mumbo jumbo is music on paper kinda literally

Regardless of the fact that not very much at all of Mumbo Jumbo actually makes enough sense for you to understand what's going on after reading a chapter- one thing does in fact stick with you. One of the first things you notice when reading this book is the mistyped words, the sort of strange flow to the words on the page that you don't get in a lot of books- either from this time period or even now. Why is this? 

Well, our class has the conclusion that the Wallflower Order got a hold of Mumbo Jumbo and misspelled it to delegitimize it. I honestly really like that theory, I'm always a sucker for meta-aspects of literature and film. Regardless, I also want to present the theory of the context of this book. 

The entire plot of this book revolves around Jes Grew as it spreads across America. Jes Grew sounding an awful lot like "just groove", seemingly as-well a metaphor for jazz. Perhaps the spirit of Jes Grew has possessed this book, to possess the life in the text it seems to have. 

In Ragtime, we talked about how the book is written as if it's a ragtime musical piece, jumping from part to part with odd syncopations littered between. Mumbo Jumbo seems to follow a similar pattern- except this time about the Jazz period and taking form of a jazz piece. The words on the page flow with rhythm, making it entertaining to read (even if you don't understand a single plot point- like me!) There's strange injections, random characters and plot points, that all comes together in weird ways much as jazz does. As you read, the spirit of Jes Grew/Jazz possess you. I highly recommend listening to jazz or jazzy ragtime while you read, it goes strangely well with the text. (I wonder why..) 

How does it relate to postmodernism? Through the jazz part I mean, cuz there's plenty of evidence arguing for it in general. But here, it seems very evident that Mumbo Jumbo is trying to tell history through music. The way a small story about a plague and some art thieves tells the much larger picture of American history, of culture being spread and sustained. The WallFlower order potentially interfering with the spelling could also be postmodernist- censorship disallowing stories to be told, subjectifying the work through the lens of "mumbo jumbo" (but not the voodoo Mumbo Jumbo). History doesn't get to be told by the disenfranchised, but here, history is about those suppressed. 

All in all, I'm quite pleased with this book so far. It's actually a fun book to read if you manage to understand the plot. 

With that being said: 

Ya like jazz? 




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