Conversation with Ishmael Reed

Some of you may remember that I talked to Cecil Brown a novelist not very long ago and it was through Cecil Brown that I came to know something about Ishmael Reed. Mr. Reed is in the studio with me today and I'm going to turn the microphone over to him as much as I can because in talking to him before we came into the studio I find that he's very well able to explain himself without any prompting from me. So why don't you take it Ishmael and I'd like you perhaps to tell the listeners how you came into writing what your first motivation was when you started and then certainly review the work you have published and then take it from there. Well certainly I started writing in my teens as a matter of fact I was a bad student in high school. I went to a Technical High School for Girls. I had very bad counseling and I went to technical high school for two years. Just the place to send a poem

and I was I was taking courses like wood wood shop things like that. I remember wood shop. The first project was to make a box a little box full kit in which you put your tools you know for the wood shop course and I didn't finish that box I mean I was working on that box for the entire year cutting my fingers and. Well after all these Band-Aids you know working on that box I decided to go into an academic school and there was this was in Buffalo about York. And I finished my high school education in an academic school but the grades I had acquired in the technical school were so bad so awful like metallurgy I quit doing my metallurgy and used the place to raise on my little metallurgy hour then entered college on a like a provisional basis and a short story got me into day school I was attending night school on a short story a long time ago when I was like 19. Entitle something pure like

very idealistic and. A sophomore again it was based upon. So you h Auden's the age of anxiety which led BERNSTEIN It's set to music and I you know kind of kept it up I went into newspapers after the after after scholar and went to two and a half years of school and just couldn't even then I couldn't bring myself this way for black studies. I just couldn't bring myself I was majoring in American literature and American studies and I just couldn't bring myself to return to school to take a you know Ben Johnson seminar and I think I wrote one of my early papers was on Spencer and I you know had I wrote to the amazement not the amazement but the chagrin maybe of my professors that you know Spencer was all foreign to my sensibility I just couldn't handle it. You know Faerie Queene these kinds of things I was going into this like I'd kind of like setting and college and returning to the ghetto every day was just like and you know I was in

Congress so I worked on a newspaper kept writing worked on a newspaper in Buffalo called the Empire Star and a long play which I came to the attention of somebody in New York was working on Orwell movie script. Homage to Catalonia I believe in kind of like induced me to come to New York and I went to New York I lost the play and moved to New York it was really just the whole the whole thing is like a hundred dollar round automobile or broke down or something like it was a whole car. We're going to New York and finally you know I'm going to New York on a bus and with a poet friend of mine and I love that the car was abandoned so I lost that so I've been enjoying the umbra workshop which I think was the most important Well the most important black writing movements of the 60s and I think that people are beginning to do some research on it I think if it had been Black Mountain there'd be a lot of books on it but it was essentially a black

writer's workshop and I had the bus there were they didn't seem to move very much interest in it but it's interesting to note that so many of the people who are our leading know black novelists and poets they started out number workshop in New York it was a workshop that was begun by. Calvin Herndon whose who has two books out call the ones called Sex and racism in America which is published in by Grove Press in 1905 and Grove Press but Doubleday 96 white and white papers white Americans which is a follow up another book. And he's probably one of the best poets with international recognition of American POWs who are some of the other writers I was talking to who was the founder of the Southern Fried theater and David Henderson the author of a book of poems called the mayor of Harlem which will be published next Friday as a matter of fact he's a teaching us California-Berkeley now. He was one of the readers of the

program sponsored by being yes that yes he admits that he and his book is being published by E. P. Dutton if I can give a plug. It will be out this Friday and I think it will give an idea of some of deferment some of the excitement going on and in black writing or Afro-American writing whichever title of the writers would prefer to use. And there were there was a Norman Pritchard in H Pritchard who has a book out from he was a member the workshop he has a book out from Doubleday called Matrix. There was also an ox Raphael. The author of the controversial off-Broadway play Shea and there were number of people. In the workshop. Very fortunate coming together. Yes and it was you know there are people all kinds of opinions. After the workshop of some of these people went to Harlem to and were with Leroy Jones in the black arts repertory theater there was a Rolling Stones or of seeking Muhammad toward a

who was a fine poets black nationalist poets. There was Charles Patterson a playwright. He was also member around. He went up to Harlem afterwards and I think he's probably only play what I know about in American history who's had some play subpoenaed by Congress National Committee and there are all kinds of people of different opinions and different approaches to who were in the other workshop and I really think the Amber workshop was really the real the real beginning of my writing career because I was. I began to be published from the on the workshop and then I. What was your first published where the first published work was a work. Called. It was the arse belching muse or something like satirical work on some things I had seen in the you know in the arts in New York. And after that workshop kind of resolved dissolved and

went through a lot of hassles. David Henderson is the fortune of the editor of Enron I think the number will be out very shortly with the third issue. Then some you know painters I was living in in the east village I met some painters and poets who were like on the periphery of the Black Mountain movement and like what is called The New York School of poets. Unfortunate call your school porter and the lot of poets in New York who. It's kind of like a misnomer rather than these people. But I met Allen Katzman who has become often Doubleday varies in June called the Comanche candles and Water Board and Water Board and I. I actually can see the East Village Ehlers. I really like the mother of the underground newspapers. Yeah because of what happened when I got a job in Newark New Jersey as an editor of a newspaper called the advance which was for the black community and Water Board. I kind of like Commission all aboard to do the first dummy. The format of the paper

and out of this dummy he decided he wanted a paper for these village and this was the village elder which I named the other after various things. Yeah it's a good time for them. Number two were these kinds of things. The alternative then I worked on the advance newspaper which was involved I was involved in writing prose you know for months and that led to the freelance pall bearers of my first novel as I told you this is the one I have read The only novel of yours that I have read and I was tremendously struck by it. As I told you it's like nothing no other writer that I know of you have really achieved a unique style and approach and I want to ask you about it at some point but I think that you know now I think that somebody has observed that you know traditionally I think maybe in the 30s of the 20s and the 20s rationally when you know when a first novel was published there were like

people lying around like going to see you I'm curious yellow for the momentous event when the first novel was published in 1925 people would. You know lined all around the block to go into the bookstore to purchase a book and I think that then you know there was always a you know Western literature that. Seems to be based upon like a lawyers argument you know the idea of precedent and I think traditionally you know the writers would be influenced by other writers even in the black literature you'll find Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison saying that they were influenced by say Dostoyevsky or yes Stephen Crane on March 20. People like that but I think now with you know all kinds of media you know you can be taken off and I were so so the freelance Paul there is not really based upon say writing or you know doesn't the history of writing it's more based upon you know a lot of things like being in New York and most of

the volume of the freelance Paul there is very high no screening book and the idea of you know seeing movies and. Conversation all these things instead of just saying well you know Mark Twain Crane's a me or them. Yes well I see what you mean I mean you don't stem from a literary tradition so much as the contemporary scene. And it's true it's a very high decibel book. It's also very visual. And yeah I can see that the influences from headlines and what you might hear over the air you know what you might see on the street but the. Well both the humor of it and then the real savagery that's there I think probably are your own and maybe partly that you're black. But also I think you have a peculiar rage of your own that comes

out. The interesting you said the black business of my reading have become very personalized it was sensation of course universe California-Berkeley become very interested in that which I taught in nineteen sixty eight when I first came to California came ca. 1000 late late 1067 and to Los Angeles and started my second novel you know like radio broke down which is a Western On one level it's a western. And I came. Well I mean it's been been this receiver of favorable reviews in such places as Western round of rodeo magazine that's I guess because of the way it is for some you know moves paper in Medicine Bend Wyoming or someplace. I came here and I taught a course at the universe California Berkeley and I became very interested in black lives are coming from a white university actually a world which was involved in white studies you know I wasn't really exposed to black literature and I had some of the same prejudices many many many black and white people have in this country concerning

black literature thinking believing that perhaps you know black literature someone like Budd Schulberg said recently he gave a blurb to a very fine young black writer named Barry Blackman and when she said this is a continuation of Ed. which began with Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright and I can attain the same kind of pledges that you know maybe for Ralph Ellison was right that there was no one like Richard now. To my amazement and. A pleasure I find that there is a tradition I found that you know I meant in this tradition and you know even though I wrote this book before I read some of it serial for example of the some of the folk material which we call folklore I would call religious material art material but I you know folk usually means everything other than Christianity and Western culture. I found that you know it can be traced back to people like Oh well two poets in the 1000 black poets even before that in the 18th century people like anonymous people who were like actually soothsayers and

conjure men you know carrying on the African tradition where the poet is or the or the musician is not separated from the tribe actually he is a functional and he you know performs. The same kind of task that. You know when you when you see a bricklayer or a carpenter or he's I mean very necessary to the tribe and that tradition was continued here in America and in the plantations and in slavery it was really lost as a lot of scholars somehow believe that. You know when when blacks came here they began with zero you know. But that's not it. Not at all and you never will I'm sure they never really got you like like you know you never really can. If you go to you know you never can really you know. Like I keep a good church down a phony or keep a good car down it always just takes on another manifestation another form. So that's what happened here. And I find that found that life like a lot of our writers or oral poets in the 18th century 19th century and even in this century consciously or or.

Unconsciously use this tradition and I've been able to try to trace this back and find you know where what kind of vision I'm in. I recently finished an anthology which will be published in in August late August call 19 necromancers from now which I kind of like deal with that. Using poets who are in this tradition to kind of like set the stage for the contemporary writers I involve in the in the in the book and of significantly I find it amusing about seven people from West Coasters are amazing the kind of creative upsurge which hasn't been been documented to my knowledge only for this book. In Berkeley I mean you have you have I mean if I think of you know because of the racism it's this culture which goes from the military to the business to the art institutions you know it's very significant that like

they chose as president of the Metropolitan Museum of Art which I think you have like 11 painters out of a thousand or so people in there living like painters in clearance so races they chose Douglas Dillon to be the president of the Museum of the Metropolitan Museum of Art which called the Louvre of America. And he was like former secretary of treasury with the Eisenhower administration so I think they involve people whose mother feels to go the arts I mean the money simply Right now money is very important and I think if if if this were like a black white movement to be documented in Newsweek and TIME magazine and they give a name like I would call it like the black revival like you know Sam's disco Renaissance across the bridge. But here I think of this kind of excitement like Paul lofty who moonlights as a bartender at the albatross on San Pablo and a very excellent excerpt from a long very masterful novel that he wrote untitled novel for this anthology I have lost Cecil Brown of course you know her life a life loves Mr. jive ass negro I have Al Young Yes his weight had to be

I don't know there's you know when you Berkeley and who has a very fine book of poems out call dancing and novel snakes I have Victor had and his crews who's been on the West Coast. He teaches at Universal California Berkeley he's fortunate to be able to publish an excerpt from his first novel rhythm section part 1. Frank Chen who's. A Chinese-American writer living in San Francisco and publishing is going to have a choice excerpt from his novel The Chinese lady Di's in. Lot of people have critics and you have poet Sarah fabulous. Yes I know her where at and there's no sense I'm saying that Ortiz Walton he's not in this book but he is working on the best book on music black with the evolving both traditions black and Western that I know anything about and which is going to publish you know double the anthology called like this that could be out in October authored by a critic like critic named Addison some

saying is like like a lot of stuff going on right here in Berkeley that I think you're right we've had some very good poets primarily black poets and then you and I find that you know as well as like many poets the blacks out here in the West Coast are involved with the long form I don't know what that is I guess because a nice you have to you're compelled to go to so many cocktail parties. You don't have a last option so you want to poems when I hear you know that they are fun like long novels and I'm amusing all that and you know it's just it's going to be like a lot of people out of the 19 I think about half of them are from the West Coast. I think too and this may be for good and bad reasons both that the the outlet for black writing is is much greater than just a few years ago. There's kind of a fashionable thing and I don't always like the way this is handled but nevertheless I do think a black writer has a much easier time of it

than five years ago even don't you think. Well I don't know I I don't know I think that some black writers have always had an easy time these are you know black writers who are in the tradition that we would call it pulling Mrs. spokesman or what a very genius young black critic Ron Welborn teaches at the University of Arizona and whose reviews can be found in a newspaper that's very favorable to black literature cause I mean in the sense that it reviews you know books that come out that a lot of the people don't review like for example of a very fine book like that. No one in NH Prichard The Matrix has not received interviews but it's like really a unique book and Afro-American as well as any other tradition. The other thing is that I think the polemicists have always had a difficult I mean very simple time easy time going back to say David Walker Walker's appeal. I get kind of essay with which they plead the you know like mad idea like lawyers were pleading the black man's

case I think a very fine writer satirists black writer named Wallace Thurman who did have a very easy time died of 30 to the 1920s of the Harlem Renaissance period. He called these genres at the end it hard to be an egg a book you know which was to show the you know the injustices and the misery. That you know blacks and do it in this country that that has always had a very and I think an easy time. I think that the writers who go the way of say what shall we say art which does not mean that someone who writes a political book a book entirely of you know arguments which argument is a sole thing like it can't be an artist I think that there have been exceptions oldish cleaver for example I think and so on I stands up as work of art. Some of Baldwins some of all one's work stands up as art as well as being like the political kind of thing but I think the tradition of the writers who have tried to be experimental black writers have tried to make something or. Have

you know been BNL outcasts you know talk about say somebody's legs on Toomer we're going to say like I find it very syrupy and sentimental and this kind of thing like kind of high camp I mean there was a period in 98 he wrote it Kane he had a difficult time he sold I think 600 copies of his book whereas people who like being polemicist were like all over the place like were celebrities and someone that you know had a chauffeur or had a very expensive patronage You know one of them had a chauffeur who drove home Harlow had a chauffeur driven limousine drive to his home in Holland which is ironic that they had their kind of left out because I think that in this country and you find it in some of the reviews I'm not saying like all white reviewer because black reviews some black reviews do the same thing. They kind of like look they kind of like. Dismissed the The Black Rider who wants to innovate and there are many examples of that and I think this is partially this this comes from the left I mean I'm surprised I mean you know people who are very humane and very.

Compassionate are looking to a better way are looking to about a better world on many other issues you know like on on Razzi and ecology I mean they're all very fine people when it comes to art they you know there really isn't much difference between them. Their approach to black lives and say somebody like Spiro Agnew is approaching in that. The the the people go to way that are considered uppity. I mean if you had told him one thing you know like how difficult it's been are if you know like Ralph Ellison's debate with Irving However how is one of these people who you know you really really can't. He really can't accept a black book that doesn't as a Ralph Ellison says in his book of essays called Shadow and act portrayed the black person as like the abstract embodiment of living hell I think if I'm quoting him correctly and you know anybody else's dismiss He has like this very doctrinaire kind of like narrow approach to black literature he wants he wants the clenched fist of militancy which is funny I think it's I mean you know nobody worth his salt would you know would would not you know rage against all the oppression and racism this

country you know all the time I mean I consider myself. A propagandist on a level. But I think that there that doesn't take into account all the fine literature and the other literature that say someone who is subjective who's talking about like go moving at the problem of moving from one house to another. You know like Al Young doesn't you know dancing is interesting you know like Al Young's book I think one of the finest book books of poems come along but I don't think it will get the same kind of response that someone who would is like being you know purely political would be seen. Yes I'm afraid you're right. And I think Al Young knows this that this is today since the free lets Paul there is let me say one word. Yeah I'm not really castigating. I mean you know we're in a period of like you know like labels I'm not really castigating left for this I think that you know the right wing would be horribly racist but they don't read. I mean.

Yes I mean you know anything about art up there all of which is a very you know very very very significant that their leading spokesman is like in the old classes like William Buckley I think history for him ends with like you know antiquity. He's even he loves Rome and he's always referring to it and he speaks that way he doesn't speak a language that people around today speak I mean you know if you really need a newspaper you can find a kind of scent kind of like Latin syntax that Buckley even I mean it's significant that he's the only one in one of the few people who can go on we'll have to let you talk about Agnew speech where I understand was like a housewife or something. Yeah. To know how while Americans articulate I mean the things that the left people left read all the time in the most you know probably most creative people in the political spectrum and you know very interesting but they do. I do find his attitude I find of not only like whites on the left like Holland. Stevens unlike a lot of these people like he would like to work all like black missionaries you know. You know someone who works for a newspaper in which the managing editor said a few weeks ago when there were there was a strike at his plant in York City where we hire people who essentially agree with our political views how this person

is working for a lot of major organ and he's like the House critic for a very large newspaper and he has the same approach you know it's got to be you know books telling people to rise up and fight telling white people rise up and fight or whatever it is and he has this kind of narrow approach you know the idea of relevancy which is always vague because a you know what's relevant to one black person doesn't necessarily have the right of a person and he has the same kind of thing and so you find it coming from there and I just say that to say that I think that these people who are really are you know the vanguard and who are really out there attempting to make a better world. She don't want to you know check this out. You know that's on your book the one I have read is certainly an attack. America or at least the American Values that. Are. Denigrating older values. But it certainly isn't a polemic polemical book in any sense it is experimental it is I think art. I'm wondering if you're continuing in the later novels to make

an attack on the same sort of faults American there. There are consistent themes in you know from Paul Barry's even in the poetry I use poetry to as workshops. I consider like my writing poetry as a workshop for novels. When I wrote you know black radio I wrote cobble poems dealing with like a western cowboy you know a language in which you know you know you knew sources here at the Berkeley library. I mean if you want to know about the West you know really go to your public library. You you know read books that you know boy narratives like you know when by blacks like you know the Deadwood Dick the original Deadwood Dick was a black cowboy wrote his autobiography it was wonderful literature the term century it was amazing the eastern critics didn't even know what the term yellow back meant it was you know they thought well perhaps it's a mulatto. You know black is like a very well known for my genre.

Turn of the century kind of like a dime novel with yellow cover it was yellow covered it was like nearly lurid and sensational about the exploits of cowboys and what I wrote before Old Yellow back I was writing poems dealing with the kind of language like you know boning up and whippersnapper all these all these kind of ideas of being on a trail drive and you know I really worked out those problems amazing that you know it doesn't affect that poem is one of the poems a cowboy will rise and been published in several anthologies most recently the Norton Anthology which goes from the medieval era sweeping which predate Chaucer down to myself I mean using a cowboy. The thing here at the last page and so I was able to exercise in writing these poems building off the Yellow back so you know back there are consistent different kind of language of course there are consistent themes and pall bearers I used to come like the the the machinery of the the Gothic horrible crime like a castle out of Toronto by Walpole which is about 200 years old like the

900 century book up to like Abyan Castillo meets Frankenstein's kind of thing where the the giving of the American setting. I heard somebody read a paper on the station. KPFA Phil wrote a paper on Gotham although he said that the gothic novels usually And this is AFTER I wouldn't publish his golf and I was usually a Protestant formant rages against Rome and it's always about a decadent aristocracy and this kind of thing a peasant uprising that you get in Dracula Bram Stoker's book when you transfer this to America when I transferred it's a minute I get like a used car salesman the slave for Richard Nixon was like to present this kind of mediocre person who makes an impact make several OK certainly all but a voice nominate the idea that the will of the dictator and in this pall bearers is a Harry Sam you know who says you can't have a hero with a character in your book with or without with the first and last name you get to first name Terry Sam was like a used car salesman and he carried the Gothic Gothic thing and he lives a separate from his constituency.

I understand the New York Times all these guys and he's saying that well this is the president now is alone he's isolated but I mean this is all because 1960s he lives in a motel you know there is Sam motel and he has all the attributes of the the stock Gothic he's a vampire eats children all this kind of thing. And. When this is carrot he's surrounded by people who talk in gangsta language. Very interesting I think one of the errors that black novelist maybe for they always have like you know white Americans speaking very proper you know English if you see because I don't know big maybe because their hang ups are where they view America you know you look at Norton the philanthropist an invisible man he speaks very very well and I was you know always you know James Weldon Johnson or Byron a man he is like white speaking divine but I mean if you listen if you look at television as Verne's they had an argument with my editor when I wrote Paul there's a seat she said you just get why I still speak like this well why don't you turn on the Honeymooners. Yeah I mean I don't go to you know Chaucer or Shakespeare to find out how white Americans like eternal

honeymoon using Oh you look at Jackie Gleason's kind of thing or vanity So you see how people talk in this country. So they kind of speak like a gangster kind of I mean this one is jargon and they you know they they they ruled this mythical universe into the construct which is so much like the the dictator that the country's call Harry Sam. Yeah. From their residency they take a residency in a restroom in the bottom of the motel where Sam has been lodged for 30 years because he has his own as you know and when I carry this old yellow back it becomes drag Gibson the cattleman. That's one consistent thing he does the same kind of thing is a capital there's no pirate to run exploits and oppresses people and he he has these kind of ambitions. Yellow black ribbon 19. Which I wrote 19 starred in 1967. You know begins with the children.

You know kids of all races I mean I don't differentiate I see all children as one action of a racist child you know and put into them like right and they take over the town say they don't have dressing up like Indians and things like this and they run the older people out of town. It's dry Gibson's task is to get rid of the you know the kids and so he goes into the census. He has his sidekicks or the people on his ranch the foreman and all of the cowboys in the town the massacre of the children and what happens is that blue go to a kid who was a black cowboy with all kinds of you know symbols built in Avengers The murder of all the children. The people you know the black people that he came to. THOMAS They're like Cass you know the other people came to town with the Avengers and by using like you know magic this kind of thing you know. And so that's one consistent thing that has carried over into. Yellow back and some of the themes I find recur and I think you find a small writers and

you find them just certain even language you know certain kind of expressions that they use words even that and I guess is what you call style. So I say this there are consistent things. This one is much more complex than the one realizes it first and I take it the second one is to I think you know some of your reading in the library the illusions go on various levels and you kind of toss in an illusion here and there I'm always amazed to find Jessie Weston in here somewhere. And this is I've got to read the other one the more so in the first book than the second I think the first book was an attempt to you know use ideas that actually work. See that AC running as a function of imagination I think the writer will even when he's not typewriters really you know quote marks writing all the time. You know all the time and I want to. I really been thinking about these things for about eight years before I started the actual novel and you do find a war working out of things in there

that you know find yellow back and your back can be read everything from like God you know satan loose in the world to simple horse opera and I think that's what you what you try to do I think is what's old some of the kids black kids and you know whites and creative creative workshop creative writing workshops I try to find your own voice and you work through a lot of the things you've taken on for you to your yes twice now that the novel you're working on now is using the detective novel mumbojumbo Cathedral your title said oh you know I was accused by some critics of just you like surprising not black critics you know some of them were writing mumbo jumbo. I'll look at mumble jumble for example as I was like really. The prototype of like a racist term you know in that in that you know anybody who is not a Christian you know when a Christian society and it's gonna

spill over the ideas of brown spillover to politics you know it's nominally Christian. Well I mean in the sense that maybe you know the intellectuals are extensions us or it is but I mean when you hear people like Jerry Ford the football player who's like has won the most powerful position in politics he talks about you know Christianity and and puritanism and Billy Graham you know Billy Graham is the official magician statement yeah. Decidedly was Dr.. Yeah right so so the you know the millions millions of people in you know when you when you when you want to know about America but you don't go to somebody someone like you know are you know going to an intellectual you know you get you go to the masses I think many of them believe in a physical hell heaven and they have all these best you areas positive I mean of the exotic Orientals and the yellow peril of this kind of thing you dealing with folk stuff. Think of what you have to deal with. They they they they believe these things and Christianity spills over into the universities and as many Thank you you know they're the Western University up until like the armed onslaught of like black studies and Chicano studies I think has been you

know primarily a place where you produce Christians and you know blacks and whites go through this. This is process so you know you find black critics and mice and he's talking mumbo jumbo why I became intrigued so I researched you know the etymology of you know mumble jumble or this or this expression and really is ready made for for what I'm doing mumbojumbo is is among them and they know people in the Sudan the priest who protects the tribe from evil. So I think that's appropriate I use that mumbo jumbo Cathedral which is like actually a metaphysical type. There are no there are no murders and there's it's like a kind of. A cult who do Detective Private Eye I mean like Horace peace who is you know in conflict with a lot of people who were representing what in this case and a patron of the arts who's a follow up Andre Perry Sam who really can't mind all business and they're always kind of like a metaphysical problems and crime for crimes like cultural crimes have been

committed cultural genocide. You know the idea that like oh you can't get you can get like crane in L.A. and people like that in print and definitely belike black writers in this country like oh what a sermon. WALLACE Senator Thurman's important book infants of the spring is even out of print you can't get it and they don't. So this is kind of approach I'm using in this this new book in which ultimately the protagonist you know creates his own system which I find in who do is it. Though this kind of improvisation improvident or a religion that can accommodate in this art forms is not the kind of thing you find the west where you know punish the heretics at home and murder the infidels abroad you know. You know intolerance is something that everybody can do and you find manifestations of who now you never can keep a religion or an arc down as I said before and I see you know when when people at Woodstock you know doing black dances which are originally a sacred dances are still sacred dances. You know there are more people at Woodstock doing the Boogaloo you know than saying Harry Krishna Iyer

I mean you know so American intellectuals are trying to find alternatives to like these old institutions didn't I was something years that are intolerant and kind of closed and narrow. We're going we're going our way there some of us in this country are going our way which we see who do as an ascetic and a surprising if I said it was dada people would understand that or I would say of surrealism they want to stand that you know and say who do well they say well what's this is mumbo jumbo but I think that that is leading many of us musicians as well as you know writers to we're trying to construct our own a static and. And paralleled with this there are other people other black writers who are attempting to you know construct their aesthetic people going to is a land war in other places or Africa or South America. You know a lot of black painters and like writers who understand South America for myself I find you know my own place interesting enough and you know I find that maybe this may be the same errors I don't know why I like to see how they work it out maybe the same

era. That the you know around the 20s the early white writers mean when they say they saw Europe you know which is still going with a they felt that they had to go to Europe to turn their back or right turn their back on what's happening here. So we we are trying to construct a minister going to formally you know black writers felt that the novel or you know that the poem ended with like the end you know the last line. But you have to do more you have to you have to you know say what you're doing and you have to try to you know find a consistent static you know someone in the black right in the 30s would like to look at some of these are these are questions that Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison were involved with you know they were always talking about Stephen Crane or you know Mark Twain even now you know I read the blackish of the New York Times or the Time magazine which Allison wrote. Well you know they always ask this question of you know what would happen if blacks weren't here you know if they were asked like what would happen to white you are probably better than Indians in Buffalo but I mean like I'm

going to. Beautiful water you know just understand the the chill the Pacific the Pacific and then Ocean the Pacific be alive and full of fish and the sea otter would be around but I mean they always you know what would happen is always like a perennial question what would have been blacks were here so we're like they're going to stay here. We've been here like longer than most people you know the I think of many white Americans are finding or defining and American identity have to go the Indians and blackness that's what's happening now but the question is he said that the problems he said that well blacks are here if blacks weren't here there would be no great literature like you know plotters use of blacks in his literature or there'd be no literature like you know Stephen Crane or you know Mark Twain he didn't mention a single black writer. Isn't that amazing I mean and you know I'm saying that that that's his generation I mean I don't and I castigate I think that invisible man is like you know what the greatest ever written I read it over and over Yeah I was in love it's always find something new and I'm saying that well my idea is that if you know if our ancestors and know that the only reason they were going to be brought here was to influence and provide material level they provide material for Steven Green who like that they probably would have more diligently at the time as a pure capitalist but

we have different I think from for now what I find in my anthology necromancers is that unlike go you know County call 900 very poor but two you know wrote socially sonnets or Melvin Tolson wrote odes. These people now are like banning blacks and now are finding their own things are bad and so this is really part of a whole movement and you know blacks are faster now. It's nice moving to the Harlem Renaissance pretty much confined to Harlem I think I would probably say that you know on a blonde south as a fair skin like news in a cell phone because I think you know she's she's probably one of two or three of the best critics in the country in a sense that she not only knows the western station she knows the black tradition this makes like a cosmic critic you know I find that like whites when they review our books and some of them you know who don't do homework you know who will say things like well I wish black college were better some fools said yesterday on times I wish you know as a debate between a slattern some guy and he said well I wish only wish the blacklist was better in the same

issue of the times they have like in the vessels they like Dollhouse and what is really you know who Jacqueline's whose handle as well but the bestsellers they have a lot of nerve talking about like they had the standards but I mean I mean there's nothing comparable all the bad literature read by whites come on this country as you know. So why can't blacks blacks are allowed to write a few bad books and a lot of excellent books to the whole range of quality is you know evident in our work. But I mean the things that they don't do their homework and I have no argument with someone like urban how their houses while Mr. Reed is trying to be a very black variation of Jonathan Swift you know. It was never in a Miami lodge honest when I was 12 years old and I like his stuff but I mean things that he not even mention people like George Gallup 1930s you know he probably was a normal black no more satirical book or someone like Wallace terminal black of the Barry we've had on Saturdays maybe I had them in mind but certainly if satire is your mode but I don't see any I it's not in the least about what's going on in the book but the point is that you know that there are people who say well why critics are not.

You know can't review black books because it's inaccessible I think that anybody does homework and goes back to say Lucy Terry you know in the 17th the 18th century writes about the boss flight about in the intact off for the country to possibly feels with a weekly is not the first cordless experience in this country who goes back to that dish and does homework goes library and even up at Cal you know people have the same ideas when I taught that course and likely to Cal you know the professor said well you know how can you possibly do this because there's no but everybody knows a black leader tinsel world war one which is a World War Two which is foolish if they do their homework that they can and they can evaluate this well as a you know blacks in a way but I think that when I see it Addison Gail Allison Gayle Jr. who's an. And suddenly a new magazine call Amistad which you can buy at terminal bookstore at the co-ops and Cody's magazine call Amistad one. He shows in this book that he's acquainted with Western literature was black literature as well as Indian literature whatever help Elsie I think when you talk about literature in this country you talk about everybody who wrote here but I

write experience things here if you want to talk about American literature so that I would like to exclude most of the anthologies that we we deal with. What Longfellow's who's a person who's been interested in American literature on black you know recently wrote a letter to The New York Times which like problem written most of you know racist literary literary book review that you'll find around a lot of saying that you know in defense of non-black poets that these guys really had to do their homework and they really had to stop. Stop evaluating black literature using Western norms as was you know like somebody insult like Saddam Rodman in the New York Times. They allowed him to say that he went through the complete works of Claude McKay County Cullen and Langston Hughes without being able to find a single poem. I mean it's like you know ridiculous becomes like you know the same kind of thing that people are doing in Augusta Georgia and killing children. Jackson State Mississippi as you find in the world of the arts is kind of like genocidal like racists as if they had like actual you know shotguns to like

and had really kill right. Right. Great body same thing. And so you know that's what we have to a lot of people need to do a lot of a lot of homework I know I am able to say this because you know I had same problem I had to really go to the library you have to really go out of your way to find the stuff. The material contract published that you know this is that you always find a black book if you're black white or you can get published. You really have to go out of the way to get to it to get the material and you know just as if I were a younger person in college I would really go into this field to try to raise a stand as a criticism so that you know I always look at education me as being you know the institutions that really cultivate people you know but to really try to raise a so that because I really depriving all people of of access to their own their art American art museums. You know we had a discussion with Thomas Hoving Thomas So we came out here and he was big ecology man you know I know this is where guys come from East living in the York you know half the year these guys say different things in the Orkneys out here.

They temper their damage to their family said you know they look down upon the west and the other character offer made a good point when he when he wrote a New York Times at the you know these guys in New York think that's the whole thing we got New York we got a Manhattan. There's no world you drop off into the underworld and all kind of beast in the demons and you know like you know oh I know I should carry some of that pain or some right oh it's like I just nobody exists we have a problem with Tom so I'm going to he's a became a hero for the People's Park and made a very lofty speech and everything. But we asked him why weren't there black painters in this museum you know the museum that running so well you know in their knives are expressionless or they're not they're not that you know we all want to be an abstract expressionist I can look at my linoleum and see that you know I mean so these kind of attitudes like go cross you know all the culture the music and you know people will subsidize them for the orchestra they will subsidize a say Ortiz Walton to do his work. Ortiz was one of the best musicians in the world and western and black music. Duke Ellington you know they want to also show that in your

film on it so what we have to do is and I think this happened in the 70s we really got opened up so black painters won't be starving anymore you know because and I white and they're not doing like the same kind of thing as what the whites are doing and that's happening New York you know black the older black painters like Romero Bearden who's been around genius. You had the insight to open up a gallery. The CINC gallery named after the Senegal our prince who overthrew the capital of the masses of a slave ship and piloted it and brought it to landed in Long Island and won his liberty. John Carruthers John Quincy Adams one of the Adams defended his case in court and he won his freedom. I mean he was named after him but I mean these things are happening where you know some of the old people like you know opening galleries of black painters can. But I mean it's you know he made it happen 77 if you feel like it. I mean how many black players are robbed in the same system using what I mean.

In Oakland maybe you can change around oh no not I don't know much about it I think that the culturally I mean I think change is going on in Oakland but it hasn't come into the outside but no good just like you. Yeah I mean things like you said Richard Wright was a great American writer and Incidentally apparently she was or you know read it at school but I mean the things that we have to really free we have to unlock these cultural institutions not enough to say and I can understand working on the economic I'm working on an economic level are saying that everybody has got to eat you know. But you know everybody can have a state every day. You know unlike champagne let you know they also have still something missing I mean so so we have to go to the. And I'm very very pleased to see black studies. Coming to universities and you know opening up so that if you go to university you're not only exposed to Chaucer in English department you look at the reading list of the English department any of us apart and you find it's like you know it's white it's Christian or it's or it's anti-Christian whatever still white you know and you don't know a person not exposed to like things that are happening right here in this country and I think that's got to be done in the 70s

this is a program and I think they're in roles people like Ben Andrews black painter in New York who really negotiated with the Whitney Museum so now will lease Whitney had 11 black painters in its annual. I mean the Brooklyn Museum the you that they write these things up Mike Wallace will never interview Ben Andrews but I think this is the what's happening with cultural front is just as if not more important in many ways than what's happening but political and really it's probably partly going to be I think it's interesting that you choose to live in New York half the year in Berkeley half the year I'm going to do anymore I don't think I'll ever go back east I think you'll stay here think that you know he says Dad I think this is the frontier variant. I read that John F. Kennedy when he came from Seattle was coming from Washington and Dior White's book making a present I 60 came from Washington I've been to see a lot to MCO is very beautiful up there. Came on down to California on the train said this is a frontier a new frontier I agree with I think.

The East is in trouble it's you know it's a livable cities in the water because nobody really seems to care about the cities New York could be New York should be like a work of art for the whole world. It should be like the you know the museum. I mean people should move out of there you know and like and and live in these lands you fly cross country see all these lands at home by the Pentagon. I mean don't move the bases out you know in like go have people live in the States and have places like New York is like museums or or where people can go in and walk around as you walk around like a living place. But that's not going to happen because you have like ward heelers running the country who have no you know people actors and all kinds of comedians running the country and I mean yes the Hitler started as a joke. You know I hope the joke doesn't grow up here you know a joke a joke starts off and as the abuse goes growth grows up and you find out soon. So the guy with a Chaplin moustache is like come on I was breaking down your door. So I think that you know if you have engineers and are put a poet engineers are people poets and artists in architecture and city planning. We can have the kind of civilization all of us want.

But I just can't see and I think I said this on NBC in the York that the real cultural changes come from west coast coarsely. They censored it because I guess they're very old. Just think also you know who want to live here and if you know all the headache commercials a film in New York. So I think that I'll you know for as for myself I find a lot of other artists actors and musicians moving on. Yes I found this just since I've been you know I don't I mean I go to New York for laughs. Nice place to visit the place. Is that you know really. Well I guess that time is is running you know short. I just would like to say to the listeners that I had asked you to read from some of your books and why don't you give them the answer you gave me. Well I think I'd better read instead of just the material I mean you know I think the page for me is like the on the test you know because you know I although I do like aural portrait I like who Jones or who is all you know writing and who has all poured at the same time but I think that

you know a lot of whites and blacks and or port poetry have to get beyond the screams and the you know the showmanship on the stage and ship. There's nothing there actually you know you have to read the stuff and I just like to say that you know about radio it is not available here I don't know why. And Cordy's and all these players do you think we could do it is it still an interest still in print Yeah. It's gone into its fourth printing and I think that you know the same publisher is it w o and I also want to listeners look out for all 19 necromancers from now all the anthology that will be available from anchor and Doubleday and. And August and you know just look at all the West Coast people who are writing that on the phone and be proud you know. Yes well I was able with a little thing we snooze into you know just keep talking is yeah. Just thank you very much Ishmael Reed for coming in just to talk with me at KPFA and I hope you'll come back if you're going to be a Berkeley chorus resident. Sure see you here again. Thank you.