Researching Reed

Our conversations in class today made me interested to see what Ishmael Reed himself had to say about his work. So I did some digging and here are some of the things I found.

This section of Conversations with Ishmael Reed,  is interesting to read because he responds to how some critics interpreted his book Mumbo Jumbo, and he also comments on how he sees 1920s America parallel to current America. 

"The only thing I can conclude is that my book caused these critics to hallucinate"

And if that quote doesn't get you reading that interview, I don't know what will.  

Here is another interview that delves into Reed's ideas on writing and politics. From everything I've seen so far, Reed is a very opinionated person who is not afraid to have his opinion made known. 

"I'm not some pathetic token standing before the settler cultural committee pleading 'Choose me. Choose me.' The kind of "minority" literature promoted by the white academic establishment, which controls what students read, includes images and plots that are no different from the kind of stereotypes we get on TV. These people don't know how much their tokens are despised in their own communities. My interest in African religion in this hemisphere is the same as the enthusiasm the Irish writers had toward a Celtic revival, or contemporary Asian American writers have in texts written in Kanji, or Hispanic writers in Aztec, or Toltec. Writers try to renew precolonial traditions all over the world. "

I found a JSTOR article where Reed talks about minstrelsy, post-modernism, and modernism and much more, of course. It's rather long to read, but interesting nonetheless. 

I talked in the Nickel Review about technology, and I said in 1967 that technology would be the black writer's boon. Nam June Paik has said that Rock and Roll is the U.S.'s greatest export, and Hip Hop, Rap and other manifestations of black culture, or black technology, are being marketed all over the world for billions of dollars,very little of which is being seen by its creators. Think also of how black technology influences post-modernism, Ron Sukenick's experiments with Voodoo, the performance art of Laurie Anderson, Twyla Tharp, Heavy Metal, the downtown New York scene; how Jazz influenced people like Jackson Pollock. With software publishing and new high tech video technology we will go to town. With video we can leap beyond the racist film distribution networks, right into the living room

...  

I just don't think that I've been influenced all that much by modernism. I've been interested in the forms they use, the discontinuity, but many years ago I discovered that these ideas were not originated by modernists. I think that avantgarde movements tend to take themselves too seriously and believe that they are originating forms which are, in fact, ancient.

And finally on page 10 of Sharon Jesse's essay Ishmael Reed's Multi-Culture: The Production of Cultural Perspective, she references an interview where Reed gives his motivation for writing historical history. (I couldn't find the actual book with the real interview online, so this'll have to do. If you wanted to know more I guess you could always check out the book from the library.) 

In an interview with John O'Brien, Reed says that he and other minority artists "aim" their questioning at "those who supply the nation with its mind... the people involved in culture," but that what he and other artists want is "to sabotage history" so that the "Historical Establishment" "won't know whether we're serious or whether we are writing fiction... Always keep them guessing"

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Reed has also written many opinion articles for the New York Times and a journalism website called Counterpunch. Although they don't have much to do with Mumbo Jumbo, these articles can give us insight as to how he thinks about things. And, he does have his own website where you can find even more information if you're still looking for it at this point. 

Mumbo Jumbled

I'll be honest, when I sat down to read this book for the first time, all I wanted to do was fling it out the nearest window and watch it sink into a pile of cold snow.

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.