Does Reed = Emerson?

            In Richard Hardack’s “Swing to the White, Back to the Black: Writing and ‘Sourcery’ in Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo”, there are several intriguing ideas brought up. While we got to begin discussing some topics in Hardack’s essay, I want to think about it a little bit more. Particularly, I want to talk about Ralph Waldo Emerson.

            Already, we have talked about Reed being like a “white ‘transcendental’ writer”, specifically Emerson. Adding on to that, Hardack believes that Mumbo Jumbo is a “parody of and homage to Emerson’s works” (Hardack 132). Although there are some similarities that we discussed in class, in terms of the relation of god(s) and nature for Emerson and Reed, I really don’t see a big connection to Emerson in Mumbo Jumbo, much less it being a parody of Emerson. I certainly did not even remotely think of Emerson or that style of writing while reading Mumbo Jumbo. Reed says things throughout Mumbo Jumbo like Set “perhaps invented taxes” and Jesus “was a sorcerer…who went around the countryside performing tricks” (Reed 170). However, Ralph Waldo Emerson in “Self Reliance” (something that should be familiar from Freshman English) says things much more like “It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things.” Sure, there might be passages that relate the two writers better, but just looking at style and tone itself, even the content in general, they just don’t seem to relate. Even if there is this connection with Reed and Emerson, I don’t see Reed intentionally doing so. Just from looking at Mumbo Jumbo as a whole and getting a feel for Reed’s intentions and goals, it just doesn’t seem like something he would do.

However, even though I am pretty sure there is no connection between the two doesn’t mean there isn’t one. I would expect Hardack to know much more about Emerson than me, who hasn’t read Emerson since freshman year. And even though I think Reed wouldn’t intentionally parody Emerson, I could be wrong. It’s not like Mumbo Jumbo is a simple book to understand, and Reed is not a simple author. And so while I feel pretty sure that there is no Reed-Emerson connection, I want to hear what you think about the topic. What do you think about Reed and Emerson? Do you see the connection Hardack is making?

Formatting Confusion

            One of my favorite things to do is reading books. My main goal in doing that is just for enjoyment. However, once you read enough books, you get a very good sense of certain rules all books follow. These conventions become constant throughout different books, making it easier to focus on the storyline since the overall format is generally the same. However, Mumbo Jumbo disregards these conventions.

            It’s not that this book is really old so it has a somewhat different structure and style from that of modern books. It was published in 1972, which means that its format could easily be what we are used to. Reed’s use of numerals always gets me, saying things like “100s” instead of “hundreds” (Reed 20). Also, the pictures that are inserted took a while to get used to, since fictional books usually have illustrations at most, and I would say typically relate to the material in a clear way. I just don’t see that clear relationship in Mumbo Jumbo. These things plus the strange placement of Chapter 1, the strange use of punctuation, and footnotes that seem to not follow any pattern makes Mumbo Jumbo a little bit confusing without even considering the actual text. It’s not that I haven’t encountered books or authors that sometimes don’t follow a certain convention, it’s just that there is an overwhelming number of conventions not being followed here. For example, in Ragtime the dialogue wasn’t in quotation marks or anything, it was just part of the paragraph. I could accept that. Yet Mumbo Jumbo does that same exact thing and it bugs me for some reason.

But the one thing that nags at me the most is, why? Why does Reed format his novel this way? Sure, to a certain extent, I could just say the format was the author’s personal preference. But with this uniquely strange structuring, it’s hard to write it off like that. There’s has to be some underlying meaning to it all. It’s hard to exactly tell what since we have only just started the novel. In class, we compared some of the structure of Mumbo Jumbo to a movie. I think that I can see Reed definitely adding the front matter after Chapter 1 to really remind the reader that the book is fiction. Adding footnotes and pictures also accomplishes that same thing as well. The formatting of dialogue, chapters, pictures, and footnotes also modifies the flow of the novel, which Reed might be doing in terms of a bigger theme in the book or trying to get it to match some aspects of the story. It’s hard to draw definite conclusions at this point in the novel, but I think the structure is important and hopefully by the end we can see maybe why Reed formatted Mumbo Jumbo this way. But maybe I’m just overreacting. What do you think of the formatting?