The Multicultiboho Sideshow - Hardcover

Pate, Alexs D

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0380976781 ISBN 13: 9780380976782

Publisher: William Morrow, 1999

Synopsis

The Multicultiboho Sideshow

Young, unpublished African American author Ichabod "Icky" Word has summoned a police detective to his Minneapolis apartment under false pretenses. Word's true purpose is to capture the unsuspecting law officer -- a tired, overweight, middle-aged white man named Bloom-and to hold him hostage, while the frustrated writer regales his prisoner with a rambling tale of anger and woe ... and an explanation for the dead body wrapped in plastic in Icky's living room.

Which is precisely what Icky Word does even as a team of SWAT sharpshooters maneuvers into optimum firing positions outside the building. The saran-wrapped corpse, Icky informs Bloom, was once Dewitt McMichael, a maker of dreams and cultural gigolo with the power to bestow a half-million-dollar "genius" grant on one lucky artist of color. The twisted roads that ultimately converged, bringing Word and McMichael together-and the bizarre circumstances that led to the latter's demiseare all part of a mad and maddening story that must be told; a mind-boggling chronicle of power, immorality, money, political stratification, racial discrindnation, brilliant creation and desecration that Icky is determined to vent in full ... even if it proves to be his last, desperate act on this Earth.

Alternately sobering and screamingly funny, Alexs D.Pate's The Multicultiboho Sideshow is a blistering and remarkable work that spares nothing and no one-as it brings down everything it takes keen and caustic aim at, from the politics of art and death to the black man's rage and the white man's institutions.

Young, unpublished African American author Ichabod "Icky" Word has summoned a police detective to his Minneapolis apartment under false pretenses. Word's true purpose is to capture the unsuspecting law officer-a tired, overweight, middle-aged white man named Bloom-and to hold him hostage, while the frustrated writer regales his prisoner with a rambling tale of anger and woeand an explanation for the dead body wrapped in plastic in Icky's living room.

Which is precisely what Icky Word does-even as a team of SWAT sharpshooters maneuvers into optimum firing positions outside of the building. The saran-wrapped corpse, Icky informs Bloom, was once Dewitt McMicheal, a maker of dreams and cultural gigolo with the power to bestow a half-million dollar "genius" grant on one lucky artist of color. The twisted roads that ultimately converged, bringing Word and McMicheal together-and the bizarre circumstances that led to the latter's demise-are all part of a mad and maddening story that must be told; a mind-boggling chronicle of power, immorality, money, political stratification, racial discrimination, brilliant creation and desecration that Icky is determined to vent in fulleven if it proves to be his last, desperate act on this Earth.

Alternately sobering and screamingly funny, Alexs D. Pate's THE MULTICULTIBOHO SIDESHOW is a blistering and remarkable work that spares nothing and no one-as it brings down everything it takes keen and caustic aim at, from the politics of art and death to the black man's rage and the white man's institutions.

About this title

About the Author

Alexs D. Pate's work has appeared in the Washington Post, Utne Reader, and Artpaper. The author of four novels, he is assistant professor of African American and African studies at the Unversity of Minnesota. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Reviews

Ichabod "Icky" Word, an ambitious young African-American writer and the protagonist of Pate's (Losing Absalom) inventive tale of crime, art, politics and black rage, needs to be heard. To gain his brief moment in the limelight, Word lures Bill Bloom, a white lieutenant with the Minneapolis Police Department, to his apartment and immediately takes him captive. Strapping the fat, battle-weary, middle-aged detective in a chair with duct tape, Word reveals the purpose of his bizarre hostage scheme, beginning a rambling, fragmented story about the powerful cultural and racial forces that have brought him to this pass. Complicating matters is the police barricade of the apartment, not to mention the garbage bag-wrapped presence of the corpse of Dewitt McMichaels, a man who was once an influential cultural maven with the power to make and break careers in the multicultural art world. Though the setup seems contrived at first, Pate effectively explores each man's personal history and emotional state, shifting adroitly from voice to voice and suffusing the dialogue with humor and irony. Veteran police officer Bloom takes a truthful measure of his faltering marriage, dead-end job and lackluster life. Meanwhile, Word describes his dealings with the circle of art-world friends he calls his "multicultiboho tribe," all of whom may or may not be implicated in McMichaels's murder. With time running out and nervous police snipers on nearby rooftops, the mystery of the murder is slowly unraveledAand Word and Bloom ultimately gain a realistic understanding of each other that civil rights laws could never mandate. Though his exuberance sometimes gets the better of him and translates into sloppy prose, Pate combines elements of a classic whodunit with the best qualities of stinging social satire, venturing beyond formula and genre. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Pates fourth (Finding Makeba, 1997, etc.) is indeed a multicultural sideshow headlined by a struggling African-American writer who attempts to explain the death of a white, grant-giving benefactor to a cop. One morning Ichabod Icky Word, an unpublished novelist eking out a living in Minneapolis, calls the police to his apartment. When Lt. Bill Bloom arrives alone, Word disarms him, ties him to a chair, and gags him before launching into a book- long explanation of the dead body in the corner of his apartment. The body is that of Dewitt McMichael, a white officer of the Shrubbery Foundation and a self-styled benefactor of underrepresented art, who recently assembled a group of minority artists to inform them they were finalists for a half-million-dollar grant. Word had hosted a reception in his apartment for the contestants, and McMichael had joined them. During a particularly heated exchange about white underwriting of minority artistsand all the assumptions behind itMcMichael, maintains Word, died from a ruptured blood vessel, perhaps a stroke. On this spare frame of plot, Pate takes ample opportunity to embroider stereotypes, sexual prejudices, economic biases, police harassment, and the travails of Words life in largely white Minneapolis. The fatal exchange, Word reports, involved McMichaels final confession: The work you are doing just doesnt take me anywhere. Do the issues here sound too complex? Pate obligingly suggests that McMichael is doing this work to assuage the guilt hes felt, ever since boyhood, when he ran over his pet dog The author's essayistic subjectthe cultural depiction of people who make artistic representations of themselvesovershadows his narrative. As with many book-length sermons, though, there are still some piquant and useful exhibits here. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Ichabod Word is a struggling African American writer in Minneapolis who is in the running for a "genius grant," competing against four other artists of color. When the foundation executive who will select the recipient turns up dead in Word's apartment during a meeting with the contenders, Word calls the police, ties up the officer who comes to investigate, and proceeds to tell him the entire story of the origin and results of the crime. Word is a loquacious fellow, and his monologue about the death (along with riffs on racism, jazz, and the artistic process, among other topics) makes up nearly the entire novel. Unlike the run-of-the-mill mystery, there is very little violence and no sex; all of the tension develops from the reader's need to discover how the loathsome executive died. There are flaws in the premise, especially in the motivation for kidnapping the investigator, but overall, Pate has effectively manipulated the mystery genre to fit his own quite fascinating ends. George Needham

Edition details

• Publisher: William Morrow
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0380976781
• ISBN 13: 9780380976782
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256