Last Days of Louisiana Red

by Ishmael Reed

"The Last Days of Louisiana Redblends paradox, hyperbole, understatement and signifyin' so expertlyyou can almost hear a droll black voice telling the tales as you readit." - The New Republic When Papa LaBas (private eye, noonday HooDoo, and hero of Reed's Mumbo Jumbo) comes to Berkeley, California, to investigate the mysterious death of Ed Yellings, owner of the Solid Gumbo Works, he finds himself fighting the rising tide of violence propagated by Louisiana Red and those militant opportunists, the Moochers. A HooDoo detective story and a comprehensive satire on the explosive politics of the '60s, The Last Days of Louisiana Red exposes the hypocrisy of contemporary American culture and race politics.

Genres: Fiction, African American, Race, 20th Century, American, Novels, African American Literature

179 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Ishmael Scott Reed is an American poet, essayist, and novelist. A prominent African-American literary figure, Reed is known for his satirical works challenging American political culture, and highlighting political and cultural oppression.

Reed has been described as one of the most controversial writers. While his work has often sought to represent neglected African and African-American perspectives, his energy and advocacy have centered more broadly on neglected peoples and perspectives irrespective of their cultural origins.

Reviews

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s incumbent upon all of us to do The Work needed to kill off Louisiana Red. It has risen again.

[Anthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

That was a wild ride.

Those were the first words that left my lips after I closed the cover of The Last Days of Louisiana Red.

The novel starts off folkloric, with a tone that could easily be imagined as the rustic voice of an aged Danny Glover sitting on the front porch in some back country New Orleans patio. That voice tells the tale of one Ed Yellings, who traveled out west to Berkeley, California. Ed was a Worker and a worker (the distinction isn't really clarified) and he aims to put an end to Louisiana Red.

What is Louisiana Red you ask? Well, Louisiana Red is the strife in society, the stuff that causes men and woman to be rude to each other, to make one another's lives a pain. We learn later that it is some sort of corporation, possibly lead by the white man to keep the black man down, and it has roots in the Oedipal complex too. I think. Well, how is that single and humble worker, excuse me, Worker, going to stop that Louisiana Red? By opening a Gumbo Business out of the Berkeley Marina of course! Isn't that what you would do? Well of course you would because if you were Ed Yellings, you'd be a thinker who knows that the Business isn't really about Gumbo, it is about stopping cancer and curing the addition to heroin. It is a secret business that isn't much more that rice and okra and chicken. But this book isn't really about Ed Yellings, because he is a tragic guy and just as we get into his story he dies.

This is really the story about Ed's bumbling and selfish children. Wolf, the headstrong eldest son runs the Gumbo Business. Street, the second son is a thug and a hooligan and some sort of African God able to woo any woman that he lays eyes on. Sister, the oldest daughter is kind of a nobody, which is why I think she only got the name sister. And then there is Minnie, the youngest. Minnie is a Moocher, well, she is THE moocher, the leader of a cult of Moochers that believe that what's yours is mine because we are all brothers and sisters and all is for the taking. Well, Minnie's mooching philosophy causes some problems for Wolf and she gets Street involved and everyone suffers and some of them die and it isn't quite clear what comes of Louisiana Red in the end but there certainly isn't any more cancer curing heroin heeling Gumbo. It is darn easy to say that a lot of stuff happens in this short little book. There is also a side story about a couple of Moochers named Kingfish and Brown as well as an actor named Chorus who is putting on a performance of Antigone. Somewhere in we also find a convoluted reference to the presence of the ancient Egyptian God Osiris who has been living in the zoo as an Orangutan. I might not be totally clear on that one, so don't quote me OK?

Well, it certainly was a wild ride and I did enjoy it a hell of a lot more than Mumbo Jumbo although it could be easily said that The Last Days of Louisiana Red is full of a whole lot of mumbo jumbo. That is for sure.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite similar to Reed's other early-70s things I have read; heavily satirical of the varieties of political radicals crowding Berkeley at the time, and unsparing in its view of African-American sexual politics. I should think he rubbed some feminists the wrong way, but men hardly get more sympathetic treatment. The narrative is reminiscent in ways of the post-hippie quasi-surrealism of Tom Robbins, Donald Barthelme or Pynchon. The story centers around warring good/evil factions who represent white magic vs black magic implementations of Hoodoo, the syncretistic belief system and practices born out of New Orleans.

[Weston · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's sad that a lyrically talented and subversively creative writer like Reed turned this sequel to Mumbo Jumbo into the most disturbingly misogynistic and heterosexist books I've read in quite some time. I half-heartedly wanted to appreciate the interesting neo-Hoodoo elements of the story, but when so many of those turns end up propping up patriarchical rants it was a lost cause.

[Starlon · Rating 3 out of 5]

1 big middle finger to feminist and the black panther party. Lost its charm half way though when the misogyny was loaded on by the pitchfork full.

[Jason · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is a chapter in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra portraying a tightrope walker. The tightrope walk is an attempt the man makes to leave the commonplace behind, to explore new possibilities, to see new lands, to expand the parameters of life, to move on to something better...a higher state of existence. However, below the tightrope is the audience, made up of the masses of the narrow-minded, the simple folk, the ordinary citizens, the littlepeople, the flies of the marketplace as Nietzsche calls them. They aspire towards nothing but mediocrity and the maintenance of the status quo. These people resent the tightrope walker’s attempt at finding a new way of life, so halfway through the stunt, they pull him down from the rope so that he dies in the fall.

Ishmael Reed, in his novel The Last Days of Louisiana Red, transplants this dilemma to a different context. He applies it to the African-American community in Oakland during the 1970s where the politics of the New Left, Black Power, and the feminist movement are in full swing. I don’t know if Reed consciously borrowed the allegory of the tightrope walker from Nietzsche or not (probably not), but it does serve as a legitimate point of comparison. Ed Yellings, the businessman who starts the Gumbo Works business, can easily replace the tightrope walker; Ed Yellings gets murdered early in the book, but as it is, he stands in for the upwardly mobile element of the African-American community in the post Civil Rights Movement era. He represents the builders and founders of an African-American economic class that is self-deterministic and independent of white America. And s the envious mediocrities of Nietzsche’s town, the ones who kill the tightrope walker, correspond to the Moochers, Reed’s portrayal of the radicals and activists, some of which come from privileged backgrounds, who refuse to build a better society and instead insist on simultaneously destroying the society that exists while demanding that everything be given to them because they are an oppressed minority. This conflict might sound shocking to younger readers who weren’t alive in the 1970s, especially considering it is being articulated by Ishmael Reed, an African-American author, but he is addressing a real social problem with detrimental consequences in the real world.

Ed Yellings’ Gumbo Works is an instant success. The gumbo is sold in a restaurant and manufactured in a factory but little is said about these establishments. This lack of detail is, I think, one of the many flaws in the novel. The business is actually a front for a secret voodoo operation which involves the defeat of Louisiana Red who is not actually a character but more like a spirit of sorts that brings negative energy into the African-American community. Ed Yellings becomes a millionaire and raises a family of four children in a mansion. Wolf grows up to be a business man, following in his father’s footsteps in preparation to take over the company. Street is a Black Power-type radical and criminal who is obviously a caricature of Eldridge Cleaver. The passage about Street committing murder then fleeing to Algeria where he is given a villa free of charge by the government is lifted directly from that Black Panther Party leader’s life. Sister barely figures into the story but probably represents the Back to Africa ideal of the 1970s since her clothes are African-inspired and she associates with a Nigerian friend. Minnie is the one who plays the most prominent role in the story. Based on Cab Calloway’s classic jive anthem “Minnie the Moocher”, she is a prominent member of the Moochers, but she falls out of favor with them because she shows up at rallies to give speeches about ontology and epistemology and other pseudo-intellectual crap that puts people to sleep. She represents the feminist element of the radical Left and insists she is entitled to take over Gumbo Works even though she has no knowledge of business. The inclusion of all these representatives in one family is of symbolic importance. Not only do African-American people bond by colloquially referring to each other as Sister and Brother, but but the idea of the community as an extension of the family makes Reed’s whole point more clear. He is depicting the African-American community as a family which is supposed to be closely knit and supportive of each other despite their individual differences yet at the same time he is showing how this family is one that is dysfunctional.

Ed Yellings gets assassinated, his factory gets burned down, and the two brothers shoot each other while Minnie insists that she inherit everything her father left behind. This is not the way families are supposed to work.

So far it sounds like a lot of interesting and legitimate ideas are introduced into the story. And it is true, a lot of them are interesting and legitimate and there is an abundance of them. A lot of them barely go anywhere after being introduced though. Sister is the easiest example of this as she only makes two brief appearances and doesn’t contribute in any significant way to anything that happens. Street and Wolf are not developed much more as characters either. Street’s only purpose in the book seems to be for the sake of mocking Eldridge Cleaver without mentioning him by name. Some of the supporting characters actually do a lot more than the main members of the family. Nanny, a woman from Louisiana, gets hired to raise the family but her ulterior motive is to groom Minnie for the sake of disrupting Gumbo Works. Nanny is a representation of the old, southern African-American way of life that the urban professional class wants to leave behind. She is actually a practitioner of voodoo and intends to spread the chaos of Louisiana Red through the Oakland Black community.

Nanny’s opposition is Papa LaBas, a houngan who is brought in to replace Ed Yellings as head of the Gumbo Works corporation. The two are engaged in a magical combat that is an updated version of the voodoo war between Doc John and Marie Laveau. The history and folklore surrounding those two legendary figures from New Orleans is sufficiently explained in one chapter. You might remember Papa LaBas as a catalyst of the action in Ishmael Reed’s previous, and far superior novel, Mumbo Jumbo. Aside from running the company, his most memorable part is when he gives Minnie a marsh and misogynistic lecture about how Black women should stay in their traditional places. His twisted logic is that women are already powerful because they provide men with sex, something which makes men obedient and submissive. I suppose that line of reasoning works if you are the type of sex-obsessed man who thinks with the wrong head, but for those of us with a more diverse range of interests, it comes off as a rather infantile view of sexuality and power.

The author’s misogyny is extreme, even by 1970s standards yet it is totally in line with what a lot of African-American men were thinking at that time. Black hyper-masculinity and sexual potency were big components of the Black Power movement and those were the progressives of their time. Read up on the Black Panther’s approach to women and sexuality if you don’t believe me. One Black Panther, I forget who, famously said, “The only place for Black women in the Revolution is on their backs.” The more conservative members of the Black community then, as represented in this story, were even more traditional and domineering in their approach to sex and gender politics.

By far, the most interesting characters are Kingfish and Elder, representatives of the lumpenproletariate who Reed despises. These two clownish characters refuse to work and survive by collecting welfare and committing petty crimes like stealing, burglary, scamming, and begging. They are obviously capable of being useful but refuse to indulge in thing like employment, instead paying for beer and weed by swiping tips off the tables in restaurants. “Owning a business is something that Black people don’t do,” says one of them. This is the type of attitude Ishmael Reed is addressing in this novel in an attempt at correcting it for the sake of his people. Kingfish and Elder stand out here because they are the most direct and clear criticism offered up by Reed and they work well as comic relief.

The least successful character is Chorus, a man who acts as the chorus of the story, explaining what is happening and what is yet to come. He provides counter-narratives about Isis and Osiris, the Egyptian deities, and Antigone, the Greek daughter of Oedipus. These plots correspond to what is happening with Minnie, Ed Yellings, and Papa LaBas. But the stories are confusing and poorly narrated. The purpose of a dramatic chorus is to clarify a story, but in this case Chorus muddles the narrative to the point where skipping these chapters might actually make the book easier to read.

I am wondering if this novel was originally intended to be a play written for theatrical production. The inclusion of Chorus, as well as a scene in a theater where Minnie heckles the performers (sound familiar Leftist millennial students at Berkeley?) are obvious references to the theater. But the whole story is told through dialogue the way a stage performance would be. Even the assassination, the shootings, and the fire at the factory are explained through conversation rather than shown as part of the narrative. This might have been conceived of as a play but written as a novel for some reason I can’t comprehend.

The aforementioned lack of detail is a real weakness. As previously mentioned, the violence and the fire are relayed to the audience by speech. There is also no description of the restaurant or the factory. Even worse, for a book about voodoo, it is disappointing that the actual rites and ceremonies are not described. Rather than having these things talked about in casual conversation, actually showing them visually bulks up the writing, fills in the blank spaces, and makes the story more complete. It allows the audience to experience these events emotionally and creates depth by drawing us into the environment and the action. If the characters only talk about these things than we just move on to the next page without really connecting with them in our imagination.

The other big problem is that Reed introduces too many ideas but never follows through on them. The different characters all represent different aspects of the African-American community but they are little more than hollow receptacles of ideas. What they symbolize is obvious but beyond the symbolism they have no life of their own. With such underdeveloped characters and themes, it is hard to tell if Ishmael Reed is being fair in his critique or not. You can find plenty of things to criticize in the Black bourgeoisie, the Back to Africa ideal, the gangster, the Black Power movement, and the feminists but there are a lot of things those people got right too. By not addressing all sides of these issues, the author does a disservice to his claims by making his criticism look shallow, uninformed, and rudimentary.

The Last Days of Louisiana Red is the follow up novel to Ishmael Reed’s most celebrated work Mumbo Jumbo, a novel that deserves all the praise it gets. The main idea of that book is that if white people stand back and give African-American people enough space then their culture will grow and thrive. I think the main idea of The Last Days of Louisiana Red is that, now that Black people have sufficient space to grow and thrive, they have to deal with some problems internal to the Black community. Notice how prominent a role the white people play in Mumbo Jumbo and how marginal the white people are in Louisiana Red. Reed has progressed to a new set of parameters here. But this latter novel is less successful because he introduces too much information into those parameters. It is like a chef making a pot of gumbo and using every ingredient he finds in the kitchen so that no individual flavor stands out and whatever is there in the pot doesn’t blend in with everything else. Reed could have left a lot of the content out to give more room for the important ideas to take hold or he could have expanded the novel to three times its length to fully develop everything he introduces. Otherwise, he does raise a legitimate issue, that of some members of the African-American community working against its greater interests. even if Some of his criticisms, particularly of feminism, are not entirely justified. I like to think that Reed is too good an author to write this kind of book since he certainly showed what he is capable of in Mumbo Jumbo, but in comparison this just ends up being another novel that doesn’t live up to its potential.

[Vel Veeter]

I hadn’t read this novel before, but I have read two previous Ishmael Reed novels (alongside the two other nonfiction books I also have reviewed recently). His books are something else. He writes using poetic language, conspiracy theories, oddball history, and a weighty erudition but with sparse prose.

The book I can most think of in terms of comparison is Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 in terms of a kind of postmodern paranoid sensibility, but in terms of the kind of almost Vaudevillian style and Black Arts consciousness I think a lot about George Schuyler’s Black No More, a kind of proto Sneetches novel from the 1930s about scientist who’s invented a process of skin whitening that erases, confuses, and upends racist practices and hierarchy in the US.

This book is about the murder of a hot sauce magnate who’s been working on a cure to heroin addiction, plaguing the Black community. It follows in the footsteps of Reed’s earlier novel Mumbo Jumbo, in sharing a major character, as well as a penchant for Egyptian history (ie in the sense that its cultural practice and influence predates the Greeks and therefore represents an African continental cultural hegemony over modern Western culture). And the novel plays heavily and borrows heavily as a rewriting of Antigone.

All of which cracks me up because a) the novel is funny, b) the novel is super weird, and c) the cover makes it look like a cookbook or a folksy memoir or another kind of Lousiana novel perhaps written by Reed’s contemporary Ernest Gaines.

It’s also an interesting pairing with Blues City because Reed’s narrator is also thinking through a nascent interest in Bay area cities not named San Francisco.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Satiric and racy deconstruction of Babylon. This sequel is a bit more thorough of an examination of syncretic Hoodoo. A bit Pynchon, a bit Tom Robbins. It's now a bit dated due to the anti-feminism.


Not as exhaustive and fresh as Mumbo Jumbo. Rare case of a "Western Canon" writer doing a sequel.

[Casey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't like this as much as I liked Yellow Back Radio, but that has more to do with the fact that I dislike the whole detective novel genre. However, the writing was so lively and convoluted and frustrating and colorful that I kept reading.

[Tonya Clapp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anything dealing with Louisiana culture has my attention. Although this does not take place in Louisiana, the story is rooted in Louisiana culture. This cleverly written book had me wanting to know more from the start. It was worth every second.

[Jean Christian · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was all over the place. There were some excellent moments but, all in all, the book was too sporadic. Thus far, this is my least favourite Reed book. I feel like the author was trying to recreate some of the magic of “Mumbo Jumbo”. It didn’t work.

[Hudak · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wish I wrote some of these reviews years ago; now it is difficult for me to fully remember what I should comment on. I remember this being vibrant and impressive... so yeah.

[Lindig · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the finest writers who happens to be black. The urban experience is portrayed in all its gritty splendor. He's a pretty good poet, too. I would recommend anything by this author.

[Mark Allen Galik · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a sprint through some places I didn't expect to go.

[Tyler · Rating 1 out of 5]

Reed uses this book as a platform to spout his disappointingly conservative views on feminists and black leftists. Similar to Mumbo Jumbo, the plot revolves around a war between two psychic phenomena, the same Neo-HooDoo from Mumbo Jumbo, represented by Solid Gumbo Works, and Louisiana Red, represented by the Louisiana Red Corporation and Minnie and her Moochers. The Workers (of voodoo) of Solid Gumbo Works are also workers in the typical sense of the word. These Workers work hard and really pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Ed Yelling, founder of Solid Gumbo Works, started from nothing and ended up a very wealthy man who lived in the hills of Berkeley. Reed gives his own short description of Louisiana Red that I will copy here: "Crabs in a Barrel." Those who have fallen for Louisiana Red, i.e. the Moochers, are entitled thugs who will do anything they can to bring successful black people down, just like crabs in a barrel pulling down others in their own climb to the top. In this metaphor, Reed essentially claims that black people are keeping themselves in the barrel of oppression by refusing to let any materially successful black man climb to the top. The Moochers come in all sorts of forms, but the ones Reed sets his sights on are the aforementioned feminists and black leftists.

The feminists are people who, according to Reed, are already fully liberated but still hunger for more power. They do nothing but bring hardworking men down, control them through sex, and send them to Skid Row. Both Reed's arguments against and treatment of feminists, especially in the second half of the book, are downright misogynistic. Reed (mainly through Papa LaBas, who is essentially Reed's mouthpiece) repeatedly says in this book that the feminists just need a man's touch, especially the lesbians, and they'll get back to normal. In one chapter, he even has this happen. A female bodyguard, who we are told knows several martial arts, is immediately incapacitated by a man, and, after being defeated, begins to passionately kiss him and fawn over how big and strong he is. Reed's argument against feminists is that they are already liberated because they can control men through sex and live easy lives doing housework without having to deal with any of the problems men (especially black men) have to handle. These sections almost feel derived through a men's rights movement pamphlet. The most baffling claim by Reed is that black feminists are somehow in cahoots with white men to bring black men down.

Leftists of all kinds are depicted here as entitled, opportunistic ideologues, but Reed is focused on black leftists. The black leftists in Reed's universe, in edition to having the traits just described, are violent thugs who pray on successful black men because they think they are entitled to the wealth of those who were to work their way up. Reed never explicitly connects leftism with Moochism, but every time a character becomes interested in leftist politics Moochism is waiting just around the corner. These are people who will turn on old friends for a quick buck and try to use racial solidarity as an excuse to rob each other. Reed makes it clear what he thinks of them: if this were Africa in the old days, these people would immediately be stoned to death.

Any good quality of this book (the vibrant writing, retelling of a myth, the satire that isn't politically vile, etc.) can be found better in Mumbo Jumbo. I'm very disappointed that what could have been an interesting follow up to Mumbo Jumbo was ruined by Reed's turn to conservativism and misogyny.

[Bill Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Second of two riotous satires featuring detective Papa LaBas. The first book, MUMBO JUMBO, was very focused on message and had a rather downbeat ending. In this book, Reed is concerned with those who would corrupt the message to their own ends: the "Moochers". Together the two books comprise histories of two different eras. MUMBO JUMBO portrays both the historical antecedents and the state of bigotry in the United States and the efforts of some people to overcome its effects. Some of these efforts are misguided, to the extent that Black artists would (at the time) emulate the forms of White success and would therefore fail to produce work that is truer to Black roots, e. g. the figures of the "Harlem Renaissance". In the end, although some enemies are punished, the odds seem overwhelming with all sides seeming to be ultimately in real or unintended collusion. As a result, the Jes Grew movement, a multi-faceted threat to the status quo and a pure (faithful to Black culture) liberating force that has been gaining momentum throughout the book, falters and seems doomed at the end of the book.
THE LAST DAYS OF LOUISIANA RED is a reaction to the then current (mid 1970s) state of affairs, where true progress has been made through the Solid Gumbo Works, but this progress is threatened by those who are using the message to promote their own selfish agendas: the Moochers. The Moochers range from out and out crooks to political opportunists who wear the mantle and are stuffing their pockets in the process or their supporters who are wandering around in a delusional fugue state: speaking the right words, but not feeling, seeing or responding to what is actually around them.
Reed's satirical portrait of the Moochers is as ruthless in this book as was his carving up of the racists portrayed in MUMBO JUMBO. Reed does not suffer fools, opportunists and hucksters lightly. We see a further amplification of the themes presented in MUMBO JUMBO, but with yet another bi-product in the effort to liberate the consciousness of all peoples: ideologues carrying good intentions to illogical extremes marching side by side with scamsters more dedicated to the seven deadly sins than to the redemption of mankind. Reed never throws the baby out with the bathwater, however. Papa LaBas is on the case, working to ensure that all are accountable for their deeds and let mere words be gone with the wind. Therefore, this book, seems more hopeful at the end than does MUMBO JUMBO, because there is a wisdom not only in knowing and understanding traitors and avowed enemies, but in knowing and understanding those who would call you friend.

[Randy Rhody · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Update to an earlier review)

Fun. Weird. Reed is a talented writer, based on this, his only book I have read so far. It’s enough to get me seeking out Yellow Radio and Mumbo Jumbo for starters.

A unique writing voice. In Red, the author humorously whips up a patois Gumbo of language from the homeys, the 'hood, and the ghetto; tosses in some of Sophocles's Antigone complete with Chorus; poeticizes and dramatizes in past and present tense; includes Aunt Jemima, Amos 'n' Andy, Minnie the Moocher; metamorphs Berkeley/Oakland of the '70s; and in general educates us (e.g., "loa" - a god in the voodoo cult of Haiti).

Judging by the number of Goodreaders who have rated Louisiana Red, and by the dearth of online book reviews, I get the sense that Reed’s work has been underappreciated. What I meant to convey previously, and not very well, is my proposition that the American canon of modern literature has unfairly neglected Reed. I have some half-cooked theories, to be calibrated after I’ve read more of his work.

I found one insightful review at https://www.nytimes.com/1974/11/10/ar....

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable enough riff on the detective novel and something of a sequel to MUMBO JUMBO. There's a lot of fun mythology and devil-may-care prose from Reed, with some pointed barbs at racism and income inequality. But the novel just ends.

[xenia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Critiques feminists of having a one dimensional definition of men.

Calls all women sluts, cunts and pussy.

OK boomer.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reed's books are a dance with chaos and control. He tapped into some deep rhythms.

[Chris Molnar · Rating 4 out of 5]

The pagelong description of Moochers, and the sequence where a white Richard Wright scholar has a nightmare where he becomes Mary Dalton in Native Son: next level.

[Ernest Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Been too long since I've read it. Brilliant worldbuilding and caricaturing of the chaos of the early 1970s with an almost underground comix attitude. Papa LaBas presiding over "not its liquidation but its metamophosis." And one of the best endings ever. Where is LaBas now that we need him?

[Jack Heath]

Synopsis: Papa LaBas, he's both a PI and a noonday HooDoo, comes to Berkeley to investigate the death of Ed Yellings.

[Mark Simmerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mentor suggestion.