The Last Days of Louisiana Red
Ishmael Reed
(Author)
Description
When Papa LaBas (private eye, noonday HooDoo, and hero of Reed's Mumbo Jumbo) comes to Berkeley, California, to investigate the mysterious death of Ed Yellings, owner of the Solid Gumbo Works, he finds himself fighting the rising tide of violence propagated by Louisiana Red and those militant opportunists, the Moochers. A HooDoo detective story and a comprehensive satire on the explosive politics of the '60s, The Last Days of Louisiana Red exposes the hypocrisy of contemporary American culture and race politics.Product Details
Price
$11.95
$11.11
Publisher
Dalkey Archive Press
Publish Date
May 01, 2000
Pages
180
Dimensions
5.46 X 8.41 X 0.49 inches | 0.5 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781564782366
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About the Author
Ishmael Reed is the author of over twenty-five books and plays, including Mumbo Jumbo, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, Flight to Canada, Conjugating Hindi, Why No Confederate Statues in Mexico, Why the Black Hole Sings the Blues, The Haunting of Lin-Manuel Miranda, and the Audible originals Malcolm and Me and The Fool Who Thought Too Much. He is also a publisher, television producer, songwriter, radio and television commentator, lecturer, and has long been devoted to exploring an alternative black aesthetic: the trickster tradition, or Neo-Hoodooism. A regular contributor to CounterPunch and founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, Reed taught at the University of California, Berkeley, for over thirty years. He has received the MacArthur Fellowship, the Los Angeles Times Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Award. Reed has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and is the only person to be nominated for the National Book Award in two categories in the same year.
Reviews
Funky, hip, and cool . . . The language is re-cycled garbage that sometimes, amazingly, becomes poetry and almost always is authentic, alive.
This is a very alive novel of living folklore; sometimes Reed's prose feels like walking through a field teeming with wild game which jumps out from under your feet.
Reed at his bravura best in the use of language and parody.
This novel disguised as a verbal comic strip is brilliant and funny.
A tangle of allusions, an allegorical puzzle that keeps the mind on its toes . . . Mr. Reed exercises in jokes and wisecracks, scholarship and satire. All of which makes for a frenetic form of vaudeville show.
Ishmael Reed has a shrewd eye, a mean ear, a nasty tongue . . . He attacks self-serving hypocrisy wherever he finds it . . . We may be horrified or amused or both. But we are too fascinated to go away.
Reed can hardly be accused of eye rolling and cakewalking for his supper. His angers and resentments are sheathed in intelligence, learning, scatological wit and showmanship. One thinks of Redd Foxx ...more before he was Sanfordized . . . Reed's approach to the novel is not unlike a Dixieland band's approach to music: a native American diversity that adds up to a unified style authentic and endlessly fresh.
This is a very alive novel of living folklore; sometimes Reed's prose feels like walking through a field teeming with wild game which jumps out from under your feet.
Reed at his bravura best in the use of language and parody.
This novel disguised as a verbal comic strip is brilliant and funny.
A tangle of allusions, an allegorical puzzle that keeps the mind on its toes . . . Mr. Reed exercises in jokes and wisecracks, scholarship and satire. All of which makes for a frenetic form of vaudeville show.
Ishmael Reed has a shrewd eye, a mean ear, a nasty tongue . . . He attacks self-serving hypocrisy wherever he finds it . . . We may be horrified or amused or both. But we are too fascinated to go away.
Reed can hardly be accused of eye rolling and cakewalking for his supper. His angers and resentments are sheathed in intelligence, learning, scatological wit and showmanship. One thinks of Redd Foxx ...more before he was Sanfordized . . . Reed's approach to the novel is not unlike a Dixieland band's approach to music: a native American diversity that adds up to a unified style authentic and endlessly fresh.
