A few years ago I passed up on a hardback first-edition copy of Walker Percy’s weird dystopian Southern Gothic Love in the Ruins, and have regretted it ever since, or at least ever since I read a run of his novels back in 2020. I wound I’m reading a digital copy of Love from my local library, loved it, and would put it up there with Lancelot as his best, knowing damn well I still haven’t read The Last Gentleman or The Thanatos Syndrome. (The Thanatos Syndrome sounds like the name of a bad novel in a dystopian parody novel or film.) The cover for this edition of Love in the Ruins is by Janet Halverson.
I’ve read nine of Ishmael Reed’s first ten novels, but I still haven’t read Japanese by Spring, his ninth work, a campus novel that parodies America’s ever-ongoing culture wars. I picked up this first-edition hardback today. Before I even opened the copy, I wondered if it belonged to the same dude who I’ve managed to cop so many used postmodern novels of the past three decades. This guy—I won’t write his name out here—this guy put stamps or stickers of his name and address in the books he bought, I guess, and I ended up picking up a lot of them used over the years: Ishmael Reed, Stanley Elkin, Don DeLillo…I was thinking about maybe writing the guy? Anyway, sure enough, this copy of Japanese by Spring included a sticker bearing this guy’s name and the same address. I did a basic internet search and it looks like he’s moved, but not far, and that he’s (probably) eighty years old. I guess I’d just want to say Thanks is all.
You should write that guy, just to get his reaction.
Nine Reeds is a lot! I’ve only recently finished my second, but he’s quite something. “Mumbo Jumbo” is unlike anything else.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I tried sending an email to an address I found but it pinged back. I’ll send a postcard this weekend (after I pick up a postcard to send).
LikeLiked by 1 person
I read Japanese by Spring last year, while finishing up a Masters program, and found it funny! If not a bit…vindictive? Even moreso than other Reeds maybe. But a good example of slightly dismantling the campus novel.
You can see the similarities between it and Juice (which I read off your posts and loved).
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ah cool! Yeah, his writing by the mid-eighties gets…bitter. Still salty sour very funny—but the meanness intensifies. Which I like.
LikeLiked by 1 person