The last publicized center of American writing was Manhattan. Its writers became known as the New York Intellectuals. With important connections to publishing, and universities, with access to the major book reviews, they were able to pose as the vanguard of American culture when they were so obsessed with the two Joes--McCarthy and Stalin--that they were to produce only two artists, Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, who left town.
Ishmael ReedI use non-fiction work written by Whites in my research. It's indispensable. That wasn't the problem. I said that "The Wire" was a clichรฉ! It's like my writing a series about Jewish life and casting all of the characters as inside traders.
Ishmael ReedCurrently, U.S. society has been encouraged by its political and subsidized mass-media intelligentsia to view U.S. life as a continual "morning in America" paradise, where the only social problems occur in the inner cities. Psychologists call this denial.
Ishmael ReedAnother California study counted 30,000 substance abusers who are pregnant are White woman. So, The Wire paints the picture of drug addiction, drug dealing, and drug abuse as being a specifically a Black issue.
Ishmael Reed