As I previously mentioned in my last blog post, Ishmael Reed brings to the table a very unconventional style of writing that I've never encountered before. As I've progressed further into the book, I have come upon countless cases of this unique style that would not be found in any other works of literature. Although there are many other examples, here are a few:
1) Unlike every book I've ever read, the start of a chapter isn't placed on another page, rather he just starts the next chapter as soon as the previous one ends. 2) Dialogue is not placed in quotation marks. This could potentially become quite confusing. 3)Reed doesn't write out numbers. "One" is 1 and "thousands" is 1000s in the book. This kind of throws me off since I'm used to authors writing out numbers, I get distracted by the fact that numbers frequently appear where they're not supposed to. 4) There are portions of writing with altered font, font size, and bolded words. Once again, this distracts me as I'm not used to seeing such writing. The last thing I'll address is 5) There are random pictures placed in the book. I honestly dot find them helpful in the least, it's usually just a picture of something vague that was mentioned a little bit. A caption describing the picture would help, but then again this is Reed's writing, as confusing as possible.
Overall, although Reed's unconventional writing style is distracting, it also makes the reading more entertaining since you don't know what to expect from him. It makes me want to continue reading the book just to see what crazy bs he can come up with next.
The illustrations are especially interesting to think about--not only do they not always "connect" explicitly to the surrounding text (they don't "illustrate" the prose the way they're "supposed to"), at times they're explicitly anachronistic (the image of the Black Panthers, after text summarizing the Wallflower "creed"). But in the absence of the usual "narrative-based" coherent connections between illustration and text, we can maybe think about some other ways these images function: what DO the Panthers in the late 1960s have to do with the culture war Reed depicts near the start of the century? In what ways does such an image compel the reader to think about how the "present" of the novel relates to the "past" it ostensibly depicts?
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