Reckless Eyeballing

RECKLESS EYEBALLING is an original, highly comic dispatch from the politicized culture wars of the 1980's that makes some very serious charges that should remain open for discussion nearly 20 years later. As the other reviewer says, why aren't more people reading this? The novel's title is the title of the protagonist's play. The narrator is Ian Ball, a playwright whose perspective as an African American male has been set upon by feminists. With the very real image of Ronald Reagan at the Bitburg Cemetery in West Germany honoring Nazi soldiers killed in World War II as "victims" on the news, Ball's world of New York Theater is in the hands of WASP producer Becky French, a strident feminist who insists all women are victims, including Eva Braun. Ball needs French in order to get his new play produced, the theme of which echoes the Jim Crow law that left America with the scar of the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till after he was accused of whistling at a white woman. French replaces Ball's friend and director, Jim Minsk, a Jew who disappears under mysterious circumstances, with Tremonisha Smarts, an African American feminist who had been among Ball's past accusers. Meanwhile, a serial assaulter, the "Flower Phantom" is terrorizing New York, a disguised man who captures feminists and shaves their heads after the fashion of the French Resistance who shaved the heads of female Nazi sympathizers in World War II. He bequeaths a chrysanthemum to each victim, including Tremonisha. Who is that masked man? What will happen to Ball's play? What really happened to Jim Minsk? What's going on with that bigoted cop just days from retirement who is investigating the "Flower Phantom"? Will Tremonisha and Ball ever see eye to eye? Reed keeps the plots, characters and suspense flying, richly offered up in solid writing enriched with the symbolism of sight. This is at once a very readable and often funny book that also probes some very sore spots.

The novel probably contains the best answer to that question within itself. Reckless Eyeballing is Ishmael Reed's satirical response the feminist movement which often (not always realizing it) has attempted to make its gains by vilifying black men and which has often worked to supress the voices of black men (like Reed himself--who is an excellent and under-read novelist). The plot itself is fairly difficult to describe because there are several plays within the novel that are important. The main character is Ian Ball, a playwright who is trying to produce a play that will get him off of the feminist hate lists. His play is being produced by Becky French (a literal femi-nazi who is producing a play hilariously exonerating Eva Braun) and directed by Tremonisha Smarts (authoress of a play--who is largely based on Alice Walker--entitled "Wrong-Headed Man"), and once the play is in their hands, it turns into an absurdly feministic farce. There are several other things happening in the novel as well. Some man, the flower phantom, is shaving feminists heads, as the French Resistance did to traitors during WWII, and Ian finds himself sympathizing with him. Additionally, there is a bigot detective out to catch the flower phantom who loves Tremonisha's play. This novel is often hilarious, particularly when the two plays in the novel are described. It is, as all satires are, also very sad at its heart. There are a lot of people, such as Ian and Tremonisha, who are being used to oppress others, and the novel exposes that. Ultimately, this is a very compassionate novel. Even Tremonisha isn't a detestable figure. She, along with much of the rest of the feminist movement, is just being used by an establishment that is larger and more powerful and is actually evil. Reed's novel has been called inflammatory, but to call it that is to ignore the sympathy in the novel. So many people are oppressed, but the attempt to gain freedom shouldn't necessitate the finding if a scapegoat.