Juice!: A Novel

by Ishmael Reed

Overview

 A lament for the death of print media, the growth of the corporation, and the process of growing old, Juice! serves as a tragi-comedy chronicling the increased anxieties of "post-race" America.

In 2010, the Newseum in Washington D.C. finally obtained the suit O. J. Simpson wore in court the day he was acquitted, and it now stands as both an artifact in their "Trial of the Century" exhibit and as a symbol of the American media's endless hunger for the criminal and the celebrity. This event serves as a launching point for Ishmael Reed's "Juice!," a novelistic commentary on the post-Simpson American media frenzy from one of the most controversial figures in American literature today. Through the figure Paul Blessings—a censored cartoonist suffering from diabetes—and his cohorts—serving as stand-ins for the various mediums of art—Ishmael Reed argues that since 1994, "O. J. has become a metaphor for things wrong with culture and politics."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564786371
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	04/05/2011
Series:	American Literature
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ishmael Reed is the author of over twenty-five books including Mumbo Jumbo, The Last Days of Louisiana Red, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down and Juice!. He is also a publisher, television producer, songwriter, radio and television commentator, lecturer, and has long been devoted to exploring an alternative black aesthetic: the trickster tradition, or Neo-Hoodooism as he calls it. Founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley for over thirty years until his retirement in 2005. In 2003, he received the coveted Otto Award for political theater.

Editorial Reviews

Seemingly tired of arguments about 'identity politics', and being forced "to rally around the flag of black brotherhood', Reed's mischievous energetic prose transforms Juice! into an engaging, troubling and innovative novel.” —The Times Literary Supplement

"...a genuinely inventive novel, which depends not on people in catharsis but on the pleasures of the riffing itself, which allows Reed to address, with savvy variety, all the foibles of a country kidding itself about 'the world of post-race harmony and sunlight.'" —Bookforum

From the Publisher

Seemingly tired of arguments about 'identity politics', and being forced "to rally around the flag of black brotherhood', Reed's mischievous energetic prose transforms Juice! into an engaging, troubling and innovative novel.”

The Times Literary Supplement

This latest novel from the prolific Reed, founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, features cartoonist Paul Blessings, who goes by the pen name Bear. But the book's real subject is the O.J. Simpson murder case, with which Bear is obsessed. The main outlet for Bear's cartoons has been a New York TV station formerly owned by PBS that has been bought up and is going commercial with a vengeance. Bear is in trouble with the station higher-ups because of his steadfast defense of O.J. and refusal to work on a different topic. Moving through the years of the criminal trial, the novel dispenses with many of the mechanisms of standard fiction and instead offers a series of rants, dialogs real and imagined, accidental confrontations, and made-up situations, all tossed off in a disrespectful, grumpy, and hilarious style. Reed is not interested in rearguing the case, but he does highlight many of its inconsistencies. VERDICT Humorous and infectious, this is one person's take on an incident that was smothered by the media yet remains unclear. Recommended for anyone interested in a report from the frontlines of the battle that is life for an aging black man in that strange land, early 21st-century America.—Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. at Oneonta Lib.

Library Journal