Ishmael Reed

There are 2 posts tagged Ishmael Reed (this is page 1 of 1).

Oompa Loompa doopity don’t

It’s been about a month since my last post and, quite honestly, it feels like longer. Ages seemed to have passed. A whole era. That’s probably because I came down with the worst cold I’ve had in years and have been both very busy and falling behind at work.

The worst part of this cold hasn’t been the coughing or the runny nose. It’s been the brain fog. I don’t know what the hell has been going on with viruses these days, but I feel like I’ve dropped about 20 IQ points. I don’t think I’m alone in this, either. I hear so many anecdotes about people needing weeks and weeks to feel mentally “normal” after they catch the bugs that have been going around.

Anywho. It hasn’t been fun. Such is the life of a teacher.

It’s Wednesday of spring break, and the weather is going haywire. Yesterday was 70 degrees and sunny. Today there’s a blizzard. I expect we’ll lose power at any moment, as is happening all over this part of Nebraska. Soon I will have to shovel.

I finished Mumbo Jumbo, which I didn’t like. It’s nothing to do with the book. I’m afraid I just read too much of it while my brain was melting due to fever. It doesn’t help that the book is awfully non-traditional in its structure, and the prose is by no means easy to parse. Even if I was at 100% brain function, I doubt I would have fully digested it.

They always say that authors have a specific person in mind whenever they write something — a person to whom the story is targeted, whether it be conscious or unconscious. (Freud, it is likely, really wanted to show his mom how smart he was.) This book, Mumbo Jumbo, is a book whose target (if they exist) utterly baffles me. Who is Ishmael Reed trying to speak to? Were there readers out there looking for him? Because I simply cannot picture anyone out there thinking, “This. This is what I’ve been waiting for.”

Which is fine. You don’t have to “get” every book that you read. Mumbo Jumbo, from what I can gather, was an experiment with form and the incorporation of African mysticism into some kind of noir mystery and written before I was born. I can snap my fingers to it the way I might snap along with a complicated Jazz record, but, ultimately, I’m a rock and roll guy. I could spend months with Mumbo Jumbo and it’d likely never click.

As Primus (who sucks) always says, “They Can’t All be Zingers.”

Today, in order to give my brain a much needed break, I’m going to read Frankenstein by Mary “Torso Face” Shelley.

I don’t know who did that painting, but it comes across as Gollum doing a Downton Abbey cosplay.

I’ve read Frankenstein about a dozen times, the most notable of which was when I moved to Seoul in 2014 and had to spend several hours at the Immigration Office waiting to get my visa stamped. It was one of the only times in my life when I sat down in a chair and read an entire book without moving, save to go to the bathroom or get a drink of water. (Shout out to the immigration office for making me wait several hours! Couldn’t have done it without you, fellas.) Frankenstein turned what might have been a trip to bureaucratic purgatory into a relatively pleasant afternoon.

It’s a skill I’d like to cultivate: Not just sitting and reading, but sitting and not consuming digital media for extended periods of time. Is it ironic that I’m writing this on a blog most people will read on their phones? Maybe. But my half-dozen regular readers appreciate irony.

These days, however, the goal of trying to avoid digital media seems more and more like starting a diet when you’re on a tour Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

…and we just lost power. Not for a long time, but long enough to cause my computer to shut down. So, I’m going to wrap this up before we lose it completely.

Stay safe out there.

Uncontrollably exuberant

Not only have I never heard of Mumbo Jumbo, but I have no idea who this Ishmael Reed is, either. As an English major, it’s tough admitting that. There’s very little point in being well-read if you’re not going to seem well-read when you’re talking to people on the street or at parties and such, so whereas I might normally just say nothing or perhaps nod my head and knowingly mumble, “Hmm, yes,” when Ishmael Reed is mentioned, I’ve got to admit my ignorance here.

I can guess why I haven’t heard of this author or book. It was published well before my time (1972) and takes place even weller before my time (the 1920s). Besides that, the cover of the edition I have features two bare-breasted flappers (or, more accurately, the same bare-breasted flapper twice), which puts it firmly in the category of Books That I’d Be Unlikely to See on a Shelf at a Bookstore.

Let’s see what James Mustich, who put together this list of 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die (and pictured below combing his moustache with a corn tortilla), has to say about this one.

Mumbo Jumbo may be the most rambunctious novel you’ll ever read, a noir mystery steeped in the lore of African American HooDoo, the social tumult and political corruption of the 1920s, Egyptian mythology, and the deep wells of Ishmael Reed’s idiosyncratic imagination.

“Rambunctious” means uncontrollably exuberant, and it is a heck of a word to use to describe a book. Personally, when I read a book, what I’m looking for is controlled exuberance, but that’s just personal preference. We’ll see how rambunctious Mumbo Jumbo actually is.

Here’s the opening paragraph:

A True Sport, the Mayor of New Orleans, spiffy in his patent-leather brown and white shoes, his plaid suit, the Rudolph Valentino parted-down-the-middle hair style, sits in his office. Sprawled upon his knees is Zuzu, local doo-wack-a-doo and voo-do-dee-odo fizgig. A slatternly floozy, her green, sequined dress quivers.

Well. I don’t know what to make of that, quite literally. What is a fizgig? The internet says it’s a flirtatious woman, but it could also be an Australian police informant.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how uncontrollably exuberant are we getting if the mayor of ‘Nerlins has an Aussie fink on his lap?