Ishmael Reed 's most important work has been his five novels, though he is also the author of two books of poetry, one nominated for a National Book Award. His experimental fiction has the stamp of poetry with its plots developed imagistically, its play with language for its own sake, and its continual reference to the power of ritual and ceremony. In his novels Reed breaks from the tradition of the pseudo-autobiography used by such major black writers as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin and based on the pattern of the mostly anonymous "slave narratives" of nineteenth-century America. Instead, Reed tries to avoid the negative attitudes and philosophical despair of many modern black writers. What Reed attempts in his fiction is to explore the mythic past of the black man and restore to him his non-Western vision. Reed's aim is the establishment of a black aesthetic...