by Ishmael Reed
Those who would never be allowed at the Free Enterprise gaming wheels, blackjack tables and slots because of that Black gentleman there in the beret with the goatee and whiskers. He threw 7, 7 times. They called it HooDooing the dice. The Jes Grew factor.
The Carriers were learning too. As long as they were stagemen, like those clowns who were so adept in the art of rap they could recite the 1st 15 listings in the telephone book and still entice the masses. They were supplied with Town Hall, Carnegie, the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel, but when they went after the fetishes of the Atonist Path strange things happened. The mysteriously unfulfilled orders from the bookstores. The tapes turned up missing. The microphone in that innocent little box about 15 feet from where you’re speaking. You know, what Atonists call “paranoid fantasies” began to occur.
It all came down to Kipling’s vision. They all, Left, Right, etc., wanted to wear their pith helmets riding on their cultural elephants but Sabu no longer wished to be their guide.
But now this pitiful creature who said something about “Black Studies so much blackeyed peas” had to stand on the soapbox as the Religious Atonist had before. Lecturing on Freud and Marx and all the old names. He resembled the embarrassed gargoyle dismayed and condemned to watch his former worshipers pass him by as they went into the centers of Jes Grew. Pagan Mysteries.
Sometimes he would yammer on and on about his mother and dad in the garment district and how hard it was for them. Everyone should be sheltered, fed, there was no disagreement about the body. It was what to do about the head.
LaBas felt everybody should have their own head or the head of God which the Atonist’s mundane “system” wouldn’t admit. Homo economicus. The well-fed the will-less robot who yields his head to the Sun King. The sad old creature wanted the Jes Grew Carriers to have his head. Cut out this Jes Grew that keeps a working man up to all hours of the night with its carryings on. The Ballyhoo of its Whoopie. Its Cab Calloway hidihidiho.
He wanted them to have his head. An Atonist head. While LaBas wanted them to have the heads their people had left for them or create new ones of their own. A library of stacks a 1000 miles long. Therefore he and PaPa LaBas disagreed about what to do with the head, not the body.
PaPa LaBas attempted to ignore this ideological tramp but wasn’t able to; the man followed him out to the automobile parking lot.
LaBas, why do you mystify your past? These youngsters need something palpable. Not this bongo drumming called Jes Grew.
Bongo drumming requires very intricate technique. A rhythmic vocabulary larger than French English or Spanish, the 1-time vernacular languages.
Come now, the old man smiles. Come now, PaPa LaBas.
The man stands next to the driver’s window as PaPa LaBas climbs into his automobile. The man puffs on his pipe. The man’s face is bloated. Sanguine.
Each year the students would invite PaPa LaBas to the campus to discuss the Harlem Renaissance. After all, he had attended this “Negro Awakening.” The Cabarets, the Speaks, and he knew the many painters, show people, film makers. He knew Park Ave. as well as those on Striver’s Row. He went to the celebrations at Irvington-on-Hudson as well as to the Chitterling Switches. But the children seemed more interested in the fact that he was 100 years old than anything else.
PaPa LaBas begins the electric starter. One of the gas lamps was broken. The beautiful interior furnishings faded. The French telephone removed long ago.
The man is still standing there. The strange wounded expression. Do aging anteaters smile?
PaPa LaBas, you must come clean with those students. They must have a firm background in the Classics. Serious works, the achievements of mankind which began in Greece and then sort of wiggled all over the place like a chicken with its neck wrung. (He had once written in a private interview that he didn’t know whether to dismiss Jes Grew or go with it. His language reflected this indecision.)
PaPa LaBas continues to ignore the man. He wants to get home, they are having greens and hog’s head to celebrate the Holiday.
Will you please move over?
The car jolts forward. The 1914 Locomobile Town Coupe has by this time developed a mind of its own. The man crashes to the pavement of the parking lot like a sandbag. His glasses are sprawled on the ground in front of him. He doesn’t appear to be hurt because he lifts himself from the pavement and begins a ponderous trot in pursuit of the car. He stops and clutches his chest as if in pain.
PaPa LaBas watches him in his rearview mirror as the man, a sad figure, turns and slowly walks toward the campus. He would sleep there under an elm until the next morning when he would climb on the soapbox and harangue about Freud Marx Youth, etc. etc. The man himself a relic from another age like the 1 letter in the neon sign that is off the blink. The poor frumpy, frowzy, man. He wouldn’t last long. Couldn’t be more than 70-75. A mere youngster. PaPa LaBas steers the car over the bridge. He saw the lights of Manhattan. Chuckling to himself he thought of the lecture: the flights of fancy, the tangential excursions, a classroom that knew what he was talking about.
People in the 60s said they couldn’t follow him. (In Santa Cruz the students walked out.) What’s your point? they asked in Seattle whose central point, the Space Needle, is invisible from time to time. What are you driving at? they would say in Detroit in the 1950s. In the 40s he haunted the stacks of a ghost library. In the 30s he sought to recover his losses like everybody else. In the 20s they knew. And the 20s were back again. Better. Arna Bontemps was correct in his new introduction to Black Thunder. Time is a pendulum. Not a river. More akin to what goes around comes around. (Locomobile rear moving toward neoned Manhattan skyline. Skyscrapers gleam like magic trees. Freeze frame.)
Jan. 31st, 1971 3:00 P.M.
Berkeley, California
* “The Complications of American Psychology,” first published (1930) as “Your Negroid and Indian Behavior”—Carl G. Jung.
Partial Bibliography
1. Abraham, Hilda C., and Ernst L. Freud, eds. The Letters of Sigmund Freud and Karl Abraham, 1907-1926. New York: Basic Books, 1965.
2. The Ancient Book of Formulas. New York: Dorene Publishing, 1940.
3. Bassett, Margaret. Profiles and Portraits of American Presidents and Their Wives. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1969.
4. Bauer, W. W. Contagious Diseases. New York: Knopf, 1934.
5. Beradt, Charlotte. The Third Reich of Dreams. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968.
6. Berger, Meyer. The Story of the New York Times, 1851-1951. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1951.
7. Blavatsky, H. P. Isis Unveiled. 2 vols. Point Loma, Cal.: Theosophical University Press, 1936.
8. Brill, Dr. A. A., ed. The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud. New York: Modern Library, 1938.
9. Brome, Vincent. Freud and His Early Circle. New York: Morrow, 1968.
10. Brunn, H. O. Story of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1960.
11. Budge, E. A. Wallis. Osiris: The Egyptian Religion of Resurrection. New York: University Books, 1961.
12. Bulfinch’s Mythology.
13. Burland, C. A. The Exotic White Man. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969.
14. Cass, Donn A. Negro Freemasonry and Segregation. Chicago: Powner, an Ezra A. Cook Publication, 1957.
15. Castle, Irene. Castles in the Air. New York: Doubleday, 1957.
16. Castle, Mr. and Mrs. Vernon. Modern Dancing. New York: The World Syndicate Co., 1914.
17. Chang, Chung-yuan. Creativity and Taoism: A Study of Chinese Philosophy, Art & Poetry. New York: Julian Press, 1963.
18. Charters, Ann. Nobody: The Story of Bert Williams. New York: MacMillan, 1970.
19. Charters, Samuel. The Poetry of the Blues. New York: Avon Books, 1970.
20. —— and Leonard Kunstadt. Jazz: A History of the New York Scene. New York: Doubleday, 1962.
21. Christman, Henry M., ed. The American Journalism of Marx and Engels: A Selection from the New York Daily Tribun
e. New York: New American Library, 1966.
22. Churchill, Allen. Remember When. New York: Western Publishers, Golden Press, 1967.
23. —— The Year the World Went Mad. New York: Crowell, 1960.
24. The Classification of Cotton. U. S. Department of Agriculture, Miscellaneous Publication #310, revised June 1956.
25. Como, William. Raoul Gelabert’s Anatomy for the Dancer. New York: Dance Magazine, 1964.
26. Conrad, Jack R. The Horn and The Sword: The History of the Bull as Symbol of Power and Fertility. New York: Dutton, 1957.
27. Craige, John Houston. Black Bagdad. New York: Minton, Balch, 1933.
28. —— Cannibal Cousins. New York: Minton, Balch, 1934.
29. Crawford, Morris DeCamp. The Heritage of Cotton: The Fibre of Two Worlds and Many Ages. New York: Putnam, 1924.
30. Crowley, Aleister. The Book of Thoth: An Interpretation of the Tarot. Berkeley, Cal.: Shambala Publications, Kashmarin Press, 1969.
31. Daniken, Erich von. Chariots of the Gods. 1st American edition. New York: Putnam, 1970.
32. Daraul, Arkon. Witches and Sorcerers. New York: Citadel Press, 1966.
33. Deran, Maya. Divine Horsemen: The Voodoo Gods of Haiti. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1970.
34. Dixon, Robert, and John Godrich. Recording the Blues. New York: Stein & Day, 1970.
35. Dunham, Katherine. Island Possessed. New York: Doubleday, 1969.
36. Fortune, Dion. Psychic Self Defense: Occult Pathology and Criminality. London: Rider, 1930.
37. —— Sane Occultism. London: Rider, 1929; Aquarian Press, 1967.
38. Freud, Martin. Sigmund Freud: Man and Father. New York: Vanguard, 1958.
39. Freud, Sigmund. New introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. London: Hogarth Press, 1949.
40. —— Therapy and Technique. New York: Collier Books, 1963.
41. Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 3 vols. New York: Modern Library.
42. Gilbert, Clinton Wallace. Behind the Mirrors: The Psychology of Disintegration at Washington. New York: Putnam, 1922.
43. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Faust: A Tragedy. Translated by Bayard Taylor. New York: Modern Library, 1950.
44. Gold, Robert S. A Jazz Lexicon. New York: Knopf, 1964.
45. Gouve, Leon. The Siege of Leningrad. Stanford University Press.
46. Guillain, Georges, M.D. J.-M. Charcot, 1825-1893: His Life-His Work. New York: Harper, Paul B. Hoeber (Medical Book Dept.), 1959.
47. Handy, W. C. Father of the Blues. New York: Collier Books, 1970.
48. Hadlock, Richard. Jazz Masters of the Twenties. New York: MacMillan, 1965.
49. Hays, H. R. In the Beginnings: Early Man and His Gods. New York: Putnam, 1963.
50. Herman, Black. Secrets of Magic-Mystery and Legerdemain. 4 vols. in one. Dallas, Texas: Dorene Publishing Co., 1938.
51. Hoffman, Frederick J. The Twenties: American Writing in the Postwar Decade. New York: Viking, 1955.
52. Horrobin, David F. The Human Organism: An Introduction to Physiology. New York: Basic Books, 1966.
53. Howe, Ellic. Astrology: A Recent History including the Untold Story of Its Role in World War II. New York: Walker & Co., 1967.
54. Hurston, Zoran. Voodoo Gods: An Inquiry into the Native Myths and Magic in Jamaica and Haiti. London: Dent, 1939.
55. —— Mules and Men, Negro Folktales & Voodoo Practices in the South. New York: Negro University Press, 1955; Harper & Row, 1970.
56. Huxley, Francis. The Invisibles: Voodoo Gods in Haiti. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969.
57. Inquire Within (pseud.) Trail of the Serpent. London: Boswell, 1936.
58. Jackson, John G. Introduction to African Civilization. New York: University Books, 1970.
59. Julian the Apostate. Works. London: Heinemann, 1923.
60. Jung, C. G. Psychology & Religion: West & East. Collected Works, vol. 2. (Bollingen Series, vol. 20.) New York: Pantheon, 1958.
61. Katz, Bernard, ed. The Social Implications of Early American Negro Music in the United States. New York: Arno/New York Times, 1968.
62. Kephart, Calvin I. Concise History of Freemasonry. Fort Worth, Texas: Henry L. Geddie, Co., 1964.
63. Kirstein, Lincoln. Dance: A Short History of Classic Theatrical Dancing. New York: Putnam, 1935.
64. The Koran. Translated by N. J. Dawood. Maryland: Penguin Books, 1956.
65. Kramer, Samuel N., ed. Mythologies of the Ancient World. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1961.
66. Lawler, Lillian. The Dance in Ancient Greece. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1964.
67. Mcintosh, Christopher. The Astrologers and Their Creed: An Historical Outline. New York: Praeger, 1969.
68. Mackenzie, Norman, ed. Secret Societies. New York: Holt; London: Aldus Books, 1967.
69. McLean, Jr., Albert F. American Vaudeville As Ritual. Lexington, Ky.: University of Kentucky Press, 1965.
70. Montague, Ludwill Lee. Haiti and the United States, 1714-1938. New York: Russell, 1940, repr. 1966.
71. Moore, Carman. Somebody’s Angel Child: The Story of Bessie Smith. New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1969.
72. Munsell, Albert H. A Grammar of Color. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1969.
73. Murray, Robert K. The Harding Era: Warren G. Harding and His Administration. Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1969.
74. The New York Times. How to Read and Understand Financial and Business News. Prepared by Financial & Business News Staff. 9th rev. ed. New York: Doubleday, 1963.
75. Nicholson, Irene. Mexican and Central American Mythology. London: Paul Hamlyn, 1967.
76. Oliver, Paul. Savannah Syncopators: African Retentions in the Blues. New York: Stein & Day, 1970.
77. Olmsted, Frederick L. The Cotton Kingdom. New York: Modern Library, 1969.
78. Osman, Randolph E. Art Centres of the World: New York. London: Michael Joseph; New York: World, 1968.
79. Ottley, Roi, and William Weatherby, eds. The Negro in New York: An Informal Social History 1626-1939. New York: The New York Public Library, 1967.
80. Pollitzer, R., M.D. Plague. Geneva: World Health Organization, Palais des Nations, 1954.
81. Prescott, William H. The World of Incas. Geneva: Minerva A Pierre Waleffe Book, 1970.
82. Rigaud, Milo. Secrets of Voodoo. New York: Arco, 1969.
83. Russell, Francis. The Shadow of Blooming Grove: The One Hundred Years of Warren Gamaliel Harding. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968.
84. Russell, Tony. Blacks Whites and Blues. New York: Stein & Day, 1970.
85. Sachs, Curt. World History of the Dance. New York: Norton, 1937; paper 1963.
86. Schortemeir, Frederick B. Rededicating America: Life and Recent Speeches of W. G. Harding. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1920.
87. Sparger, Celia. Anatomy and Ballet: A Handbook for Teachers of Ballet. London: Adams & Charles Black, 1949. 4th ed. New York: Hillary, 1965.
88. Speiser, Werner, et al. The Art of China, Spirit and Society. New York: Crown, 1960.
89. Stearns, Marshall and Jean. Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance. New York: MacMillan, 1968.
90. Stillman, Edmund, and William Pfaff. The Politics of Hysteria: The Sources of Twentieth-Century Conflict. New York: Harper & Row, 1964.
91. Sullivan, Mark. Our Times: The United States, 1900-1925, vol. 6, The Twenties. New York: Scribner’s, 1935.
92. Summers, Montague. The History of Witchcraft and Demonology. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1926; University Books, 1956.
93. Tallant, Robert. Voodoo in New Orleans. New York: MacMillan, 1946.
94. Teevan, Richard, and Robert C. Birney, eds. Color Vision: An Enduring Problem in Psychology. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1961.
95. Veronesi, Giulia. Style and Design, 1909-1925. New York: Braziller, 1968.
96. Wilcox, R. Turner. The Mode in Hats and Headdress. Rev. ed. New York: Scribner’s, 1959.
97. Williams, Martin. Jelly Roll Morton. New York: A. S. B
arnes, a Perpetual Book, 1962.
98. Williams, Sheldon. Voodoo and the Art of Haiti. London: Morland Lee, n.d.
99. Winslow, Charles Edward Amory. The Conquest of Epidemic Disease. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1943.
100. —— Man and Epidemics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952.
101. Witmark, Isidore, and Isaac Goldberg. From Ragtime to Swingtime: The Story of the House of Witmark. New York: Furman, 1939.
102. Ziegler, Philip. The Black Death. New York: John Day, 1969.
103. Zinsser, Hans. Rats, Lice and History. Boston: Little, Brown, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1935.
104. Zweig, Stefan. Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, Sigmund Freud. New York: Viking, 1932.
A Biography of Ishmael Reed
Ishmael Reed (b. 1938) is an acclaimed American novelist, essayist, and poet, whose work often challenges mainstream culture and conveys the perspectives of minorities—especially African Americans—whose voices are underrepresented. He has been called “great” by novelist James Baldwin; Sam Tanenhaus of the New York Times; Ta-Nehisi Coates of the Atlantic; and Harvard University Press Over the past forty years, Reed has published more white authors than white literary magazines have published black, Hispanic, Native American, and Asian American authors.
Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Reed grew up in Buffalo, New York. He studied at the University at Buffalo, which later became the State University of New York (SUNY), before moving to New York City, and later, California. For thirty-five years Reed taught at the University of California, Berkeley, while maintaining visiting appointments with several other institutions, including Harvard University, Yale University, Dartmouth College, and the University at Buffalo, SUNY.
