is one of the most profoundly interesting human dramas of our era. However, tracing his evolution is less my concern than the content and clarity of his thinking. Cleaver is saying many things that badly need saying and that are either not being said or not being said so well. Cleaver's message is to remind us just how revolutionary the democratic idea really is. His emphasis on the importance of democracy may seem commonplace, but his views are powerf...

[In the following review, Hood describes aspects of Cleaver's polemics in Post-Prison Writings and Speeches, concentrating on his sexual and social reform theories.]

[Cleaver's] volume of "post-prison" writings and speeches (a phrase stamped on the book jacket and used as part of the title on the title page, no doubt to squeeze out every last drop of sensationalism) … is sheer polemics. Even worse, it is mere propaganda. Manifestoes, diatribes, threats, exhortations—the whole bag of propagandist tricks is here. Ostensibly to fill a political need. In actuality, to fulfill a simple economic greed: money. No, I'm not blaming Cleav...

[In the following review, Raggio explicates the main points of Cleaver's agenda in Post-Prison Writings and Speeches, separating his rhetoric from his insights on race relations.]

A little over 10 years ago I reviewed Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice [see excerpt above]…. I said then (and on rereading the book still think) that Cleaver was a gifted writer but one whose particular qualities of rage, resentment and quasimystical aspiration in a context of racial struggle put him outside many of our literary canons. The review led to an agitated discussion … in which I tried to refine and clarify the distinctions I had drawn in the first piece. The chief one was betwe...

[Soul on Ice] is one of the discoveries of the 1960s. In a literary epoch marked by a prevailing mediocrity of expression, a lack of substantial new talent, a kind of spiritual slough after the great wave of American writing from the 1920s to the 1940s, Eldridge Cleaver's is one of the distinctive new literary voices to be heard. It reminds me of the great days of the past. It has echoes of Richard Wright's Native Son, just as its true moral affinity is with one of the few other fine books of ...

All the essays [in Soul on Ice] deal with racial hurt, racial struggle, and racial pride. Mr. Cleaver is a black man, and he is not going to let either himself or anyone else forget that fact—in case it is possible for an American of either race to do so. Ralph Ellison and even James Baldwin want above all to be writers, and Cleaver says no, that is impossible, that is foolish, and certainly that is wrong. I am with Ellison and Baldwin all the way, but the author of a book with the stark, unrelenting...

[In the following essay, Hubbard and Grant profile the life and times of Cleaver, focusing on his spiritual conversion.]

[In the following review, Costello admires Post-Prison Writings and Speeches for its frank approach to American race relations.]

In "Soul on Ice," Eldridge Cleaver's reflections on the plight of American society somehow sounded like those of a prodigiously intelligent man describing a tree though never having seen one. Reading those prison essays, however, you knew that he had read and digested every manual on the subject. The result was, up to a point, brilliant and revealing. Beyond that point, lurked some empty although eloquent abstractions, patently incorrect in their assumptions, judgments and conclusions&#...

The madness takes its toll, but it should be clear, before all critical connection between the black and white sensibility breaks down, that, for the Negro writer, madness comes not in hating the white world but in hating it without style. A lucid rage can be an effective cultural weapon; literary delirium tremens can only bog down everyone's anger. This frenzy to set up an official literary barricade, to uncover symbols and tales which will promote some sort of atavistic tribal unity, can lead very ...

[In the following essay, Horowitz comments on the significance of Cleaver's "many changes of heart" during his lifetime.]

[In the following review, Johnson recounts Cleaver's life as related in Soul on Fire.]

[In the following review, Lehmann-Haupt appraises the insights of Post-Prison Writings and Speeches.]

The style throughout [Soul on Ice] is pop Leftism, a mixture of sex and revolution characteristic of the New Left around the world…. Horst Krueger describes this combination as it appears in West Germany: "the era of Sex and Socialism. Eros is on the Left and beautiful is our youthful rebellion. Make love and carry the banner of the Vietcong high." Cleaver adds to this a brashly violent note and a sure literary talent…. A Black Muslim who renounced Elijah Muhammed's teachi...

[Post-Prison Writings and Speeches] is hard reading, not because [Cleaver] has lost his gift for words, but because the cross and nails are so real, as is the unknowing assent to their use by the rest of us. The chase is real, the cruelty is inquisitional, the casualties and deaths paralyze the tongue. The book is no sequel, in any usual sense, to Soul on Ice. It emerges from a crowded life. The language straddles street and hermitage. The meditations and outrage that Eldridge shares come from immediate cri...

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 ...

Soul on Ice is a collection of essays straight out of Dante's Inferno. The hell is there, and its name is America. Cleaver takes the reader on a journey down into the bowels of the nation, stopping to explore many of the levels of suffering. What he has to say about the black man in America, about the mystique of the white woman, about black heroes and villains, about Vietnam, and about the whole insane racial fabric of this country is said with freshness and insight and a power of conviction that wi...

To: English Chairman From: Principal

[Soul on Fire] projects back to the sixties, when men and women, educators and policy-makers, blacks and whites were caught in a moral bind, demonstrating for human dignity and equal rights. And who better to articulate that era than a notorious black militant revolutionary? By and by, the book contains all the "whats" the reader may want to know about Eldridge Cleaver. It is a collection of the events of his life that shaped him into the man he was to become…. There is retrospection on...

[In the following obituary, the critic summarizes Cleaver's career.]