Historiography sucks. It's one of the most annoying subjects to discuss because of its abstract nature, but Ishmael Reed has created a very compelling study of this that I can't help but explore. However (I just need to complain about this real quick), not only is it very confusing to piece together the big picture, but the book also reads like a bomb went off in a library and the whole mess about its stylistic decisions—not following standard conventions, settings jumping from chapter to chapter, footnotes for some reason, etc.—is the debris. This debris has to exist, though, because trying to tell this chaotic cultural narrative in a straight line makes it even worse. Like many of its contemporary works, Reed's Mumbo Jumbo has a very distinct method in how it narrates history. While history is usually read as a passive linear record, Reed uses it as an active battlefield of cultures. The novel puts two fundamentally opposing versions of the...
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