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Young, unpublished African American author Ichabod "Icky" Word has summoned a police detective to his Minneapolis apartment under false pretenses.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Young, unpublished African American author Ichabod "Icky" Word has summoned a police detective to his Minneapolis apartment under false pretenses.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.
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.
