Reckless Eyeballing by Ishmael Reed

First published: 1986

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Satire

Time of work: 1980’s

Locale: New York, New York, and the fictional Caribbean island of New Oyo

Principal Characters:

• Ian Ball, a black playwright in his late twenties or early thirties
• Tremonisha Smarts, a playwright and a black feminist
• Becky French, a director and white feminist
• Jake Brashford, a black playwright
• Lawrence O’Reedy, a white detective
• Randy Shank, a black playwright

The Novel

Reckless Eyeballing is a work written in the third person that closely follows the life of black playwright Ian Ball over a period of weeks in Manhattan as he tries to get his second major play produced. Having left the Caribbean island of New Oyo to become a famous writer, Ian is caught between the conflicting political demands of a small group of theater people. Ian emotionally and philosophically vacillates between feuding factions that argue over his position as playwright and the political correctness of his play. He is torn between loyalty to a simpler southern way of life and the hectic, conflicting social interactions in a major northern city. Ian is also philosophically trapped between an older generation of black, male, radical, anti-feminist playwrights and an emerging group of white and black radical feminist playwrights and directors. A series of short vignettes shows the increasing demands put on Ian by his producer, Becky French, and his director, Tremonisha Smarts. His chief supporter, a white director named Jim Minsk, is brutally sacrificed in a racist and sexist ceremony held at a fraudulent “college” in the South. At the same time, a bizarre series of attacks on leading feminists in the arts is perpetrated by the Flower Phantom, a masked intruder who cuts off his victims’ hair and leaves a chrysanthemum at the scene of his crimes, claiming the women deserve the same punishment that French female collaborators with the Nazis received after World War II. White detective Lawrence O’Reedy is assigned to the case. Nearing the end of his tenure as a New York police officer, O’Reedy is suffering from hallucinations in which the black and Hispanic victims of his quick gun come back to haunt him. The Flower Phantom continuously strikes throughout the novel, as O’Reedy’s investigation becomes more and more muddled. Ian’s mixed reaction to the Flower Phantom reflects his troubled state of mind. He refers to himself as a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; he rationally feels the attacker is crazy but emotionally supports his actions.

Becky French demands that Ian’s play, slated to be shown at the prestigious Mountbatten Theater, be produced instead at a smaller venue. In place of Ian’s play, Becky plans to produce Eva’s Honeymoon, a play that takes place at the end of World War II in Adolf Hitler’s bunker. In this play, Eva Braun rebels against Hitler, claiming that she as well as other German women have been victimized. Eva shoots and kills Hitler and then runs away with Hitler’s chauffeur. During a meeting at Becky’s office, Ian finds out his play will receive little support. Becky vehemently objects to Ian’s depiction of female characters, claiming that Ian’s male gaze has perverted their position in the drama; Ian proclaims the authenticity of his vision. Becky has him thrown out of her office, and over a series of days Ian succumbs to the seemingly inevitable alterations of his work, hoping that he can still get his play produced. His new director is Tremonisha Smarts, a leading black feminist playwright recently victimized by the Flower Phantom.

In the process of rewriting the play, Ian feels that Tremonisha brings knowledge and dramatic savvy to the piece, yet he continues to balk at a major alteration of the drama concerning a black male named Ham Hill. Reckless Eyeballing is a play about Ham, who was lynched for “recklessly eyeballing” a white woman named Cora Mae. Ham’s body is disinterred, and the skeleton is put on trial by Cora Mae to legally prove that Ham was guilty of sexual misconduct. Originally, Ian had Ham proven not guilty, but Becky insists that Ham be indicted and condemned again for a sexual crime. Tremonisha refuses to change the original idea. She and Becky argue vehemently over Becky’s radical stance, and Tremonisha accuses Becky of being a white feminist who does not sympathize with black feminists.

Jake Brashford, an aging black playwright famous for his play The Man Who Was an Enigma, has sponsored Ian for artistic grants in the past. Jake is a staunch black radical who represents a protest philosophy that Ian increasingly finds out of date. Jake vehemently objects to Ian’s working in consort with feminists and rails against any compromising tendencies Ian voices. Randy Shank, another older black playwright famous for the play The Rise and Fall of Mighty Joe Young, is known for his radical message of black male sexual supremacy. After failure in Europe and blacklisting at home, Randy is reduced to working as a doorman at Tremonisha’s apartment complex. Randy distrusts all feminists, black or white, and is extremely anti-Semitic. Ian also deals with Shoboater, a black critic originally from New Oyo. Shoboater mocks Ian’s lack of continental taste in food and liquor and warns Ian against collaboration with any feminists.

Ian’s play is successfully staged after Tremonisha leaves for California and Ian agrees to all Becky’s changes. Jake appears at the production and, in a drunken rage, accuses Ian of compromising with feminists. Shoboater writes a critical review of the play, but it is put on a back page of his paper. Randy Shank is shot by O’Reedy. Ian returns to New Oyo, where his mother’s chauffeured car brings him to her palatial house. On the way, Ian reads a letter from Tremonisha Smarts in which she renounces her radical black feminism and condemns the theater world of Manhattan. She plans to let herself gain weight, have children, and continue to write. Ian’s mother has a house guest named Johnnie Krenshaw, a “goddess” of the feminist movement, who wrote a famous play No Good Man. Johnnie is also undergoing a change in attitude, rejecting feminism and writing plays that she could read in church. Martha Ball leaves Johnnie and Ian to talk and goes upstairs to unpack her son’s clothes. She finds a crumpled leather coat, a beret, a black mask, and human hair of many textures and colors, suggesting that Ian was the Flower Phantom all along.

The Characters

Ian Ball is the principal character in the book. As a young playwright from the fictional Caribbean island of New Oyo, Ball is undergoing an identity crisis in the high-pressure theatrical world of New York. All the other characters can be seen in relation to Ian, who is at the center of a battle between male and female viewpoints.

The crux of the novel involves Ian’s attempts to get his second play, Reckless Eyeballing, published. Becky French, director and white feminist, and Tremonisha Smarts, playwright and black feminist, oppose the production. Jake Brashford and Randy Shank, both black playwrights, urge Ian not to change his mind and give in to feminist pressure to rework his play.

Detective O’Reedy seems a caricature of a sexist, racist white policeman. His frequent use of violence on black and Hispanic subjects suggests mental instability. His search for the Flower Phantom, who defiles women by shaving off their hair, seems anything but authentic.

In fact, the characters in the novel are difficult to picture as real human beings, because they exist principally as mouthpieces for ideas. Consequently, it is hard to develop sympathy for them as characters with real problems. Throughout the novel, few of the characters change or question themselves; they have the feel of types rather than individuals.

Ian appears to be an exception; he gives in to the demands of his feminist producers and changes the focus of his play. The reader is cautioned, however, concerning Ball’s own motivations. Ian describes himself as a Jekyll-and-Hyde sort, giving rise to questions about his own characterization.

In fact, the author is pulling a sleight-of-hand trick with his characters. Drawing strict ideological lines is part of his satiric intent. The feminist debates that occur throughout the novel depict the women characters Tremonisha and Becky as unrelentingly hostile to male viewpoints. The black men Jake and Randy are equally inflexible. By making the characters behave in this way, certain viewpoints are ridiculed, showing the dangers of extreme behavior and political correctness. The one sympathetic character in the novel besides Ian’s mother is Jim Minsk. Minsk is a Jewish director who supports Ian but who is killed early on in a public execution that satirizes Ku Klux Klan activities.

Tremonisha Smarts revokes her hard-line feminist perspective at the end of the novel, but this sudden about-face rings false. There is no preparation given in the text for this radical change of attitude, and the episode is only one of many character surprises that occur in the text without warning.

The narrator of the novel is unreliable. Information is withheld at the will of the nameless but omniscient narrator. The prime example of this manipulation concerns the identity of the Flower Phantom, which is hidden until the last page of the novel. The reader is given much information about Ian without any clues as to his true identity. Therefore, the revelation of his true nature as the Flower Phantom seems somewhat contrived and out of character.

Critical Context

Reckless Eyeballing fits into a personal literary tradition established by Reed through the publication of other satiric novels such as The Free-Lance Pallbearers (1967), Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down (1969), Mumbo Jumbo (1972), and The Last Days of Louisiana Red (1974). These novels suggest that Reed is not afraid to tackle dangerous social subjects or critique prevalent or accepted stereotypes. In his novels, Reed builds a landscape that blends fantasy with reality, ignoring conventional characterizations and distorting linear time frames. He blends popular culture figures and genre conventions into his fiction, so that his novels evoke archetypal images without conforming to any specific formula. His satire ranges from subtle parody to outright buffoonery while lampooning varied concepts of race, class, and gender. His exaggerated characters have often proven difficult for critics to handle. In particular, feminist critics have questioned his portrayal of women. Reed’s reworking of African American cultural identity, stressing Afrocentric origins, black vernacular creativity, and black survival abilities, puts him at the forefront of African American postmodernism. Nominated for two National Book Awards, Reed is a prolific and important African American writer who has published novels, poems, plays, and essays. His critical stature continues to grow as he explores the varied world of African American and American cultures with a unique voice.

Bibliography

Byerman, Keith E. “Voodoo Aesthetics: History and Parody in the Novels of Ishmael Reed.” In Fingering the Jagged Grain: Tradition and Form in Recent Black Fiction. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985. Focuses on Reed’s use of parody and reworking of history. Suggests that Reed uses a unique combination of metaphysical form and social critique in his work.

Fox, Robert Elliot. “Ishmael Reed: Gathering the Limbs of Osiris.” In Conscientious Sorcerers: The Black Postmodernist Fiction of Leroi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, and Samuel R. Delany. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987. Fox studies in depth seven of Reed’s novels and finds that each work builds on the previous one, expanding Reed’s aesthetic. Sees Reckless Eyeballing as having elements of farce that add to the trickster tradition of African American narrative.

Harris, Norman. “The Last Days of Louisiana Red: The Hoodoo Solution.” In Connecting Times: The Sixties in Afro-American Fiction. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1988. Analyzes The Last Days of Louisiana Red in relation to Reed’s insistence that racial histories be reviewed and rewritten. Comments on Reed’s methods are helpful for understanding Reed’s later works such as Reckless Eyeballing.

Martin, Reginald. Ishmael Reed and the New Black Aesthetic Critics. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988. Martin closely analyzes Reed’s evolving notion of Neo-HooDoo aesthetics and how it relates to new black aesthetic critics such as Clarence Major, Houston Baker, Jr., Addison Gayle, Jr., and Amiri Baraka. Comes to the conclusion that Reed refuses to acknowledge any mode of criticism, whether white or black. Discusses Reckless Eyeballing as a satiric allegory that demonstrates Reed’s constant ability to change.

Mvuyekure, Pierre-Damien. The “Dark Heathenism” of the American Novelist Ishmael Reed: African Voodoo as American Literary Hoodoo. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007. Examines the intervention of Reckless Eyeballing in the discourses of postcoloniality and African American feminism.

Settle, Elizabeth A., and Thomas A. Settle. Ishmael Reed: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982. Covers all aspects of Reed’s publishing career, including sound recordings and videotapes, through 1981. A valuable resource guide for articles and essays by Reed as well as reviews of his work.

Whitlow, Roger. “Ishmael Reed.” In Black American Literature: A Critical History. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1973. Covers the early career of Reed, including his poetry, and makes a strong argument for his inclusion in the absurdist literary tradition.