MUMBO JUMBO

by Ishmael Reed ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 1, 1972

This strange, hysterical, and highly comic rendition of the Dionysian underside of culture is a kind of cops-and-robbers interpretation of world history. Versus the black hoo-doo artists, jazz freaks, and spiritual descendants of the much-maligned Osiris, are the evil white ""Atonists"" (after the monotheistic Egyptian god Aton) -- such as Moses and the Knights Templar and Christianity in general, co-opters and bastardizers of the magic tradition, who use it for their own tawdry, repressive, imperialistic aims. Berbelang and his Mu'tafikah gang liberate African art from ""Centers of Art Detention"" like the Metropolitan Museum, only to be betrayed by Thor Wintergreen, the white rich boy whose liberalism fades when confronted by the oily tones of the kidnapped curator, Biff Musclewhite. And the Depression is merely a huge ploy to cut the economic muscle from the dangerous Jazz age -- but the ""Jes Grew"" phenomenon will resurface in the propitious '60's, stronger than ever, still trying to recover the lost texts so as to reunite the music with the Word. The book is sprinkled with pertinent recherche quotes from various texts, and puts down, in very non-linear fashion, Freud, Marx, and other gods of impoverished Western Civilization as it dashes back and forth in time in its hip but coherent semi-serious jig of Establishment sine qua nons. The fast, dense, almost gnostic prose abounds with allusions to everything under (and over) the sun, and is more than worth the difficulties the non-attuned or uninitiated reader may have in following it.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1972

ISBN: 0684824779

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1972

Categories: FICTION