Recently in class, we've delved into the idea that Mumbo Jumbo can be viewed as an ontological detective novel. Throughout the story, LaBas is acting as a detective, trying to unravel the mystery of the big bad Atonists interfering with and trying to take down Jes Grew. He's constantly gathering clues and putting together metaphysical evidence that reveals Hinckle Von Vampton to be the villain he is, finally culminating in the great story beginning in ancient Egypt that satisfyingly fills in the mysterious holes lurking in the narrative. The whole book plays out like a movie, with a number of obviously cinematic elements scattered throughout, like the title coming after the first chapter and the stage cues in the final chapter. I can definitely understand the book being viewed as a detective novel of sorts.
Still, I feel like if I were to describe the novel to someone, I'm not sure I would call it a detective story. There are just so many other elements at play throughout the book I'm very reluctant to pin it to just one genre. The novel consists of a whole number of themes and stories, and it's all jumbled enough so as to appear something like a collage. It seems like Reed is most trying to make fun of contemporary western culture and reveal an alternate perspective to early twentieth century history directly in opposition to the common "Atonist" narrative. I would say that his method of telling a detective story is definitely twisting and building on the modernist ways of doing so, but it's not his chief purpose in the novel.
So it's pretty difficult to assign some specific genre to Mumbo Jumbo that people will understand immediately. It's not really like any other works I've read before, and I would say intentionally so. It's a very postmodernist novel, obviously, and is designed to be particularly unpalatable or unfamiliar, at least at first. Slowly, as I read, it opened itself up as satire, historical narrative, a detective story, and also text simply designed to provoke the reader. This chaotic mixture of work definitely seems to allow for a whole slew of interpretations, as I'm sure Reed was aware. I'm certainly glad to have read it, I'm just still gathering my thoughts together and trying to determine exactly what it is I've read.
You bring up some good points, I gave that panel presentation and I'm still reeling to coalesce the book in my mind. Part of the trouble is the depersonalization of the narrative; many of the characters aren't fleshed out too deep by Mumbo Jumbo, so it's a little harder to pin its genre down. It actually makes the story feel more like historical record rather than fiction, even though we know it (?) to be such. Detective story is a good starting place, but other than that it transcends many definitions.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking that we aren't supposed to try to pin the novel down to one genre. I mean, throughout the novel Reed breaks down the structural walls of Atonist/Western culture to point out that it's good to be free-flowing and random. That's what Jes Grew was. So by making the novel potentially fit into a ton of genres, maybe its another way to say we don't need it to fit into just one. We should just let it be what it is and not define it by our society's standards.
ReplyDeleteAs I was wrapping up this novel, I was also thinking about the postmodern aspects of it and also realized that it has a detective-story like aspect to it, which surprised me considering how detective stories are sort of the opposite of what one would expect from a postmodern novel (compared to Slaughterhouse-Five for example.) I think this another way that Reed toys with irony, but it's interesting how the inability to pin Mumbo Jumbo down to one genre kind of mimics the inability to stay still once infected with Jes Grew.
ReplyDeleteI agree that _MJ_ is not easily categorized--and calling it a "postmodernist novel" is a bit of a cop-out, as that isn't really a *genre* with definite common traits but more of a loosely connected bunch of characteristics (and historical/cultural contexts) with a lot of room for diversity within the category. But you're right that while Reed plays with certain conventions of detective fiction, and it might be a really useful way to conceive LaBas's role in the plot to see him as serving a detective-like function, but in this ontological sense, no aficionado of genre detective fiction, looking for a good murder mystery or blackmail plot, is going to be particularly gratified by this craziness. Next time a friend asks if you can recommend a good detective novel, you might do better to point them to Raymond Chandler than Ishmael Reed. (Although it might be fun to toss them the Reed just to mess with them!)
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