num_pages: 168
description: 
  "For all the talk of the black aesthetic, few black novelists have broken sharply with the traditional devices of the realistic novel. One writer who departs from such conventions, however, is Ishmael Reed. . . . The Free-Lance Pallbearers uses an explosive combination of straightforward English prose, exaggerated black dialect, hip jargon, advertising slogans and long, howling uppercase screams."â€”Newsweek
Ishmael Reed's electrifying first novel zooms readers off to the crazy, ominous kingdom of HARRY SAMâ€”a miserable and dangerous place ruled for thirty years by Harry Sam, a former used car salesman who wields his power from his bathroom throne. In a land of a thousand contradictions peopled by cops and beatniks, black nationalists and white liberals, the crusading Bukka Doopeyduk leads a rebellion against the corrupt Sam in a wildly uproarious and scathing satire, earning the author the right to be dubbed "the brightest contributor to American satire since Mark Twain" (The Nation).
language: English
title: The Free-Lance Pallbearers
titlecomplete: The Free-Lance Pallbearers
genres: American, Classics, The United States Of America, African American, Humor, Novels, 20th Century, Literature, Fiction
ratings_count: 367
publisher: Dalkey Archive Press