MUMBO JUMBO - ISHMAEL REED

AVAILABLE

First novel and the first book I’ve bought (not got from the library) in a while. I’ve been on the lookout for this book in the used bookstores for a while. I had heard a brief synopsis of the plot somewhere and then I heard that story about Reed writing a play where Lin Manuel-Miranda is haunted by ghosts for writing Hamilton, and thought to myself, here is a man I need to know more about. Either way, I was left with the unusual feeling that I wish this was longer. This is perhaps Thomas Pynchon’ fault. This book is very much in the style of Gravity’s Rainbow or Mason & Dixon or Against The Day, though it predates all of them and Pynchon references Reed in GR. But since I read those volumes first I wanted that insane expansiveness. Reed knows so much about this time-period, the 20’s, and writes the sort of story you want to check Wikipedia about every few pages to catch the cameos and understand the mythologies, I would have been fine to read a book double this length in this world, spinning out all the strange side-stories into bizarre corners. But, you get what you get, and what’s here doesn't disappoint. The main plot revolves around the battle between a Harlem houngan and his allies against the Wallflower Order, a group committed to domination. There are plots about a multi-racial gang repatriating looted objects from museums and Cab Calloway running for president and struggle between polytheists and Atonists and Black culture being metaphorized into a virus and an attempt to create an android and on and on and on. There’s smart and interesting stuff about early 20th century urbanization and rent parties as mutual aid, as well as a long, fascinating retelling of Egyptian Mythology that involves Dionysus, Christ, Moses and Zipporah, lots of practical advice about the nature of the Loa, as well as a convincing reading of Faust as a quintessentially Western figure that I’m upset I wasn’t exposed to in a class I took in college all about Faust. All of this was great and I would have loved more of any one of them. Knights Templar stuff, speculation on Warren G. Harding’s heritage, thoughts on astrology, the history of Haiti, Black Herman, a real early 20th century Black stage magician, it’s all here. I’m going to have to check out Reed’s other stuff, this book shared a lot of my interests but I’m guessing someone as voracious and all-consuming in his knowledge, like Reed, might be onto other stuff in other books. Either way, I’d highly recommend this. 1921 Loa