Ishmael Reed, Chapter 1 from Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down


1. The traditional Western plot usually involves a hero (morally incorruptible and good with a gun), a lawless town in need of protection and cleansing, and numerous smaller tropes of character and language. To what extent do Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down and the Loop Garoo Kid share the language and plot of a traditional Western, and to what extent do they depart from the formula? What does the pattern of resemblance and departure suggest about the resiliency or lack of resiliency of the ideals contained in the traditional Western?

2. The language of Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down is one of its most remarkable features. Explore how Ishmael Reed interweaves the language of the traditional Western ("Folks. This here is the story of the Loop Garoo Kid") with comic digression ("A desperado so onery he made the Pope cry"), African-American folk traditions ("don't forget the gris gris, the mojo, the wangols old Zozo taught you"), and the urban colloquial language of the 1950s and 1960s ("You know how hard he tried with the kids and the town's heathen, how he'd smoke hookahs with them brats and get stoned with Chief Showcase the only surviving injun and that volume of hip pastorale poetry he's putting together").

Does this language suggest that Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down is a novel about history, about the present, or both? What does this language suggest as a vision of American culture and how to approach the many vernaculars and communities of America?

3. Are the many cultural references within Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down meant to be read and valued for their absurdist quality, or should they be evaluated for hidden symbolic content? Does it matter, for instance, that the Loop Garoo Kid moves "from town to town quoting Thomas Jefferson"? What quotations from Thomas Jefferson might he be uttering, and how might they be relevant within the context of the novel?