Book Review

Mumbo Jumbo

by Ishmael Reed

     What if the battle between good and evil came down to a conflict between those who are too uptight to dance and those who are free enough to dance? Recasting the oldest conflict nown to humanity in these terms is what Ishmael Reed does in his novel Mumbo Jumbo. This conspiracy theory novel digs down into the roots of Western and African culture, extending all the way back to ancient Egypt and the battle between Osiris and Set. But you don’t need to believe in conspiracy theories, Egyptian mythology, or other such “mumbo jumbo” to get what Reed is saying in this somewhat allegorical story.

The setting is 1920 in New York City, the time of Prohibition, the Jazz Age, and the Harlem Renaissance. New dance crazes are taking off in popularity and this is causing panic in some sectors of the white society who think of it as an outbreak of a disease or pandemic. Certainly this plague sweeping across America is more exciting than COVID-19. Two Vodun houngans, Papa LaBas and Black Herman, see the outbreak in another light; they see it as an opportunity to allow loas from the otherworld to enter into America since they believe that dancing is a result of possession by spirits. At a rent party. The two houngans get into a discussion with Abdul Hamid, the leader of a new religious sect caled the Atonists. In opposition to the Vodun movement fostered by the others, Abdul Hamid represents order, discipline, and strict morality. This conflict between Vodun and the Atonists represent two sides of the African-American soul. One side is steeped in magic and African traditions brought over by slaves to the Americas, and the other side is the conservative religious line that runs through Marcus Garvey’s UNIA, the Moorish Science Temple of Noble Drew Ali, the Black Israelites, and the Nation of Islam.

Whats gets revealed as the story progresses is that Abdul Hamid is secretly working for an ancient secret society called the Wallflower Order. (Get it? A “wallflower” is someone who goes to a dance but instead of participating, srands by the wall and watches.) Thw Wallflower Order is also employing Hinckle Von Vampton, a white O.G. grand master of the original Knights Templar. How he managed to survive from the 14^th century up until the 1920s is never addressed, but this is a story involving magic and the occult so just let it go at that. Von Vampton is the editor of a sleazy tabloid newspaper and he is searching for the Android, an African-American spokesperson who will say what the Templars and Wallflower Order want him to say. Their mission is to control African-American people by preventing them from dancing.

There are other subplots and subtexts in this short novel. The most prominent involves another secret society called the Mu’tafikah, a gang that is plotting to steal indigenous art from a mueseum and ship it back to their countries of origin. Reed is addressing the fact that when you look at “primitive” art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art or other galleries, you are, in fact, looking at stolen property. Such high culture is a result of the colonial looting of artifacts from cultures that did not want to give them up. Some of them were made as sacred objects that served as means to ensure social cohesion in tribal societies. They weren’t intended to be gewgaws for rich white people who don’t even understand what they mean in the context of the societies that produced them. What Reed does in this novel is bring to light the ways in which white colonialists decimated the societies of the people they conquered and enslaved. The supposed superiority of white civilization is not built on the stable foundation of nobility and ethics the way some would want us to believe.

But the tone of Mumbo Jumbo is not bitter. In fact, it is barely even hostile. The concern of the Knights Templar is that if the dance crazes continue to flourish in the African-American community, then white culture will lose its purity and die out. But the response from Papa LaBas and Black Herman is not to destroy white culture. Actually they are solely concerned with creativity; they want to create a vibrant, life-affirming culture that is a unique and vital life source for the people of America. There is nothing destructive about it at all. And they don’t want to simply revive the old traditions of Vodun; they want to reinvigorate them to become an authentic American idiom of its own. Ishmael Reed’s message is that everything will be alright if African-American people are given the space to be themselves and live lives that are authentically their own.

The novel climaxes when the two houngans crash a party sponsored by the Wallflower Order in a rich woman’s mansion. It is there that Black Herman gives an account of ancient Egypt that starts with Osiris teaching the world how to dance and play music, while his envious brother Set tries to make everybody logical and unemotional. The teachings of Set eventually reach Moses who Reed portrays as a false prophet. These beliefs are then passed on to the Wallflower Order, the Knights Templar, and up to the Atonists of Abdul Hamid in the 1920s. If you read the Egyptian mythology passage carfeully, you will find parallels between the ancient Egyptians and the story of these New Yorkers in the Harlem of the 1920s. Scholars of history, theology, and mythology might be quick to point out that Reed’s portrayal of Egypt and Moses are not accurate at all, but in this way, Reed is reiterating his point that African-American people do not need to remain obedient to their traditions; they can reinvent and recreate their mythologies, religions, and culture to suit the needs of their times. That is how cultures are renewed and kept alive. In a Hegelian sense, this conflict between tradition and innovation is necessary to keep the social praxis thriving.

Ishmael Reed has certainly written an interesting novel with a unique set of ideas. The biggest problem with it is that the plot mostly moves along through dialogue and conversation. It is mostly people talking to each other. Some people will hate me for saying so, but I didn’t like James Baldwin’s Another Country for the same reason. But Reed’s characters do tell stories and exchange interesting ideas. It is just that a little more action and activity would have served the story well. The book is all about a plague of dancing but there is very little dancing that happens as the plot progresses. That type of descriptive action would have brought a lot more life into the narrative. Also, there is a small amount of word play and punning that Reed does well, but he could have done a lot more of it. Despite these flaws, this novel is still definitely worth reading because it expresses such an interesting range of ideas and a legitimate critique of American society.

Mumbo Jumbo is unique in another way. Written in the early 1970s, Ishamel Reed saw a connecting thread between the 1960s with its Civil Rights and Black Power movements, and the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. He saw both eras as times of renewal and creativity, times for Black Americans to build on and reconstruct their identity. In this way, Mumbo Jumbo is a celebratory and optimistic novel. Maybe we are now living in a time when this kind of optimism and rebirth could become useful again. 

 

Book Review

In the Wake Of the Plague:

The Black Death & the World It Made

by Norman F. Cantor

     I never have any luck when finding books about the Black Death. Of the handful I’ve read, the only interesting accounts I’ve come across have been chapters in history books covering a broad spectrum of issues related to the 14^th and 15^th centuries. Norman F. Cantor’s In the Wake Of the Plague is no exception. It’s difficult to even tell why Cantor wrote this dreadful book. Maybe he wanted to finish one last project before he died. Maybe he was senile. I don’t know. But I do know this book is a waste of time.

Cantor opens up with a chapter on what the Black Death actually was. His contention is that it was not entirely the bubonic plague, but a mixture of that with anthrax that had spread from diseased cattle to the human population. He doesn’t appear to know much about science, but fair enough, I’ll stay with him for the time being. But then he launches into a long, unnecessary sidetrack about plagues, pandemics, and other diseases that adds nothing of value to his discussion.

From there, he goes into an analysis of medieval society that starts with Princess Joan’s journey to Spain to get married. There is a lot about the Hundred Years War, peasant uprisings, the structure of the nobility, the relation between church and state, the disputes over the papacy, and a detailed account of Bradwardine’s progressive theology and his conflict with the more conservative and less-scientific philosophers of the day. At some points, this all reads more like a general history of the era and less like a treatise about the Black Death. In fact, the Black Death only has a tenuous connection to what Cantor actually writes about. He details the lives of people who died of the plague, but doesn’t say much about the plague itself as if it is little more than an afterthought or a way of making connections between people that aren’t really connected. Then there is some other stuff about the scapegoating of Jews and witches. It’s a mishmash of information loosely tied together by the theme of the plague, but none of it ever congeals into any kind of an intriguing narrative. It all seems quite boring and pointless.

The book ends with a couple of goofy chapters considering that the Black Death might have come from people eating snakes, something from outer space, or germs that spread from eastern Africa. There are then more sidetracks about diseases in ancient Greece and Rome, and AIDS in the 20^th century. None of this is explained with sufficient detail to be convincing or even interesting. In the afterword, Cantor tries to explain how the Black Death affected society, but all he comes up with is some abstract social theorizing and commentaries on art history; none of these claims can be supported with any kind of tangible or relevant data.

The only good thing I can say about In the Wake Of the Plague is that it has a cool picture on the cover. That and the fact that it is so short and simple that it can be read in one day. In other words, it won’t waste too much of your time if you actually bother to pick it up. It is best to pass this one by. 

 

2 Sci-Fi Novels in This 1 Ace Double Volume

 

The Water of Thought by Fred Saberhagen

&

We the Venusians by John Rackham

2 novels in 1 volume from the Ace Double series

Ace Books Inc., 1965

mass market paperback

Available for purchase on Ebay here

Vintage Edition of a Classic Anti-War Novel

 

All Quiet On the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque

Fawcett Crest Books, 1967, 16th Fawcett Crest printing

mass market paperback

Available for purchase on Ebay here

Literary Analysis/Book Review

Lord of Dark Places 

by Hal Bennett

     Not much is known about African-American author Hal Bennett. His most well-known, yet still obscure, novel is titled Lord of Dark Places. Despite rave reviews from almost everyone who has ever read it, it is still off the radar for most bibliophiles. Maybe it is too transgressive, too ugly, too gut-wrenching for most readers. Maybe some people are too weak to follow a story in which the main character is a villain, an anti-hero, albeit with a certain kind of charm, who is also a Black man struggling with the turmoil of his inner-mind, a psychological space that is neither comforting nor inviting. Maybe those critics and scholars who set themselves up as gatekeepers of intellectualism don’t want us to see this side of the African-American experience. Those kinds of people should be ignored, or at least sidelined enough so that they don’t steal the thunder that Hal Bennett and this novel deserve.

As the story begins, we are taken into the deep south where the twelve year old Joe Market is fishing in a creek. The prose is rooted in the Southern Gothic style and immediate comparison to William Faulkner is legitimate, but that elder statesman of Southern fiction never dragged his readers into the gutters of perversion the way Hal Bennett does. Comparisons with Jean Genet also spring to mind as Joe’s father Titus comes to tell him that his mother just died while he was having sex with her. The father goes on to rape Joe, and, to the reader’s probable surprise, Joe admits that he secretly enjoyed it. Throughout the course of the novel, Joe repeatedly returns to this memory along with one other memory, the time he played the infant Jesus in a church play with the Virgin Mary, acted by a prostitute who he would later sleep with.

While those three events had a powerful impact on the development of Joe Market’s mind, there is something else that permanently shapes and ruins his self-perception. His father declares himself the prophet of a new African-American religious movement and takes his son with him. The two of them travel around the South, preaching in revival tents until the spectacle at the end of each meeting is revealed: Joe takes off his clothes, stands naked in front of the audience, showing them his enormous penis while Titus tells the audience that, for a small fee, anybody can have some private time with the young boy to bask in his divine glory. In actuality, this means Titus is pimping his twelve year old son who has sex with every customer be they young old, male, female, gay, straight, or anything else. The long term effect of this is that Joe grows into adulthood thinking his sexuality has a divine special purpose (I’m not sure if Steve Martin lifted this joke in The Jerk from Hal Bennett or not), and even worse, Joe deludes himself into thinking he is a black messiah, a new Jesus Christ.

Semiotically speaking, Joe’s phallus is a signifier that carries a lot of meaning with it throughout the entire novel. During childhood, Joe’s father teaches him to call it by the name “Willy”. After Joe settles in New Jersey, he re-christens it with the more northern and more adult-sounding name “Dick”. Finally, around the time he meets his bride-to-be, he renames it “Christopher” after the Catholic saint. He also names his son “Christopher” after his own penis. Through the use of male names and name-changes, Joe’s penis is personified, taking on a personality of its own, a centralized object in his life, almost becoming an entire character in itself. The name changes represent stages of growth in Joe’s life and as the novel progresses, it becomes obvious that the erect phallus connotes and associates itself with death. The life-giving, creative force of masculinity is, when wielded by Joe Market, inverted into a tool of destruction, slaughtering all who come into contact with it like a machine gun gone out of control.

In terms of semiotics, another key observation to make at this point is the absence or presence of boundaries. Within the confines of African-American sexuality, and within the Black community in general, Joe Market lives without boundaries. He has sex with anybody who pays for it and goes even farther by having sex with his father on a routine basis. In one graphic scene, father and son have male on male on female sex with a prostitute. But when encountering the white community, Joe is confronted with boundaries that humiliate and confuse him. In New Orleans, he encounters a white woman who insists on having sex with him, but she will only allow him to penetrate her through the barrier of a metal fence, a boundary he is able to see through but not cross. The fence is a barrier he can partially penetrate but it also restrains him at the same time. Afterwards, Joe goes away feeling frustrated, confused, and scared especially because the white woman threatens to call up a lynch mob if he reuses to have sex with her. The world he sees on her side of the fence, and what she says and does on that side, is one he can not fully comprehend, let alone participate in. Between the white woman and her fence, he feels accepted and unaccepted in her world simultaneously.

The other significant encounter Joe has with the white world is when Tony Brenzo enters the scene. While Joe is working as a gay street hustler in New Jersey, Tony, a vice squad cop, decides to arrest him. After pleading for mercy, Tony agrees not to book him if he enrolls in school and finishes his high school education. This is done and the two go on to become best friends. Tony’s main concern is that nobody has ever respected Joe for his mind, only taking interest in his body, particularly his penis. Tony may seem like an angel at this point, but as the story goes on, he becomes a little more complicated. As a cop he is honest when it comes to arresting murderers, robbers, and other hard criminals, but when it comes to smoking pot and having sex with prostitutes, quite often in threesomes with Joe, his morals are a little bit lax. Hal Bennett had a true talent for portraying the complexities of his characters’ minds; everyone in the book has inner conflicts and moral ambiguities like Tony’s and this goes a long way in making each one of them take on a distinct life of their own. By the end of the book, you feel as if Joe, his friends, and the people in his neighborhood are people you actually know.

While in nigh school, Joe meets his future wife Odessa, a pretty, morally upright church-going girl under the strict domination of her mother. Joe sees her as an opportunity to go straight, in more ways than one, and they later have a son together.

During Odessa’s pregnancy. Joe joins the army with his closeted gay friend Lamont. They get sent off to the war in Vietnam which turns out to be a traumatic experience for Joe. But before joining the army, Joe was getting lost on the straight and narrow path he had undertaken. He began smoking more marijuana than anyone could imagine a man being able to handle and he begins losing his mind. He hatches a bizarre scheme to kidnap and kill his boss’s pet turkey in order to convince Lamont to join the army with him (trust me, it makes more sense when you read the book for yourself), but when he is holding the dead turkey in his arms, he begins to think of it as a crucified messiah. It is at this point that the author begins to plummet the depths of Joe’s twisted psyche.

The war is traumatic for two reasons. One is that he sees an African-American airplane pilot die after being shot in the crotch. Joe is bothered by this because he sees a Black man entering death in a state without sex, neither man nor woman; the wound where his genitals used to be is neither penis nor vagina. From then on, Joe becomes obsessed with his own penis and struggles internally with his own sexuality, especially in his attraction to men. Then during a combat operation, Joe shoots a Vietnamese man. Here we see how he begins to suppress his emotions and embrace his identity as a dealer of death. At first he feels guilty and sick to his stomach, but he suppresses these feelings. From that point on, he goes through the same cycle every time his behavior results in someone else’s pain or death: killing then guilt then stoic unemotionalism. His constant pot-smoking and sexual intercourse help him to escape from anything negative he might feel.

After Joe returns from the war, his infant son Christopher ends up dead in his crib. Joe blames Odessa for this and begins abusing her physically and emotionally in some of the most heartbreaking passages of the novel. But nobody ever said this was going to be a cheerful read. Other bad things happen too. Tony asks Joe to be an informer a heroin dealing case that might involve Joe’s boss, neighbor, and sometimes sexual partner China Doll. Tony and Joe also grow closer together as romantic partners while other people die and Joe’s life continues to spiral out of control. Finally, China Doll has an orgy at her house on Halloween night that turns into the wildest ending you might ever read in a novel. It is at this orgy that we get the deepest insight into the confusion of Joe Market’s mind and once we get these insights we can also see there is a twisted moral code, shocking in its revelation, that Joe follows. In his mind, he does terrible things to people because he wants to save them from the world. He hurts people to help them. When he kills, he thinks he is saving people from the agony of life. Note that Sethe in Toni Morrison’s Beloved has a similar motivation when she murders her own daughter. When Joe beats Odessa, he does so because he loves her; he thinks he is no good for her and he wants her to leave him for a husband who is better. Joe is the Divine Redeemer and Savior who does terrible things to good people for the sake of liberation from the horrible world we live in, or so Joe tells himself in the tumultuous haze of his inner mind. This is sad because Joe’s friends all love him. He is charming, fun, and charismatic; the people around him see a lot of potential that he is unable to see in himself. And they are not entirely wrong. As a reader you will find him to be a monster, but through understanding his tortured soul, you still might find an ounce of sympathy for him despite yourself.

Lord of Dark Places has its share of flaws. Some passages are sloppy, some events seem haphazard and improbable. There are a couple loose threads in the story lines. But the strengths of the book are so powerful that these minor problems have little impact in the end. Bennett takes a lot of chances, almost too many it might seem. As a life story and character study of Joe Market, it is hard to pinpoint what the maain theme of the book actually is. It combines pornography and transgression with commentaries on race relations, gender issues, psychology, the atrocity of war and violence, and the general existential dread you might feel when confronting the bigger picture of the world. It examines identity in relation to sexuality, masculinity, bisexuality, and the African-American community. It takes a nuanced look at police relations with Black people. It addresses the issue of what it means for members of any race to be American. There is even a noir-like murder-mystery subplot that comes in more than half way through the novel. The writing isn’t really about just one thing; it brings all these elements together in a way that should have resulted in an overblown mess. But thanks to Bennett’s unique talent, it doesn’t. If the novel is trying to deliver one single message, it might be that the hyper-sexualization of African-American men can have destructive consequences if their sexuality is not guided by a strong, developed mind. But Bennett doesn’t write like the kind of author who wants to preach. He lays out all the blood, guts, and semen on the table so you can make of it what you will.

Other great things about this book are the well-drawn, ultimately unforgettable characters that harmonize so well with each other in the narrative. Joe’s friends explain sides of himself in ways that he can’t see and he does the same for them. The complexity of Joe’s character comes close to perfection; as a reader you want him to overcome his insanity no matter how bad or brutal he gets. The way the developmental events of his childhood keep resurfacing also works well as a narrative device and as a psychological indicator of Joe’s mental association and motivations. There is also the humor. This book is hilarious at times like Joe’s plot to kidnap the turkey, what Cheap Mary makes Joe do when she blackmails him, and the scene where Odessa’s mother walks in while Joe and Tony are double penetrating China Doll. Finally, there is the plot twists and the harrowing emotional turmoil. As the story goes on, corner after corner after corner gets turned in rapid succession, making your head spin. The unpredictability factor and shock value are high and by the end of the book, you might feel as if you have taken about fifty succeeding punches to the head. You might as if you’ve just spent a round or two in the ring with Mike Tyson. The ending might make you have a nervous breakdown. Is that good? Anything that can make you feel so emotionally drained at the end is great art no matter how unpleasant the experience might be. Writers of garbage like John Grisham or Ayn Rand will never make you feel anything this emotionally potent. That is why they aren’t true artists and Hal Bennett is.

Hal Bennett, it’s unfortunate you aren’t alive today to receive all the accolades you deserve for Lord of Dark Places. It is like the Mt. Everest of transgressive literature and reading it is like climbing to that peak. It is a hidden peak that only few have approached but maybe it is better for us to hold such a repulsive, grotesque, and beautiful secret for ourselves. There is no other book like this and there never will be again. Congratulations and all hail to the King Hal Bennett, whoever it was that you were.

 

Salman Rushdie attack: suspect charged with attempted murder

Suspect, 24, from Fairview, New Jersey remanded without bail over alleged attack on author in New York

Read the full article on The Guardian here

 

Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, an American Anti-hero at His Worst

Rabbit, Run

by John Updike

Fawcett Crest, 1983, 1st Ballantine Books edition/3rd printing

mass market paperback

Available for purchase on Ebay here