The only other time when I've wanted to destroy a reading assignment was when we read Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises last semester. I eventually learned to appreciate Hemingway's style, and hopefully I can do the same for Ishmael Reed's writing. It'll take some more work to convince me, though, because right now reading this book is like wading waist deep in a pool of mud.
First of all, you can't just put numbers into the middle of a sentence like that. 1 would think that he was just a lazy writer who had 1000s of other things on his mind. 0r P3rH4p2 17's Ju57 W473R3D d0Wn l337 5p33K (2 can play at this game, Ishmael). Also, the weird names, new words, and the jumpiness of the chapters make it hard to concentrate but also make concentration essential to the understanding of the book. Can you see why I'm frustrated? On a more positive note, I do like the occasional pictures that go along with the story (like the invitation to the Chitterling Switch).
It's like Reed is constantly trying to jab you awake as you read. He doesn't want us to fall "asleep" and get too comfortable reading this book. His writing gives us annoying mental pokes and says "Did you get that? Did you see what I did there?" He almost shoves the fact that he has complete control over the story in our faces.
Well, at least he knows what he's doing. Perhaps we will too, eventually.
I feel like this book is another good example of how an author can use metaphors to write however they please in order to prove a point. We know that Ishmael Reed must be a good writer, so if his writing style is strange to us, and if it breaks conventions that we're used to, then it must hold a deeper metaphorical meaning to it. If he's a good writer he wouldn't just mess up the structure because he didn't know any better. There was a deep thought process behind this book, and he's left it up to the reader to figure out what he's saying. So maybe reading this book can be a hunt for the hidden metaphor instead of a walk through deep mud.
I'm slightly excited to see where this book will go and how the story will unfold. (I'm still a bit skeptical as to if I'll enjoy it or not, though.) For now, I shall go attempt to finish tonight's reading of Mumbo Jumbo, and hopefully this time my mind won't feel like scrambled eggs afterwards.
Ahaha, perfect gif usage right there. I agree with your point on how the author is using metaphors however they want to prove a point- that's one of the things bugging me the most so far. Good luck not having a scrambled-egg-mind at the end of the reading!
ReplyDeleteIf I remember right, he's throwing a Hemingway book out the window (_A Farewell to Arms_?) in that scene, because he's upset by the ending. Funny that here, you're upset (or at least nonplussed) by the *beginning* of a novel--a much less common phenomenon, I'd guess.
ReplyDeleteI am a bit surprised by how many of you in the class find the unconventional use of numerals so disorienting. It's not like he's doing a Prince thing by subbing "4" for "for" or "U" for "you." In some ways, Reed's style seems to anticipate the weird, acronym-heavy fractured syntax of the Twitter/texting age--it seems to me like the young people are rewriting the conventions of spelling and syntax more aggressively than ever before.
After reading more of the book, I can say the number thing is no longer an issue for me. I feel like the first few chapters were a bit of a shock to some of us because we couldn't immediately infer meanings for things like jes grew, and the plot itself was still confusing at that point. This book made us feel uncomfortable because we weren't (and still aren't) exactly sure what was going on, and what Reed is trying to tell us through all this.
DeleteAfter the first reading assignment it was hard to articulate exactly why we found it weird, because we had only read 7 small sections. Perhaps it was the thought that we were missing something in the text itself that was more disconcerting than the numbers and the format of the book. I think why most of us listed the numbers as being weird was because it was the easiest thing that we could point to as being different, and we used that to explain our discomfort because we had nothing else concrete enough at that time to explain why we felt uncomfortable... if that makes any sense...