["Flight to Canada"] is a demonized "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a book that reinvents the particulars of slavery in America with a comic rage. Reed has little use for statistical realities. He is a necromancer, a believer in the voodoos of art. Time becomes a modest, crazy fluid in Reed's head, allowing him to mingle events of the last 150 years, in order to work his magic. We have Abe Lincoln and the Late Show, slave catchers and "white-frosted Betty Crocker glossy cake," Jefferson Davis and Howard K. Smith. Every gentleman's carriage is equipped with "factory climate-control air conditioning, vinyl top, AM/FM stereo radio, full leather interior, power-lock doors, six-way power seat, power windows, white-wall wheels, door-edge guards, bumper impact strips, rear defroster and soft-ray glass."

It isn't simple fun, backdrops for a minstrel show. The author seems to be telling us that the cluttered paraphernalia of our past...