Ishmael Reed Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Jerry H. Bryant

Critical Essay by Jerry H. Bryant

I like Ishmael Reed. There is so much of him. He is going on forty-six at the time I write, is still healthy and pugnacious, and has already incarnated himself in more forms than two normal men do in a lifetime…. Not everyone likes him as much as I do. Some call him too conservative. Some call him unreadable. Some call him silly and superficial. But he is so active and productive in so many fields of contemporary American art that he cannot be ignored. In the late sixties, when he was one of a couple dozen young black writers seeking an audience in that atmosphere of black revolutionary chic, he came on as a kind of enfant terrible. Yet, even at the time, before we knew better, his revolution didn't seem that much different from that of William Melvin Kelley, or Ronald Fair, or John O. Killens. Now it...
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