From Jonathan McAloon's 8-1-17 Guardian article entitled "Mumbo Jumbo: A Dazzling Classic Finally Gets the Recognition It Deserves":
"[Ishmael Reed's] 10 novels are, for the most part, subtle satires on race, worked
into settings such as the OJ Simpson trials, a US civil war in which
photocopiers exist and a wild west where cowboys wield laser guns. But
Mumbo Jumbo is the most dazzling of them all. Set ostensibly in the
1920s, Reed’s novel follows conspiracy theories ranging backwards and
forwards through time. A 'plague' called Jes Grew has spread from New
Orleans and caused half the country to dance recklessly, enjoy jazz and
have a new appreciation for African American culture. Religious orders
like the Knights Templar and the hi-tech Wallflower Order (responsible
in Reed’s novel for the Depression and the US occupation of Haiti) seek
to destroy an ancient Egyptian text that the Jes Grew may 'want'.
"But Jes Grew is 'an anti-plague', the spirit of innovation and freedom
of self-expression itself: 'Jazz. Blues. The new thang … Your style.' Reed took a snatch of the preface to 1922’s
The Book of American Negro
Poetry, in which James Weldon Johnson says 'the earliest Ragtime songs,
like Topsy, "jes" grew' – they just happened – and turned it into a
clever literary device that exposes people’s prejudice.
"While some believe the media invented Jes Grew to sell papers, Harlem
Voodoo priest Papa LaBas is drawn into the search for its ancient text.
Unbeknown to him, a Muslim scholar has already found it, translated it
and had it rejected by a publishing house. The slip is found next to his
dead body: 'The "Negro Awakening" fad seems to have reached its peak
and once more people are returning to serious writing … A Negro editor
here said it lacked "soul" and wasn’t "Nation" enough.'
"Made up of newspaper cuttings and party invites, handwritten notes and
footnotes, contemporaneous and contemporary photographs,
Mumbo Jumbo
gives one a sense of Reed just using everything that captures his own
imagination. This is exhilarating because, like jazz, the novel feels
improvisatory and ambitious. Reed embraces ridiculousness, while lending
the ridiculous weight. It is a funny book about conspiracy theories
that nonetheless feels serious and true, encompassing potted histories
of Voodun loas and the Crusades, essays on Christ’s laughter and the
cotton trade ('Was it some unusual thrill at seeing the black hands come
in contact with the white crop?'), and a postmodern alternative
creation myth involving Osiris, Incas, Homer and Moses."
To read the rest of McAloon's article, click HERE.
