Notes 1. TOTAL LIFE IS WHAT WE WANT: THE PROGRESSIVE STAGES OF THE BLACK AESTHETIC IN LITERATURE 1. This was the problem of nomenclature that had bogged down some of Douglass' thoughts toward the correction of racism. He was tom, as was true of many black leaders, between a violent response to white violence and arrogance, and his own Christian principles. Yet this dissonance did not lead to inaction: cf., the commentary preceding The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass' in Early American Negro Writers, edited by Benjamin Brawley (New York: Dover, 1970). 2. Although I have chosen as the focus of my inquiry Major, Baker, Gayle, and Baraka because of the quantity and quality of their comments, and because of their association with Reed, it is still an arbitrary choice which excludes many other critics who were import­ ant to the formation of the new black aesthetic. Certainly Hoyt Fuller, the former editor of Black World, deserves his place among the leading black aestheticians, as does Larry Neal. An excellent reference for a more full discussion of other personalities in the new black aesthetic is Propaganda and Aesthetics: The Literary Politics of Afro-American Maga­ zines in the Twentieth Century, by Abby A. Johnson and Ronald Mayberry Johnson (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1979). 3. This method of delivery was one of the mainstays of effective communication for those obsessed with the power of the word in the 1960s: Baraka, Cleaver, Sonia Sanchez, even Jane Fonda. Ntozake Shange would write in 1980 that blacks had so claimed 'the word' that it hardly mattered who spoke or what was said; the listener was immediately comfortable with simply the grace and rhythm of the words issuing forth. (Nappy Edges, [1st edn] New York: Bantam, 1980). 2. NEW IDEAS FOR OLD: NEW BLACK AESTHETIC CRITICAL GUIDELINES AND BLACK WRITERS 1. The most lucid discussion of these times in the black arts movement and new black aesthetic movement from 1969 to 1975 appears in Propaganda and Aesthetics: The Literary Politics of Afro-American Maga­ zines in the Twentieth Century by Abby A. and Ronald Mayberry Johnson (1979), in the 'Black Aesthetic' chapter. 2. Hoyt Fuller's Black World would have had immense influence on what black writers would or would not have endorsed in the 1970s if the magazine had not folded, under financial duress, in late 1974-early 1975. 109 110 Notes 3. THE WAY OF THE NEW WORLD: INDIVIDUAL CREATION AND ETHICAL BOUNDARIES 1. Baraka's own footnote on this term warrants quotation, as it is a sterling example of his search for exactness in diction and a perfect example of his particular kind of rhetoric: 2 Capitulationist here equals general submission to the U.S. status quo of Black national oppression and racism; Tom' would spell it out in classic Black cultural terms. I also use the scientific term comprador, which means literally an agent of the oppressor nation (in this case, a Black agent); 'house nigger' we have traditionally called them, with some accuracy (Black American Literature Forum 14, I. 1980) 14. 4. HOODOO AS LITERARY METHOD: ISHMAEL REED'S TRUE AFRO-AMERICAN AESTHETIC 1. In Reed's scheme of things, dullness is a symbiotic appendage of an oppressive culture. In 19 Necromancers From Now (1970), Reed writes that he likes William Burroughs 'who at least manages to get it [American literature] beyond the common, simple routine narrative that critics become so thrilled about' (xvi). For black writers of a like mind with Reed, dullness is analogous to 'whiteness' in narrative. Dullness is non-chaotic, and thus a staple of a formalized system, but it is also stultifying. For a more detailed discussion of writing by blacks who are principally opposed to dullness in narratives, see Reginald Martin's Ntozake Shange's First Novel: In the Beginning was the Word, a monograph, Mary Washington College Monograph Series (Freder­ icksburg, Virginia: October, 1984). 2. Irving Howe, 'New Black Writers', Harper's, December 1969, 143-4. Supposedly, this review was to serve as a gathering together of the new, prominent black writers to that point in 1969. Instead, it was a barometer of Howe's feelings and his own cultural tastes and an indicator of how little Afro--American literature he had read; and it showed the small degree of respect he held for that writing by blacks he had read. Reed is especially harshly and curtly dismissed in this review; Howe writes, 'He [Reed] may intend his books as a black variation of Jonathan Swift, but they emerge closer to the commercial cooings of Captain Kangaroo' (13G-41). 3. Reed said during the interview which Reginald Martin conducted with him that the meaning of the illustrations in the text are: page 15, the Teutonic Knights' Seal; page 69, several Watergate conspirators together three years before Watergate; page 74, a Black Panther demonstration exemplifying the rhythmic movements of their bodies, the kind of movements which so appal Atonists; page 75, a fantastic painting of the swearing-in of Warren G. Harding; page 88, the King Creole Jazz Band; page 96, a woodcut illustrating the persecution of Notes 111 Chinese Americans by whites in the nineteeth century in California; page 141, a black Olmec head from Central America; page 166, a photograph of Harding and his black grandfather from J. A. Roger's The Five Negro Presidents; page 170, the funeral train of Harding; page 177, a painting of Europe rallying her nations against the 'Asian Hordes' [by Knackfiiss: 'Volker Europas wahrt eure heiligsten Cuter' ('People of Europe, protect that which is most holy to you.')]; page 193, a black Pope John on Taroh cards; page 207, a black dancer of the Dionysian cult on a vase from ancient Greece; page 211, two photographs of two groups in similar 'uniforms': top, the rock group Black Sabbath, bottom, the capture of Nazi war criminal Werner Von Braun by Gl's; page 240, nineteenth-century woodcut which shows blacks always in the background of frontier culture, observers of the excessive displays of violence; page 244, photograph of Jean Martin Charcot, mentor of Freud, illustrating the European/Western cure for hysteria incorporating drugs, surgery, and therapy; page 245, the black, Rib de Janeiro method for curing hysteria through god­ possession frenzy and giving full vent to one's emotions. 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Bradley, David, 'Black and American in 1982', Esquire (May 1982) 60. Brawley, Benjamin, ed., Early Negro American Writers: Selections with Biographical and Critical Introductions (New York: Dover, 1970). Carmichael, Stokely (Kwame Toiire). 'Stokely Carmichael Explains Black Power to a Black Audience in Detroit', Black American Literature, ed. Ruth Miller (Beverley Hills: Glencoe, 1971). Chapman, Abraham, ed., New Black Voices (New York: Mentor, 1972). Chesi, Gert, Voodoo: Africa's Secret Power (Austria: Perlinger-Verlag Ges. m.b.H., 1979). Cleaver, Eldridge, Soul on Ice (New York: McGraw, 1968). Cullen, Countee, 'From the Dark Tower', On These I Stand (New York: Harper, 1953) 74. Domini, John, 'A Conversation with Ishmael Reed', The American Poetry Review, 7, 1 (January-February 1978) 33. Douglass, Frederick, 'American Slavery', Early Negro American Writers, ed. Benjamin Brawley (New York: Dover, 1970) 203. 112 Works Cited 113 -----,'What the Negro Wants', Early Negro American Writers, ed. Benjamin Brawley, 209--11; 214-15. Dubois, W. E. B., The Souls of Black Folk (New York: New American Library, 1969). Ellison, Ralph, Invisible Man (New York: Vintage, 1952). EmanueL James A, 'Blackness Can: A Quest for Aesthetics', The Black Aesthetic, ed. Addison Gayle, Jr. (New York: Doubleday, 1971) 196. Garnet, Henry Highland, 'An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America (1843) .. .' Black American Literature, ed. Ruth Miller (Beverley Hills: Glencoe, 1971) 136. Garvey, Marcus, 'The Passing Negro "Intellectual"', Black American Literature, ed. Ruth Miller (Beverley Hills: Glencoe, 1971) 320, 325. Gayle, Addison Jr., The Black Aesthetic (New York: Doubleday, 1971). -----, The Way of the New World: The Black Novel in America (New York: Doubleday, 1976). -----, 'Black Women and Black Men: The Literature of Catharsis', Black Books Bulletin, 4 (1976) 48-52. -----, Wayward Child: A Personal Odyssey (New York: Doubleday, 1977). Gover, Roger, 'An Interview with Ishmael Reed', Black American Literature Forum (December 1978) 16. Henson, Josiah, Truth Stranger than Fiction', Early Negr.o American Writers, ed. Benjamin Brawley (New York: Dover, 1970) 166-7. Howe, Irving, 'New Black Writers', Harper's Magazine (December 1969) 130-41. Johnson, Abby A. and Ronald Mayberry Johnson, Propaganda and Aesthetics: The Literary Politics of Afro-American Magazines in the Twentieth Century (Amherst: University of Massachussetts Press, 1979). Jones, Leroi, The Myth of a "Negro Literature'", Black Expression: Essays by and about Black Americans in the Creative Arts ed. Addison Gayle, Jr. (New York: Weybright and Talley, 1969) 181-97. Knight, Etheridge, 'Statement on Poetics', The New Black Poetry, ed.