The Paris Review - Fall 2016

INTERVIEWER
I know you and Baraka had an up-and-down relationship through the years.
REED
He had an up-and-down relationship with everybody. He was like Sugar Ray
Leonard. He’d kill you in the ring, but outside the ring he’d be the nicest guy.
I never stopped having an active correspondence with Amiri—as a matter of
fact, I published him up until a few months before his death.
INTERVIEWER
What did you think of him as a writer?
REED
He was a great writer. As I’ve said before, Amiri did for English syntax what
Monk did for chords. Both were into original inversions. And now that he’s
dead they’re recommending his book for a Christmas gift. The New York
Times hated him. Then they recommended SOS for Christmas.
INTERVIEWER
It just goes to show, it’s never too late to be a token. So, you left New York,
and at some point you went down to New Orleans, and this is where you
immersed yourself in voodoo culture.
REED
I had a tourist’s idea of voodoo. I think in my generation most black people grew
up in families where people whispered about a religion as old as Christianity. I
was naturally curious. My first novel, The Free-Lance Pallbearers, plays with the
idea, jokes about it. My second novel, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down, shows
the influence of Haitian mythology and religion, which I’d started to study, and
I put some of those themes and characters in there. In my next novel, Mumbo
Jumbo, I went as far as I could in using the Haitian spiritual idea. Years before, I
went to Nigeria and began to study Yoruba. I discovered that this religion ranks
with Islam and Christianity as a world religion. Oshun, one of the children of
the Yoruba god Olódùmarè, is celebrated every year in Atlanta, in Nigeria, and
in Brazil. So this is a worldwide religion. But I’m not a religious person. I’ve
always been skeptical of religion. And some people get carried away. I know of
47