Hey all! Mostly got the one review today. Mithra Awards and best/worst of year lists soon!
Ishmael Reed, The Terrible Twos (1982) - Did I read this for my Gen X project, or out of general interest in the work of Ishmael Reed? Well, both- and yes, I know Reed was born in 1938, well beyond the cut off for the baby boom (though others tell me people born in 1940 are boomers, which, considering the actually observable demographic event this particular dumb generational label is named after…), let alone Gen X. Well, as it turns out, novelists don’t usually get going until late in life, compared to, say, popular musicians! That, and my projects tend to have an… expansive tendency. The way I figure it, Reed contributed to the cultural gestalt and to the range of possibilities present in late twentieth century literature (and today).
Reed is one of the few literary figures who actually deserves the appellation “trickster figure,” certainly among writers allowed into most “respectable” literary conversations. He was playing with form, history, and identity well before that became a quotidian thing in literature. This got him name-dropped in the “postmodernism” conversation, but in ways that made him mostly a background figure. You have to figure being funny and black had a lot to do with that. He also had a habit of picking fights. From what I can tell, Reed would choose to identify most with the fights he picks with writers he sees as misrepresenting the black experience- he had a column at Counterpunch for a long time where he savaged a wide range of writers for this. What stood out to me when I first started reading his books, eager after finishing the masterpiece of Mumbo Jumbo, were the results of fights he got into with Alice Walker, Amiri Baraka, and other “movement” writers. He didn’t like people telling him what to write, he didn’t want to keep his satirical gaze away from the big tasty sacred cows any movement sets up, and he certainly didn’t like when people like Baraka issued death threats as a means of cultural discipline.
He also didn’t like how many writers made their names on depicting black men as ravenous incestuous monsters. Fighting Alice Walker on this probably did the most damage to his legacy. How this came to be, happily for this review, enters into Reed’s unique style. Reed’s novels are conjurings- he summons up pastiche-worlds made of elements from history, myth, poetry, pop culture, headlines, anecdotes. Seer and trickster figures guide naïfs and sinners through these topsy-turvy conjured worlds through to some sort of conclusion- tragic, comic, apocalyptic, occasionally a cliffhanger. There’s speeches, in Reed novels. He lets many symbols speak for themselves, and some points to make themselves through the indirect method, but not all. So, when he decides he has beef with black feminist writers, his depictions of them, the speeches figures of wisdom make against them and their ideas… are pretty extreme.
Well- these fights did mark a turning point in Reed’s career, diverting what had been a pretty steady ascent. But what they don’t do is make a turning point in his writing, though from what I’ve read thus far he never quite got back to the vigor of his work from the sixties. Fights like that — and you have to figure he feels at least a little vindicated now that Alice Walker has outed herself as a lizard-people-believer — will drain you. But he kept going, keeps going. Among other things, to call Reed’s imagination “free ranging” is an understatement. He might have his grudges, but he builds their expression into new interests and approaches (and, sometimes, new bones to pick with new foes).
He seemed to be on something of a Rasta kick in the early eighties, to judge from The Terrible Twos! A “risto-Rasta” (aristocratic Rasta? Not sure if that’s right) little person hustler called Black Peter undertakes a campaign of satirical sabotage against a future economy seemingly based largely on… Christmas! I didn’t time it this way but it worked out. Reed predicts that the incoming Reagan administration would usher in a long dark time of consumerism, media manipulation, war overseas and against the poor (but not against the USSR!), and after twenty years or so of this, we have a brainless male model for President, a Christmas-themed megacorp running much of the economy, and Nicolaites trying to engage in some sabotage (most of them are useless white people, though- Black Peter has to show them what’s up).
I learned that the Book of Revelations mentions a sect, followers of Nicholas, as being especially vile heretics! That’s catnip for a writer like Reed, and he connects that Nicholas to Saint Nick and from there to… Haile Selassie? Why not? I don’t think Reed was pledging his troth to the Rastafari way… or maybe he was, for a bit, during his conjuring! In any event, Santa’s little buddy Black Peter sets up a surreal Christmas Carol situation for President Himbo to try to convince him to not go through with some heinous plans and to serve the people. We’re unsure if it works- there’s a Terrible Threes that he also published in the eighties, and apparently his latest, published this year, is The Terrible Fours!
There’s stuff you can ding The Terrible Twos for. There are some stereotyped depictions of black women (I wonder if they were meant to be anyone in particular- sometimes you want an Annotated Reed, where all of his asides against something in the newspapers he was reading at the time or against old enemies get explained to poor schlubs like me… not holding my breath!). There’s not a ton of plot- maybe more than Reed’s usual, but that’s not saying much. If you’re really opposed to the soapbox, you might want to stay away, though I am confident in saying Reed character speeches are really their own genre. Some of the points be tries to get across are a little… “newspaper op-ed writer on a slow day,” a little Andy Rooney- “Americans are like spoiled brats at Christmas etc etc.” You also get his by then habitual disdain for activist types and even a smidgen of the odd credulity he showed towards black-led strongman governments, ala Duvalier and Mobutu, around then too, part of his particular black masculinity thing. Still and all- I found it worth reading, and I do think Reed will be relevant for my project going forward.
I think we all know the REAL reason for the season!