The Terrible Threes - Softcover

Reed, Ishmael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1564782247 ISBN 13: 9781564782243

Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press, 1999

Synopsis

With offbeat humor and on-target social criticism, Ishmael Reed presents in "The Terrible Threes" a vision of America in the not-too-distant future, a portrait of a fairy tale gone awry. Opening on Thanksgiving Day in the late 1990s--three years after the former fashion-model president was laughed out of office for admitting that Saint Nicholas knew more about the workings of the executive branch than he did--the White House is implicated in a plot to rid America of its surplus people and the Third World of its nuclear weapons.

About this title

About the Author:

Ishmael Reed is the author of over twenty-five books including Mumbo Jumbo, The Last Days of Louisiana Red, Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down and Juice!. He is also a publisher, television producer, songwriter, radio and television commentator, lecturer, and has long been devoted to exploring an alternative black aesthetic: the trickster tradition, or Neo-Hoodooism as he calls it. Founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley for over thirty years, retiring in 2005. In 2003, he received the coveted Otto Award for political theater.

From Publishers Weekly:

Reed's jazzlike, surreal phantasmagoria is set in the late 1990s, in an America where millions of surps (homeless people) forage for food, while U.S. President Jesse Hatch is a figurehead manipulated by televangelist Rev. Clement Jones, his spiritual adviser. The former president, ex-fashion model Dean Clift (star of The Terrible Twos , this novel's predecessor) has been removed from office but will soon stage a comeback. Among the convoluted subplots, two drive the action: White House communications chief Robert Krantz's "lone cowboy" scheme to drop neutron bombs on New York and Miami, then place the blame on Nigeria; and billionaire toymaker Elder Marse's plan to exploit the charisma of dwarfish Rastafarian Black Peter. Reed's uproarious, wisecracking, deadly serious farce swings between the inspired and the heavy-handed, but when he is on target, which is much of the time, he is one of the sharpest socio-political satirists around, hurling pointed barbs at racism, the CIA, women, the Vatican, the New York literary crowd and Americans' demand for instant gratification.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1564782247
• ISBN 13: 9781564782243
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192