Bound to be Bad

           When Dana and Kevin travel back in time together, Dana explains to Rufus that they are both from the future and are a married couple. I understand that Dana tells Rufus this to help explain her strange arrivals and to tell him who Kevin is, however, I think that what she told him might have later led to a misunderstanding. While back in time together, Dana and Kevin assume the roles of master and slave to blend in and protect themselves. This move, however uncomfortable it makes us feel, also makes sense. However, the combination of these two actions can be misleading from Rufus’s perspective. He was told that they were a married couple but then sees the master-slave dynamic between the two. Sure, he knew that Dana was educated and that mixed-race marriage was a thing in the future but he mainly just saw the act of master and slave. I know he got to see them sometimes not really acting, but there was still a lot he didn’t understand about their relationship.

           As we have discussed in class, the relationship between Rufus and Alice is a master and slave relationship, but it’s somewhat different. Rufus does seem to care about Alice and wants her to care about him. He doesn’t just want any slave, he wants Alice. However, he still treats her as a slave and as his property. He has her come sleep with him each night. This reminded me about how Dana went in Kevin’s room each night as well because Kevin didn’t want her to sleep in the attic but it looks different from an outside perspective. I feel like Rufus, even if he isn’t consciously trying to all the time, is trying to have a relationship like Dana and Kevin. However, with their acting and his limited knowledge, Rufus and Alice have a terrible relationship. 

           The thing is though, I don’t think that providing Rufus with more or less information about the future and who they are would change the outcome. With more information, he might just get even more confused and with less information, he would still reflect his time period in some way. I don’t see how Dana doing something different would change it for the better. I feel like there’s only so much she could do with her occasional influence on Rufus, who was already trapped in the system and influenced by his time period. I think that the relationship between Rufus and Alice was bound to be bad in some way and there was little that could be done by Dana to change it.

Wait, that was it?

From the start of the book, Vonnegut constantly reminded us that the killing of Edgar Derby was coming, that it was going to the climactic point of the book. However, the scene itself was pretty anti-climactic. It was one page before the book ended and the entire thing took one short paragraph to describe.

“Somewhere in there the poor old high school teacher, Edgar Derby, was caught with a teapot he had taken from the catacombs. He was arrested for plundering. He was tried and shot."

Campbell got to speak for much longer than the entire scene of the supposed climactic point. How does that make sense?

Something that seems much more like the climactic point is the bombing of Dresden. The book had been building up to the point where Vonnegut could finally tell us what happened in Dresden, but not in a way that told us exactly what was going to happen. It had an entire scene with some follow-up, leaving more than a page for the end of the novel. So what is the point of Vonnegut to be contradictory in this way? It’s not that Derby’s death was not important, it just wasn’t presented in a way that made it seem like the big climactic point. I guess if Vonnegut is going to announce the beginning, end, and climactic point of his book he might want to through the reader off guard a little bit, but I don’t know. We did have more details given about Derby's death throughout the book, but the overall way it was presented did not leave much drama as to what was going to happen. So why tell the reader these details ahead of time anyway? It does fit in with tralfamadorian ideas and the novel is supposed to be formatted like the tralfamadorian novels. So does that mean the climax in tralfamadorian novels are pretty anti-climatic? I mean, I would believe it with how their ideology is. What effect does this have on the novel? Do you have any ideas as to why Vonnegut would do this?

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?

What's Up With the Little Boy?

            In class we have talked about how Doctorow uses his powers as an author in some ways that are not quite subtle. For example, Doctorow makes Houdini all a sudden crash next to the little boy’s house right after the little boy thought about the magician. It’s a rather odd thing to happen, but perhaps Houdini happened to be driving down that street and crash. The chances of that actually happening is really unlikely, but it has some basis of realism. However, some of the other things Doctorow adds to the story seems to be like some sort of magic.

            The little boy started off seeming like a normal kid. Sure, it was odd that Houdini appeared right after the boy thought about him, but that was probably just Doctorow trying to get Houdini into the story. But then the little boy says something quite confusing. “Warn the Duke,” he told Houdini (Doctorow 10). Who’s this duke? Why did the little boy randomly tell Houdini this? It just overall is a puzzling end to the chapter. But the story goes on. Then as we follow Houdini in his story, he happens to meet Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It can be easy to forget the little boy’s prior warning like Houdini did (Not that Houdini would know what to warn the duke about). However, the little boy’s statement is somewhat prophetic. Could a warning have prevented Ferdinand’s assassination? What would that have meant for WWI? This is only the start of the supernatural powers of the little boy.

            In Chapter 15, Doctorow tells us that the little boy “could look at the hairbrush on the bureau and it would sometimes slide off the edge and fall to the floor. If he raised the window in his room it might shut itself at the moment he thought the room was getting cold” (Doctorow 117). Doctorow in this passage just basically told us that the little boy has telekinetic powers. Any doubt about the boy having strange powers is erased by Doctorow in this moment. It’s not just the reader connecting the boy’s strange statement and the later encounter with Ferdinand. Doctorow is showing us the unusual traits of the boy. For a book that can mix history and fiction so well, it is odd that he would decide to give the little boy these powers in a not so subtle way. What is Doctorow trying to do with the little boy? Why is he being so obvious with his powers as an author? There are a lot of strange things going on with the little boy. What do you think?

This blog is now for History As Fiction

Racehorses and Basketball

           In class, we discussed Gunnar telling Scoby in a letter that he “sympathize[s] with these animals ‘cause this place makes [him] feel like a racehorse” (Beatty 146). The more I thought about this passage, the more I realized how many ways it could apply to Gunnar.

           Let’s first think about racehorses. Racehorses are used for entertainment purposes, usually with people betting on the outcome of races. They are constantly trained and looked after carefully to make sure they are in good physical condition. Certain breeds of horses are seen as better for the sport, having more agility or whatever traits that are needed. The racehorses make a lot of money for their owners but are only valuable to those owners for a certain amount of time. While racehorses may have a brief claim to fame, they are generally forgotten as they fade out of the spotlight. Several horses are euthanized as they get injuries too great to recover from, such as breaking a leg. Doesn’t sound so great for the horses, does it?

           Now think about basketball. Basketball is a form of entertainment, probably one that several of us enjoy watching. A stereotype seen in Beatty’s book and present today is that black people are better at basketball. Gunnar is constantly pushed and monitored to be at his best level for each game. While playing college basketball, Gunnar isn’t really getting much benefit from it, instead, others make money through his efforts. We see all of these colleges trying to recruit him, but each college just wants to be the one to profit from Gunnar’s talent. However, just like racehorses, basketball players slow down and many get forgotten, becoming discarded as their talent is no longer the same as it was. This paragraph unfortunately echoes many of the things of the prior paragraph.

           What we see in basketball and racehorses is this system where the people who benefit are not those putting in the effort. The owners get money and the fans get the enjoyment of watching the sport. In some cases like Gunnar’s, the people (or horses) don’t actually want to be playing for all these people but end up in that situation because of their talent. One interesting thing with racehorses is that certain breeds are seen as being better racehorses which reminds me of the whole notion of African-Americans being better at basketball, or athletics in general. In both of these cases, I see somebody being exploited for the benefit for others. What was first read by me as a casual comment seems to be so true on so many levels its surprising. It makes me just wonder how many other hidden meanings I missed while reading the novel. Maybe I’m looking too deep into this. What do you think?