Flight to Canada
I wouldn't have thought it possible to write a funny book about slavery, but Ishmael Reed does just that in Flight to Canada. This is a multilayered postmodern satire of slavery and the racism that pervades America, not just in the 19th century, but in the late 20th century as well.
Reed diagnoses the sickness of the South by associating southern plantation owners with King Arthur and Edgar Allan Poe. They are wannabe Arthurians who wallow in decadence: "Raised by mammies, the South is dandyish, foppish, pimpish; its writers are Scott, Poe, Wilde, Tennyson." Furthermore, he says, Jefferson Davismisread his people. It wasn't the idea of winning that appealed to them. It was the idea of being ravished. Decadent and Victorian writing both use the romantic theme of fair youth slumbering. Fair youth daydreaming. Fair youth struck down. In the New Orleans Mardi Gras, that great Confederate pageant, the cult of Endymion has a whole evening.
It is this decadent romanticism that is the weakness of the South. In the tradition of Gone with the Wind, we are provided here with a vision of the South as a place full of fantasists who are completely divorced from reality. And the reality that they do encounter--the violence of the South--is experienced by them as a kind of sexualized horror. The narrator, Raven Quickskill, writes,Why isn't Edgar Allan Poe recognized as the principal biographer of that strange war? Fiction, you say? Where does fact begin and fiction leave off? Why does the perfectly rational, in its own time, often sound like mumbo-jumbo? Where did it leave off for Poe, prophet of a civilization buried alive, where, according to witnesses, people were often whipped for no reason. . . . Poe got it all down. Poe says more in a few stories than all of the volumes by historians. Volumes about that war.
Swille, the central representation of this Southern decadence, is a perfect illustration of this. He collects whips and "fettering equipment," and,[to] make sure they were effective, he had Jim, the black stud, try them on him personally. He always tried out the fettering equipement personally so's to determine whether he'd gotten his money's worth. He loved the sound of screams coming from various parts of the plantation, day and night. Eddie Poe had gone bonkers over his equipment and used some of it in his short stories.
Thus, it's not just that slaveowners were profiting financially from this system but that they had learned to love it, that they got off on it, the sadists that they were.
Reed also takes on the Uncle Tom stereotype in this book. The reader is presented with multiple possibilities for coping with slavery and racism. Raven Quickskill chooses to write, to speak for his people and to try to expose the problems of the system. He resists commodification and servitude as he runs away from his master (Swille) and refuses to even attempt to buy himself because, as he points out, he is not property but a person. Stray Leechfield, another escaped slave, takes a different tack. He sells his body so that he can buy himself, taking part in pornography:Leechfield was lying naked, his rust-colored body must have been greased, because it was glistening, and there was . . . there was--the naked New England girl was twisted about him, she had nothing on but those glasses and the flower hat. How did they manage? And then there was this huge bloodhound. He was licking, he was . . . The Immigrant was underneath one of those Brady boxes--it was flashing. He . . . he was taking daguerrotypes, or "chemical pictures."
Through the commodification and sexualization of his body, Leechfield earns the money he needs to buy his legal freedom. Quickskill is horrified at Leechfield's willingness to take part in this racist ideology, even for this purpose. A third option is provided in the experience of Uncle Robin, upon whom Harriet Beecher Stowe based some of her Uncle Tom's Cabin and who is a trusted and loyal servant of Swille--except he is also taking advantage of Swille. He changes Swille's will so that the plantation is left to himself instead of Swille's family and, because he has played the Uncle Tom so thoroughly, the family allows it as a reward for his loyal service. In the end, despite the condemnation that others may heap on him, calling him and Uncle Tom and a traitor, Uncle Robin is able to say,Yeah, they get down on me an Tom. But who's the fool? Nat Turner or us? Nat said he was going to do this. Was going to do that. Said he had a mission. Said his destiny was a divine one. Said that fate had chosen him. That the gods were handling him and speaking through him. Now Nat's dead and gone for these many years, and here I am master of a dead man's house. Which one is the fool?
By providing these possibilities, none of which is without its drawbacks, Reed complicates one the questions consistently raised in African American literature: is it better to openly resist, to act politically, to run away? or is it better to take what you can get, to moves slowly and behind the scenes, to stay and take some shit but to live? W. E. B. DuBois or Booker T. Washington? Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, Jr.? Nat Turner or Uncle Tom?
Finally, no matter which approach to slavery is taken, Reed shows us, slavery is not so easily escaped. Even outside of the slavemaster's control, there are forms of slavery that are harder to shake. Raven Quickskill says,Not only were the slaves enslaved by others, but they often, in subtle ways, enslaved each other. . . . Slaves judged other slaves like the auctioneer and his clients judged them. Was there no end to slavery? Was a slave condemned to serve another Master as soon as he got rid of one? Were overseers to be replaced by new overseers? Was this some game, some fickle punishment for sins committed in former lives? Slavery on top of slavery? Would he ever be free to do what he pleased as long as he didn't interfere with another man's rights? Slaves held each other in bondage; a hostile stare from one slave criticizing the behavior of another slave could be just as painful as a spiked collar--a gesture as fettering as a cage.
Even beyond this, though, there remains the enslavement of advertising and popular culture. Quickskill confronts Yankee Jack, a distributor/advertiser, saying,You decide which books, films, even what kind of cheese, no less, will reach the market. At least we fuges [refugees] know we're slaves, constantly hunted, but you enslave everybody. Making saps of them all. . . . It's unearthly, the way you hold sway over the American sensibility. They see, read and listen to what you want them to read, see and listen to. You decide the top forty, the best-seller list and the Academy Awards.
This pseudo slave narrative at this point becomes commentary on contemporary American culture and the ongoing need to be in control or to be controlled.
Ultimately, I suppose, that's what Flight to Canada is built on: the varieties of control we are subject to or that we subject others to.
Reed diagnoses the sickness of the South by associating southern plantation owners with King Arthur and Edgar Allan Poe. They are wannabe Arthurians who wallow in decadence: "Raised by mammies, the South is dandyish, foppish, pimpish; its writers are Scott, Poe, Wilde, Tennyson." Furthermore, he says, Jefferson Davismisread his people. It wasn't the idea of winning that appealed to them. It was the idea of being ravished. Decadent and Victorian writing both use the romantic theme of fair youth slumbering. Fair youth daydreaming. Fair youth struck down. In the New Orleans Mardi Gras, that great Confederate pageant, the cult of Endymion has a whole evening.
It is this decadent romanticism that is the weakness of the South. In the tradition of Gone with the Wind, we are provided here with a vision of the South as a place full of fantasists who are completely divorced from reality. And the reality that they do encounter--the violence of the South--is experienced by them as a kind of sexualized horror. The narrator, Raven Quickskill, writes,Why isn't Edgar Allan Poe recognized as the principal biographer of that strange war? Fiction, you say? Where does fact begin and fiction leave off? Why does the perfectly rational, in its own time, often sound like mumbo-jumbo? Where did it leave off for Poe, prophet of a civilization buried alive, where, according to witnesses, people were often whipped for no reason. . . . Poe got it all down. Poe says more in a few stories than all of the volumes by historians. Volumes about that war.
Swille, the central representation of this Southern decadence, is a perfect illustration of this. He collects whips and "fettering equipment," and,[to] make sure they were effective, he had Jim, the black stud, try them on him personally. He always tried out the fettering equipement personally so's to determine whether he'd gotten his money's worth. He loved the sound of screams coming from various parts of the plantation, day and night. Eddie Poe had gone bonkers over his equipment and used some of it in his short stories.
Thus, it's not just that slaveowners were profiting financially from this system but that they had learned to love it, that they got off on it, the sadists that they were.
Reed also takes on the Uncle Tom stereotype in this book. The reader is presented with multiple possibilities for coping with slavery and racism. Raven Quickskill chooses to write, to speak for his people and to try to expose the problems of the system. He resists commodification and servitude as he runs away from his master (Swille) and refuses to even attempt to buy himself because, as he points out, he is not property but a person. Stray Leechfield, another escaped slave, takes a different tack. He sells his body so that he can buy himself, taking part in pornography:Leechfield was lying naked, his rust-colored body must have been greased, because it was glistening, and there was . . . there was--the naked New England girl was twisted about him, she had nothing on but those glasses and the flower hat. How did they manage? And then there was this huge bloodhound. He was licking, he was . . . The Immigrant was underneath one of those Brady boxes--it was flashing. He . . . he was taking daguerrotypes, or "chemical pictures."
Through the commodification and sexualization of his body, Leechfield earns the money he needs to buy his legal freedom. Quickskill is horrified at Leechfield's willingness to take part in this racist ideology, even for this purpose. A third option is provided in the experience of Uncle Robin, upon whom Harriet Beecher Stowe based some of her Uncle Tom's Cabin and who is a trusted and loyal servant of Swille--except he is also taking advantage of Swille. He changes Swille's will so that the plantation is left to himself instead of Swille's family and, because he has played the Uncle Tom so thoroughly, the family allows it as a reward for his loyal service. In the end, despite the condemnation that others may heap on him, calling him and Uncle Tom and a traitor, Uncle Robin is able to say,Yeah, they get down on me an Tom. But who's the fool? Nat Turner or us? Nat said he was going to do this. Was going to do that. Said he had a mission. Said his destiny was a divine one. Said that fate had chosen him. That the gods were handling him and speaking through him. Now Nat's dead and gone for these many years, and here I am master of a dead man's house. Which one is the fool?
By providing these possibilities, none of which is without its drawbacks, Reed complicates one the questions consistently raised in African American literature: is it better to openly resist, to act politically, to run away? or is it better to take what you can get, to moves slowly and behind the scenes, to stay and take some shit but to live? W. E. B. DuBois or Booker T. Washington? Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, Jr.? Nat Turner or Uncle Tom?
Finally, no matter which approach to slavery is taken, Reed shows us, slavery is not so easily escaped. Even outside of the slavemaster's control, there are forms of slavery that are harder to shake. Raven Quickskill says,Not only were the slaves enslaved by others, but they often, in subtle ways, enslaved each other. . . . Slaves judged other slaves like the auctioneer and his clients judged them. Was there no end to slavery? Was a slave condemned to serve another Master as soon as he got rid of one? Were overseers to be replaced by new overseers? Was this some game, some fickle punishment for sins committed in former lives? Slavery on top of slavery? Would he ever be free to do what he pleased as long as he didn't interfere with another man's rights? Slaves held each other in bondage; a hostile stare from one slave criticizing the behavior of another slave could be just as painful as a spiked collar--a gesture as fettering as a cage.
Even beyond this, though, there remains the enslavement of advertising and popular culture. Quickskill confronts Yankee Jack, a distributor/advertiser, saying,You decide which books, films, even what kind of cheese, no less, will reach the market. At least we fuges [refugees] know we're slaves, constantly hunted, but you enslave everybody. Making saps of them all. . . . It's unearthly, the way you hold sway over the American sensibility. They see, read and listen to what you want them to read, see and listen to. You decide the top forty, the best-seller list and the Academy Awards.
This pseudo slave narrative at this point becomes commentary on contemporary American culture and the ongoing need to be in control or to be controlled.
Ultimately, I suppose, that's what Flight to Canada is built on: the varieties of control we are subject to or that we subject others to.