Ishmael Reed - Mumbo Jumbo
Read about half of it this week. God what a great book. I read it the first time more than ten years ago now, long enough to forget how many ideas and beliefs I thought were my own came from this book, or at least were solidified by it.
Further (take that, American literary culture): an actually funny book! A book with jokes, not absurd gestures towards them!
(So clear, too, why Pynchon referenced Reed by name later. This is like Gravity's Rainbow if it were fun.)