Thoughts on Ishmael Reed

 

Around noon on a brilliantly sunny Tuesday, I sat in the back of an auditorium awaiting our guest writer in the 29^th Annual Writer’s Series at the University of North Alabama.  He walked on the stage slowly, cool, and suave, aged well for seventy-eight years.  He had on a white suit, looking like a modern day Mark Twain, and when he began to read, he had all of the charisma “America’s greatest satirist” should have. 

            Ishmael Reed began to read from his newest novel “Juice.”  Though I haven’t read the book myself, the chapter he read gave me some insight to his prose style.  I liked the insight the narrator of the book had about his own feelings towards the O.J. Simpson trial.  I can’t remember exactly what the line was, but it was something like: I was wondering whether I thought it was for my own selfish reasons I wanted him to kill himself, or if I actually thought it was better for him.  But I knew what kind of trouble lay ahead for my brothers because of him. 

            Though his prose was well developed and funny, it was his poetry that revitalized my love of writing.  I loved how he uses humor in his writing, even when dealing with serious topics.  I liked how he had fun with his writing.  I had an epiphany when he said “poetry can be fun sometimes too.”  I think I forgot that while reading all my Modernist favorites like T.S. Eliot.  I remembered why I started writing: because I liked it.  Some of my classes have made me forget why I chose this major.  But old Ishmael helped me remember what it was I love about literature.  Ishmael also talked about his parents thinking he had wasted his life writing and teaching because he came from a blue collar house hold.  I can relate-- I think my parents think I’m wasting my time getting an English degree instead of majoring in business or computer software.  He made me feel like I wasn’t.    

            After his reading I got a chance to meet Ishmael Reed and have my book signed.  He talked with some people in my Contemporary poetry about seeing Tennessee Williams in a bar in New York.  He said the people he was with called him a hayseed because he couldn’t contain his excitement. After he signed my classmates books, he started talking about New Orleans and Jimmy Swaggart getting caught down there with pants around his ankles.  I told him I saw an ad selling holy water the night before that promised financial security if you bought it at prayed over your bills.  He laughed, even thought I don’t know why I said that.  It made me nervous to be around someone I respected.    

Hegemony

By definition, hegemony is the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant group (Merriam-Webster.com).  Hegemony deals in every culture, but nowhere is it more noteworthy than modern-day America.  Our society is shaped by the dominance of capitalism over every aspect of our lives.  We survive by eating and drinking what the corporations make available, and we entertain ourselves with what the corporations decide to endorse.  Whether this is good or bad, or a mixture of the two, is beside the point.  Our society, once shaped by local traditions and folklore, has shifted in the past one-hundred years into a corporate entity.  We identify ourselves with brands.  Most of us have to work for corporate America.  Capitalism is the centripetal ideal that we have decided to build our society around.  This is my point:  If capitalism has, in fact, become hegemonic, is there any way to change it without somehow becoming a part of it?  

The idea of American capitalism isn't just an abstract ideal taught in educational institutions, though it is.  We are told from a very young age that the free market is right, and everything else is evil.  This is inherently false, however, because our economy is a mixture of all of these.  This is because capitalism isn't just "dry husks of ideology" as Raymond Williams said, but because it is the hegemonic entity of our society.  Capitalism will take on parts of other systems in order to survive.  The sharp, brutal edges of a completely free market will be sanded down by socialist institutions such as social welfare and social security.  It is through this incorporation of new ideas that capitalism renews itself.