Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down
by Ishmael Reed
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"'Folks. This here is the story of the Loop Garoo Kid. A cowboy so bad he made a working posse of spells phone in sick. A bullwhacker so unfeeling he left the print of winged mice on hides of crawling women. A desperado so ornery he made the Pope cry and the most powerful of cattlemen shed his head to the Executioner's swine.' And so begins the HooDoo Western by Ishmael Reed, author of Mumbo Jumbo and one of America's most innovative and celebrated writers. Reed demolishes white American show more history and folklore as well as Christian myth in this masterful satire of contemporary American life. In addition to the Black, satanic Loop Garoo Kid, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down features Drag Gibson (a rich, slovenly cattleman), Mustache Sal (his nymphomaniac mail-order bride), Thomas Jefferson, and many others in a hilarious parody of the old Western"-- show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down is a book that reads less like prose and more like poetry-slam. It's whiplash fast, driving you foreward before you even realize where you've been. It's part slang, part pop, part scatting, part minstrel and completely engaging. It doesn't make you think so much as slams you up against thoughts so fast you have to either take them on or die trying to fight them off.
That was fun, I guess.
I really have no idea what to make of this book.
Wild, off the rails, fun.
Also sort of pointless, silly, half-baked.
I really have no idea what to make of this book.
Wild, off the rails, fun.
Also sort of pointless, silly, half-baked.
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Author Information
68+ Works 3,949 Members
Poet and novelist Ismael Reed was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on February 22, 1938 and grew up in Buffalo, New York. After attending the State University of New York at Buffalo, he moved to New York City, where he became a co-founder of the East Village Other, a journal of experimental writing. From New York, he moved to Berkeley, California, show more and started the Yardbird Publishing Company. Reed's fiction draws upon myth, magic, and ritual to produce a literature that attempts to be larger than life. He has been called an ironist, whose explorations of United States history in general and African American history in particular reveal deep scars in the culture that no amount of technology can heal. Reed tries to incorporate multimedia and nonlinear techniques into his writing style. He has defended his eclectic techniques with spirit, however: "Many people call my fiction muddled, crazy, incoherent because I've attempted in fiction the techniques and forms painters, dancers, film makers, musicians in the West have taken for granted for at least 50 years, and the artists of many other cultures, for thousands of years." His other published books include: six collections of poetry, including: New and Collected Poems, 1964-2007; eight collections of essays, most recently Barack Obama and the Jim Crow Media: The Return of the Nigger Breakers (2010); Gethsemane Park; The Reed Reader (2000); Blues City: A Walk in Oakland (2003); and six plays, collected by Dalkey Archive Press as Ishmael Reed, The Plays (2009). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Awards and Honors
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down
- Original publication date
- 1969
- People/Characters
- Loop Garoo Kid; Drag Gibson; Mustache Sal; Chief Showcase; Jake the Barker; Zozo Labrique (show all 32); Black Diane; Juggler; Marshal; Doctor; Banker; Skinny McCullough; Bo Shmo; Royal Flush Gooseman; Preacher Rev. Boyd; Chinaboy; Horrible Hybrid; Spooky Situation; Zeke; Jeff Willias; Alcibiades Johnson; Meriwether Lewis; William Clark; Mighty Dike; Big Lizzy; John Wesley Hardin; Field Marshal Theda Doompussy Blackwell; Pete the Peek; Harold Rateater; Big Woogie; Pope Innocent; Thomas Jefferson
- Important places
- Yellow Back Radio; Video Junction
- Epigraph
- I was content. I was surrounded by no greedy grafters, no slimy creatures. Just dogs, horses, sheep, goats, bulls, burros and Men.
William S. Hart
America . . . is just like a turkey. It's got white meat and it's got dark meat. They is different, but they is both important to the turkey. I figure the turkey has more white meat than dark meat, but that don't make any dif... (show all)ference. Both have nerves running through 'em. I guess Hoo-Doo is a sort of nerve that runs mostly in the dark meat, but sometimes gets into the white meat, to.
. . . Anywhere they go my people know the signs.
Henry Allen
Oh, the hoodoos have chased me and still I am not broke,
I'm going to the mountains and think I am doing well;
I am going to the mountains some cattle for to sell,
And I hope to see the hoodoos dead and damn them all... (show all) in hell.
from "The Rustler," an American cowboy song
In Bath County, Kentucky in 1876, several tons of dried beef fell from the sky. How did this mass of meat get up into the sky--and how specifically dried beaf?
from "the Day It Rained Cows"
Ronald J. Willis,
E... (show all)ast Village Other, March 1st, 1968
Roy Rogers' movie double's name was Whitey Christensen.
from New York Journal American
Col. 5, May 4, 1948
The sheep are happier of themselves, than under the care of wolves.
Thomas Jefferson - Dedication
- To Carla, Pope Joan and Dancer
my 3 Wangols - First words
- Folks. This here is the story of the Loop Garoo Kid.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Thomas Jefferson was out of a job but that was O.K. too.
- Blurbers
- Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 295
- Popularity
- 108,646
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.71)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 10
- ASINs
- 9
