While Mumbo Jumbo is a very difficult book to read, especially at the start, it is far from impossible. Though on the surface it appears to be in some points a mix of gibberish, typos, and random things, such as pictures and quotations, thrown in without much explanation, once you look a bit deeper, it's possible to somewhat ignore or gloss over some of the extra, strange, information to get to the core story. In general, it's not nearly as different from normal novels as Reed would seem to want you to believe, as it uses many of the same conventions as most novels do, albeit in slightly different forms.
The start of the book has by far the most prominent examples of this unusual style of writing, from the oddly-placed first section to the short chapters that jump around to the huge amount of new, unfamiliar terms. It almost seems as if Reed is attempting to provide some sort of shock value in the beginning, to show just how strange this book is going to be by going all-out with the first few chapters. This section was the hardest for me to understand by a very long way, but, as the book goes on, it becomes much easier. Though the reader's progression and ability to pick up the meaning of some of the terms through context are part of what makes the book easier to read later, it's also in large part because Reed writes the rest of the book in a much more normal way. There is a decrease in the number of sudden images, strange phrasings, and the like, and it begins to read more normally. While the actual ideas of the book continue to be extremely out-there and strange, such as the search for the Talking Android using skin-altering cream, the claim that Warren G. Harding is actually black, and countless others, the language used to convey them is actually not all that unusual by the end. In the section discussing the history of Osiris and Set especially, perhaps in part due to the change in narrator from Reed to LaBas, it was easy to "forget" that I was reading this supposedly strange Mumbo Jumbo, as it seemed pretty much like any normal book in places.
In addition to the writing style becoming less unusual as the novel goes along, it also becomes more clear that the structure of Mumbo Jumbo as a whole is fairly conventional. The extremely disjointed, short opening chapters with limited connections between them in terms of characters give way to those that are generally longer, and sketch out a continuous, central plot with recurring characters that serves as the backbone of the novel and has a somewhat "normal" arc up until its resolution at the end, using some quite popular storytelling conventions. In addition, though the book in points has places where it seems to want to appear free from structure, such as Chapter 1 being located outside the usual boundaries of the story and there being two separate Chapter 52's without explanation, these are more an exception than a rule, and the novel as a whole is fairly bound by traditional chapter structure.
I think what makes Mumbo Jumbo confusing at the beginning is that we (the readers) are unfamiliar with the world of Mumbo Jumbo and have not yet been fitted with our "Ishmael Reed glasses." After a while, the book seems to become more normal because our understanding of that world increases, possibly to a point at which one is sees our world through those same glasses. Also, after finishing the novel and briefly going back over it, the parts that initially seem random (pictures, news, chapters, typos, etc.) seem to form more of a purpose after understanding the message(s) in Mumbo Jumbo. Nice post!
ReplyDeleteThis is an excellent observation because I know I definitely felt the same level of confusion after the first few chapters, but it is interesting how the book kind of evens out as it progresses. One idea that comes to mind on why this might be the case is that as we get later in the book, we see Jes Grew kind of falling behind. When the epidemic was in full swing in the beginning (where the weird chapters are), pages are mixed together and he uses foreign languages, but as Atonist ideals take over in the plot line, their more traditional style of books take hold of Reed's layout and writing as well.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really interesting idea, it would certainly fit with the theme of Jes Grew throughout the novel, and it's something I think that Reed would do. I certainly noticed that the last chapter before the epilogue, immediately after it's discovered that the Text was burned, was the most "normal" part of the book to read.
DeleteI personally would like to reread Mumbo Jumbo and have a different mindset going into the book. Like you, I also was confused and kind of put off by how confusing and difficult to comprehend the first few chapters are. I think part of the reason why you think that the later parts of the book are easier to read may be because you became used to the style that Reed uses. Im not saying Reed didn't make the style less severe as the book progressed but it might have to do with you getting more comfortable with the writing style.
ReplyDeleteYour reading of Zuzu as a dog (still not clear to me how "doo-wack-a-doo and voo-do-de-odo fizgig" made you think "dog"!) is a really good illustration of why you don't SKIP a paragraph when part of it gets a little confusing--you plow on, and hope things start to cohere. There's no question that the novel is deliberately confusing at the start, but I insist that it's not AS confusing as some of you have said, with ideas about most of the words being invented, no recognizable English syntax, etc. It's pretty easy to reconstruct a clear sequence of events and characters in the opening scene, despite the stylistic oddities. And this holds true for the rest of the book. It entails some *work*, and the reader has to take some steps to meet the author on his own terms, but it can be comprehended. I've seen it happen!
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