Synopses & Reviews
When Papa LaBas (private eye, noonday HooDoo, and hero of Reed's ) 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, exposes the hypocrisy of contemporary American culture and race politics.
Review
"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." Time
Review
"Funky, hip, and cool . . . The language is re-cycled garbage that sometimes, amazingly, becomes poetry and almost always is authentic, alive." Choice
Review
"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." Village Voice
Review
"This novel disguised as a verbal comic strip is brilliant and funny." Library Journal
Review
"Reed at his bravura best in the use of language and parody." Publishers Weekly
Review
"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." The New York Times
Review
"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." The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
" blends paradox, hyperbole, understatement and signifyin' so expertly you can almost hear a droll black voice telling the tales as you read it."--
About the Author
Ishmael Reed is the author of over twenty-five books--including Mumbo Jumbo, The Last Days of Louisiana Red, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down and Juice!. 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" as he calls it. Founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley for over thirty years, retiring in 2005. In 2003, he received the coveted Otto Award for political theater.