THE LAST DAYS OF LOUISIANA RED

by Ishmael Reed ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 22, 1974

This time it's concentric historic and mythic rings of a Conspiracy against black men and white women that only Ishmael Reed, with his enormous post-rational leaps of causality, could devise -- and only detective Papa LaBas, ""the leading occult troubleshooter in the country,"" could solve. Louisiana Red Corporation is a criminal mail-order house specializing in juice boxes, black record companies and hard drugs. It's a quack operation founded by New Orleans witch Marie whose guiding spirit is Minnie the Moocher (like Cab Calloway's song), an emotional and psychic thief who lives off the energy of her victims -- all of whom are later embodiments of Antigone -- a wrong turn, by Reed's account, of the course of civilization. And it also happens that the assassinated patriarch of the Yellings' Solid Gumbo Works dynasty (which is the only alternative to the Red peril) has a daughter named Minnie, leader and theoretician of a group of militant Berkeley radicals called the Moochers. Relief chapters are narrated by a black minstrel named Chorus who holds an old grudge against an actress starring in Antigone who once upstaged his act, and the dialogues of some street people Moochers named Andy and Kingfish and their moralistic compatriot Amos, a loyal Worker for Solid Gumbo. Why Yellings was eliminated (he was working on a cure for heroin addiction) and whodunnit (industrial spies including a black mammy in love with a white man) is no more a mystery than the conclusion of any Greek drama or super-detective story, even though ""there will always be Louisiana Red."" Reed's hoodoo/mojo/gris gris/Mumbo Jumbo has a wickedly funny vitality that undermines white European ideology. He's a very important novelist.

Pub Date: Oct. 22, 1974

ISBN: 1564782360

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1974

Categories: FICTION