Gene Seymour on Ishmael Reed

The Lives They're Living

Gene Seymour spent years working for big-city newspapers as a reporter and movie and jazz critic. He's the author of a young adult history, Jazz, the Great American Art. These days, he lives in Philadelphia and contributes mightily on a remarkable range of subjects from baseball to crime novels and many steps in between to The Nation, book forums, CNN. com, The New Republic, The Washington Post, and others. Ishmael Reed was born in 1938, and as a novelist, poet, essayist, and provocateur, has been at the center of American letters since the 1960s.