60. Japanese By Spring

by Ishmael Reed (240 pgs)

Rating: 4

Professor Puttbutt is the son of a prominent military family and non-tenured faculty at the Jack London college in California. He is an African American who rants against affirmative action. He is a coward and a radical alternately with one hell of a mean streak.

I am honestly not sure what to make of Japanese By Spring. It was relatively easy to read but the commentary on ethnicity, PCness, and academia is probably going to take a while to sink in. There was a certain preachy feel to the epilogue and I find it very strange that author showed up as a character several times throughout the novel. I suspect that Reed used forms of African and African American story telling that I am just not familiar with. I did tend to identify with the sort of overarching sense of frustration that accompanies discussion of ethnicity throughout the narrative. It’s difficult to glean Reed’s position on many of the topic but I’m leaning to the conclusion that Reed doesn’t have a position on them. It’s possible that the novel is a farce only intended to expose the ridiculousness of the entire current discourse.

As I said. I don’t know. I have no particular insight.

I tentatively recommend the book in a general sense because recommending it to specific people would indicate I understood it more than I really did. But I do recommend it because it is making me think about these topics and I believe that’s a valuable thing.