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10) Reckless Eyeballing by Ishmael Reed
I want to recommend this book with as many warnings as possible. This book is sexist, racist, anti-semitic, homophobic, ethnocentric, classist, colorist, and probably a few other -ists as well. It's got a rape, a lynching, a sexual assault, a blood libel, a murder, police brutality. And that's the point. This book is designed as a provocation. Reed throws so many -isms at you as a sort of reductio ad absurdum about intersectionality of oppression. You're still trying to think in terms of a hierarchy of oppressions, Reed says. Your brain wants to say "Oh, racism is worse than anti-semitism. More horrible things have been done in the same of racism." or vice versa. Or whatever. But your brain is wrong. You can't compare this stuff, and trying to do that plays into the hands of people who are more interested in power than justice. Trying to construct a calculus of privilege will only lead to madness.
In a Tom Wolfeian 1980s New York, playwrights vie for the attention of the downtown theater scene. A white feminist playwright has written a play rehabilitating Eva Braun. A black male playwright works with first a Jewish male director, then a black female director, then a white female producer, on an all-female play about the aftermath of a 1960s lynching and who might be to blame. Reed calls a lot of attention to the eyeballing part of his title, the role of constantly changing perception in shaping this world, but I think 'reckless' may be the more important part of the title, the key to his linkage with Wolfe, the key to understanding his characters' behavior. The story is manic, crude, mostly out of control, highly confusing. It's also pretty damn funny, and pretty damn thought-provoking. I enjoyed it a good deal and I enjoyed having conversations about it with people. But... all of my warnings stand. Go into this book with your eyes wide open about what you're stepping into.
tags: a: reed ishmael, african-american, postmodernist, satire
I want to recommend this book with as many warnings as possible. This book is sexist, racist, anti-semitic, homophobic, ethnocentric, classist, colorist, and probably a few other -ists as well. It's got a rape, a lynching, a sexual assault, a blood libel, a murder, police brutality. And that's the point. This book is designed as a provocation. Reed throws so many -isms at you as a sort of reductio ad absurdum about intersectionality of oppression. You're still trying to think in terms of a hierarchy of oppressions, Reed says. Your brain wants to say "Oh, racism is worse than anti-semitism. More horrible things have been done in the same of racism." or vice versa. Or whatever. But your brain is wrong. You can't compare this stuff, and trying to do that plays into the hands of people who are more interested in power than justice. Trying to construct a calculus of privilege will only lead to madness.
In a Tom Wolfeian 1980s New York, playwrights vie for the attention of the downtown theater scene. A white feminist playwright has written a play rehabilitating Eva Braun. A black male playwright works with first a Jewish male director, then a black female director, then a white female producer, on an all-female play about the aftermath of a 1960s lynching and who might be to blame. Reed calls a lot of attention to the eyeballing part of his title, the role of constantly changing perception in shaping this world, but I think 'reckless' may be the more important part of the title, the key to his linkage with Wolfe, the key to understanding his characters' behavior. The story is manic, crude, mostly out of control, highly confusing. It's also pretty damn funny, and pretty damn thought-provoking. I enjoyed it a good deal and I enjoyed having conversations about it with people. But... all of my warnings stand. Go into this book with your eyes wide open about what you're stepping into.
tags: a: reed ishmael, african-american, postmodernist, satire