312
PARTISAN REVIEW
Minnie the Moocher's bodyguard, but the point beneath the purple, that
these brutal man-hating broads , the Dahomeyan Softball Team, are at long
last easily broken by the one
sure
of male supremacy, the heat-seeking SAM
missile, is nonetheless made . Or so it
seems.
There is a good deal of elusive action in
The Last Days;
in fact the novel
itself, for all its explosive topics, is ultimately evasive . Reed 's attack on Minnie
the Moocher is curiously blunted , she is generously restored to her sweet self at
the end of the novel, while
Street,
her male counterpart, is conveniently
killed midway through the book .
Yet
they are initially established as the
prime agents ofLouisiana Red , the vile hot sauce that ruins the Gumbo, and it
is, one might argue, somewhat disconcerting to find them finally revealed as
the
mere
dupes of masquerading Whites. Although broadly drawn,
Street
is
indeed a promising character, a cynical Bigger Thomas on the
verge
of
Cleaverhood. Minnie not only suggests the person of Angela Davis, but
more
importantly stands forth as the deluded daughter of a long line of powerful
Black mothers who helped break the balls of their vulnerable men . To
underscore this aspect of her character, an itinerant musician named Chorus
wanders through the novel complaining of Antigone 's usurpations . Potent
figures, rich themes , complex problems-yet Reed seemingly retracts his
satire at the last moment , deprives Minnie of her substance , and concentrates
instead on Maxwell Kasavubu, a White
apparatchik
still living his life in
Richard Wright 's
Native Son .
Louisiana Red
emerges
as a comprehensive
metaphor, the endemic disunity of the Black Nation in America writ large:
"negroes stabbing negroes," crabs in a barrel, "Each crab trying to keep the
other one from reaching the top."
Yet
in this spacious metaphor the hot
issues
of Reed's analysis
(Street's
criminality , Minnie 's feminist rage , the
Black matriarchy) are somewhat blurred .
The problem in
The Last Days
is Papa LaBas, the old man from down
there, a patriarchal
houngan
who first appears in
Yellow Back Radio
and then
serves as the focal character in
MumboJumbo.
He is the voice Reed has given
to his mythology (Neo-HooDoo) and as such , tirelessly discoursing, he calmly
dominates the hectic plot of
The Last Days .
Each of these three novels
variously repeats the mythos ofNeo-HooDoo . Loop Caroo's "connaissance"
in
Yellow Back Radio
is the knowledge of myth, a knowing that is at once a
way of being in the world, and this knowledge, rooted in the lore of West
Indian voodoo , links him to the myth of Osiris. He is indeed Black Osiris
reborn, and Drag Gibson, the LBJ-like rancher, none other than
Set
in
whiteface . Taking first the familiar yellowbacked Western as his narrative
model, and then in
Mumbo Jumbo
the pulp detective-adventure fiction,
Reed has retold their essential conflict in his own terms and at the same
time
set
forth an ambitious reinterpretation of past and present Afro-American
