* (restored)
‘In his 1972 novel Mumbo Jumbo, Ishmael Reed writes the story of an ‘epidemic’ of black culture—song, dance, slang and other elements—spreading into mainstream America. He calls his plague ‘Jes Grew’ and it is spread by ‘Jes Grew Carriers’ (or J.G.C.s) who are responsible for outbreaks throughout the US, and in some locations overseas.
‘Reed sets most of his story in New York during the Jazz Age. An earlier outbreak of ‘Jes Grew’—associated with the rise of ragtime in the 1890s—had been effectively contained. But now a new, stronger bug is sweeping northward from New Orleans, and threatens to subdue most of the population. There are “18,000 cases in Arkansas, 60,000 in Tennessee, 98,000 in Mississippi and cases showing up even in Wyoming.” Workers are dancing the Turkey Trot during their lunch break, and singing in the streets. The authorities are alarmed. People want to catch this new disease. Those who are still healthy gather around those already bitten by the bug, and chant “give me fever, give me fever.”
‘But if everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon of the new black plague, who is left to stop it. Here Reed outdoes himself, offering the grandest of conspiracy theories. The Knights Templar, apparently disbanded in the year 1312, are actually still hanging around, and waiting for a chance to stop the Jes Grew epidemic. But they need to get in line. The Teutonic Knights, founded in the twelfth century, also want to block the disease. And some Masons, a former cop, yellow journalists, Wall Street, politicians the folks at the Plutocrat Club, and a mysterious group known as the Wallflower Order, dedicated to implementing the world- view of an even bigger conspiracy group, known as the Atonists, all have skin in the game (literally and metaphorically).
‘Three years after Reed published Mumbo Jumbo, E.L. Doctorow released his novel Ragtime to great acclaim, with particular praise lavished on that book’s mixture of fictional characters and real personages from early 20th century America. But Reed set the tone for this mashup up truth and fiction in his colorful predecessor, and even anticipated Doctorow’s reliance on black music as an emblem for the flux and flow of the era.
‘If anything, Reed is more ambitious. He even includes footnotes and a lengthy bibliography at the end of his novel—with citations of everyone from Edward Gibbon to Madame Blavatsky. Photos and artwork are also inserted into the text, which often seems intent on breaking free of the constraints of the novel, and turning into a radical reinterpretation of the last several thousand years of human society.
‘Reed has delivered a classic work in the literature of paranoia. He joins an illustrious company, offering us a book that can stand alongside—at least in terms of the breadth of its conspiracy theories—Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters, Robert Anton Wilson’s The Illuminatus Trilogy, Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan and other powerful literary evocations of our zeal to find hidden enemies everywhere we look. Writers nowadays may do some things better than their predecessors, but the generation that lived through McCarthyism, the Cold War, Alger Hiss and Kim Philby had a much better skill at capturing the exotic flavor of the paranoid mindset in narrative form.’ — Ted Gloria
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Facsimile pages
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Further
Ishmael Reed Website
‘Mumbo Jumbo’ @ Wikipedia
‘Ishmael Reed and the Psychic Epidemic’
‘Mumbo Umbo: Wormholes through History’
Ishmael Reed @ Biblio
Ishmael Reed’s KONCH MAGAZINE
‘Ishmael Reed on the Life and Death of Amiri Baraka’
Ishmael Reed @ goodreads
‘Fade to White’, an Op Ed by Ishmael Reed @ NYT
‘Bad Apples in Ferguson’ by Ishmael Reed
‘All the Demons Of American Racism Are Rising From the Sewer’
Ishmael Reed on ‘Juice!’
‘Self-reflexivity and Historical Revisionism in Ishmael Reed’s Neo-hoodoo Aesthetics’
‘The Black Pathology Biz’ by Ishmael Reed
‘ISHMAEL REED: JABS, LOW BLOWS, AND KNOCKOUT PUNCHES’
‘Mumbo Jumbo’ reviewed @ Autodidact Project
Ishmael Reed’s Top Ten Books List
‘A Progressive Rebuttal to Ishmael Reed’
‘Ishmael Reed on the Language of Huck Finn’
‘Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo: Afrocentricism, Philosophy, and Haiti’
‘Ishmael Reed: The Idol Smasher’
Buy ‘Mumbo Jumbo’
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Extras
Ishmael Reed reads two poems and discusses his novel “Mumbo Jumbo.”
Meet Ishmael Reed
To Become A Writer, Ishmael Reed
Huey P. Newton, Ishmael Reed & Jawanza Kunjufu On Racism Again Black Men (1988)
Ishmael Reed at Litquake 2007
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Interview
Let’s talk about writing. You’ve said before, “Writing is Fighting.” As you know, Miles Davis compared his musical exercise to the discipline of boxing. In fact, he said he respects good boxers so much, because they require and possess an intelligence; that, there’s a “higher sense of theory” going on in their heads. He compared it to his solitary exercise of performing.
ISHMAEL REED: Miles was also a boxer.
Right. So, we have this whole concept of boxing, writing, fighting. Why this philosophy of “boxing” as writing?
IR: I think I have a pugnacious style. My style is not pretty. I don’t use words like “amber” or “opaque.” (Laughs.)
Or Chrysanthemums? (Laughs.)
IR: (Laughs.) Yeah, yeah. My stuff is direct. Critics have compared my writing style with boxing all the way back to 1978 when my first book of essays appeared: it was compared to Muhammad Ali’s style. Others have compared my style to that of Roy Jones Jr. and Mike Tyson.
As a writer, you explore all kinds of different emotions. My latest poem is about a tree in my backyard, which is from the Tropics. I’m trying to explain how it got there. I had a meditative poem about watching out over the Golden Gate Bridge from a mountain.
It was published in The New Yorker. I think when I write essays I’m out to do on the page what we can’t do in the media. We don’t have billions of dollars that are available to these people who do what amounts to a propaganda attack on us. We’re being out propagandized. When I look at the newspapers, I’m furious. Because I can see where the interpretation of whom we are and how people from the outside define us.
My friend Cecil Brown is very upset because the SF Chronicle is doing a Black History Month series and it’s all White male writers! I mean they assign Black History Month to all White writers with all these African American writers in the Bay Area and in California? I mean I’m here and I’ve written for them. And of course, they wrote about the kind of Black image that appeals to them: Athletes and Entertainers. Not a single scientist, or inventor. I was down at Lockheed Martin, addressing the Black employees: Engineers and Scientists last week. I told them that a lot of the space equipment used by NASA was invented by Black scientists, yet when Mailer wrote that ignorant book about the moonshot, Fire On The Moon, he said that Blacks were jealous of this White achievement.The formula for sending a shuttle into space and bringing it back was devised by a Black woman scientist.
Cecil also said he was pleased that there was a Hollywood writer’s strike so all these demeaning images of blacks would at least disappear for a while, for at least 3 weeks. Because, I mean the Writer’s Guild is only like 2% African American. I think there’s probably, what, no Pakistani American writers?
I think there is 1.
IR: Well, probably, he’s the one saying, “We all ought to assimilate.”
Or, he might try to hide it.
IR: Yeah, hides it. Right. So, that’s all we have. All we have is writing. Sometimes it’s very effective. I mean I’m organizing my neighborhood block with emails, because we have criminal activity on our block. Instead of the old days, where we had to confront these people, now we can do it through emails and cyberspace.
I did a book called Another Day at the Front which was my first critical book about the media, and I got on Nightline. I was able to challenge some of these assumptions of African Americans and their culture.
Is writing a solitary experience? Is it shadowboxing in a sense?
IR: Not for me. I have T.V. on all the time when I’m writing. I have music on. I’m engaged with the world. If the phone rings, I answer it. I’m not the kind of writer who sits around 8 hours a day writing. I’ll write in the morning, and sometimes I’ll get up 4 in the morning sometimes and do this Anthology I’m working on. (PowWow, releasing this summer by De Capo Press). I’m learning a lot. I wasn’t really a short story person, but now I’m reading about 140 short stories and there are a lot of good ones out there. I’m reading stories from different groups– like from the 19th century immigrant perspective which is really overlooked. In this country, it’s not good to be “ethnic.” Although, T.S. Eliot said, “Not all ethnic writers are great, but all great writers are ethnic.” I mean Eliot was the head of the modernist movement!
I don’t know about this solitary stuff. I mean I do plays and they are collaborative. My last play was called “angry” by the New York Times. Even though every line could be footnoted. I got a great review in the Backstage which is a theatre trade magazine, but the Times guy said I was “angry” about a lot of things. But, I mean, what was I angry about? I took on 2 issues. One was the pharmaceutical industry using African Americans as guinea pigs and colluding with psychiatrists, who get $40,000 kickbacks, and how they use these drugs in Africa for testing. They are fully aware of the bad side effects when they produce these drugs. The other issue is how think-thanks front these people like McWhorter to push this line that “all of African American’s problems are self inflicted.”
This is what we’re up against. See, our intellectuals don’t know what we’re up against. They think this is all about getting on the Bill Maher show. There is an orchestrated campaign that is tied to the Eugenics campaign. I just had a dialogue with John Rockwell from the New York Times, because we’re in the same anthology together. I said, “Look, the Eugenics movement came out of the United States.” “Where? Where? Where?” he said. So, I had to send him a book on this.
Let’s talk about Mumbo Jumbo your most famous novel. Many say this novel was about the forces of “rationalism and militarism” versus the forces of “the magical and the spontaneous.” Today, we find extremist groups rooting themselves in piety, religion, spirituality and faith. In the 1972 version of the novel, Abdul Hamid, a Black Muslim fundamentalist, burns the “Book” which contains the “key” to these ancient traditions of magic, dance, and creativity. If Mumbo Jumbo took place in the 21st century, who would burn the “Book”?
IR: I think there are fundamentalists all over the world. I think all religions have fundamentalists who have different interpretations of scriptures that are very vague. These books are written in metaphor, they are written with symbolism. A lot of it is outdated and tied to the times in which the text was written. So, you can do anything you want to with religion. Unfortunately, in the world today, we have dogmatic people entering into politics. I don’t think the two mix. But, we always believed in separation of church and state. But, I predicted there would be a theocracy in the 80’s in my book The Terrible Twos, where I had a preacher running the White House in 1982.
You see, I think when you’re an independent intellectual you’re going to get it from all sides. I get it from the Left, the Right, the Middle. When I proposed that people said it was silly, but now we have Huckabee and Bush, and others. I mean they’re all still players. But, when I said it, they thought it was silly.
___
Book
Ishmael Reed Mumbo Jumbo
Scribner
‘Mumbo Jumbo is Ishmael Reed’s brilliantly satiric deconstruction of Western civilization, a racy and uproarious commentary on our society. In it, Reed, one of our preeminent African-American authors, mixes portraits of historical figures and fictional characters with sound bites on subjects ranging from ragtime to Greek philosophy. Cited by literary critic Harold Bloom as one of the five hundred most significant books in the Western canon, Mumbo Jumbo is a trenchant and often biting look at black-white relations throughout history, from a keen observer of our culture.’ — Scribner
Excerpt
*
p.s. Hey. Please excuse any effects from my considerable jet lag this morning. ** rewritedept, Hey, man. It’s been quite a while. I’ll go follow your instagram if I’m not doing that already. I think tricks are good but I’m very sleepy this morning so I can’t be sure. ‘RT’ will tentatively start the streaming and BluRay portions of its life in July. If you do want to bring it to Reno it would need to happen fairly soon. Thanks! Iowa City was great, actually. Falco? Huh. I need sleep too, so maybe see you in my dreams that I never remember. ** jay, Hi! Trecartin is incredible. So worth exploring. I hope you had a great four days although I guess they’re pretty much in the rear view by now. How was the rest too? ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thanks! The trip was really terrific. How was your homebound trip? And nice that you lifted that slave phrase. I was very envious of it. Love please letting me sleep later than 3:30 am, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Oh, right, I remember your article. Everyone, Master _Black_Acrylic and his chums at the late, much missed zine Yuck ‘n’ Yum put together a great article about Ryan Trecartin back when that remains highly worth reading. Here. ** A.R. Johanson aka DennisCooperIsASadisticPedophile, etc., etc., You have had more than a week to attack me and other people here. Your points such as they are and your hatred are beyond crystal clear. I won’t allow you to disrupt this place any longer. As of now, I will block you no matter how many times you change your fake email address. And if any comments get through, they will be immediately deleted. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. I was so incredibly happy to read about your retreating cancer. Such a huge relief, and I hope that sticks permanently. The new Sunn0))) is gorgeous of course. Much love, pal. ** Thomas Moronic, Hey, T! I don’t remember seeing any written script-type stuff of Ryan’s, but I am very hazy this morning. Oh wait, I think he did show me some graphs. I hope that work you were intending to do is flying now. Great, I’ll read your Morrissey thing. Everyone, the great Thomas ‘Moronic’ Moore … well, I’ll let him tell you: ‘I also wrote an essay/review about my recent shitty bout of heavy and annoying depression and linked it to the new Morrissey album and more so the power of whatever art gets you through the days when you need it to. Philip put it up at his Substack without paywall if anyone fancies a look’. Here. Sure, let’s FaceTime. Let me know when is good. xo. ** Hugo, Hi. No, I have yet to go to Ryan’s compound. If we’d been able to go to the film festival in Athens where RT is playing that’s just about to happen, we could’ve, but alas. I’m not a Robert Pattinson fan, so unless a film has some other selling point, I won’t angle to see it, and ‘The Drama’ is not calling to me. Blowing up at me is not going to help him get published. Arto Lindsay is a vastly under-sung complete master of the guitar, so a thing on him would be most welcome. Thanks. And for the hugs. My head is a cloud, but I can sense them. ** Adem Berbic, Hi. Iowa City was great. There’s a really vibrant scene there of adventurous young filmmakers, video artists, writers, zine makers and more, and it was a total thrill to get to hang out with them and talk about their work and our film. London launch, understood, makes sense. Hopefully you can do a reading here at some point. I think we’ll be back from Berlin by the 23rd, yes, great. I can’t wait to read Tadhg’s long poem. RT in London is pretty much a dead possibility unless something unexpected happens. ** Steven Purtill, Hey! Thanks, Steven. Yeah, he seems to have a lot of hot steam he needs to blow off. Love to you. ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Hi, pal! I’m happy your day was great. I hope today is too. Great luck with the work on the tracks. I’m completely brain dead this morning due to miserable jet lag, but I’ll be good again. You sound great. I don’t know the Tokyo Pop movie. How was it? ** kenley. Hi, kenley! He’s so great: Trecartin. Joy central. Iowa City is terrific. I guess it’s like this oasis of coolness and vibrancy in the middle of an otherwise Trumpy state. That was my impression. Enjoy Newfoundland! Wow! Let me know what you got up to. ** Steve, Hey. It was my first trip to Iowa period. The reading got cancelled because we had multiple cancelled flights, and I didn’t get there in time. The screening couldn’t have gone better. My jet lag is unfortunately severe this morning, but we’ll see about tomorrow. Everyone, Steve’s fantastic radio/podcast show has a new episode for y’all. Here he is: ‘The latest “Radio Not Radio” show is up now, with music by Neo Geodesia, Serokolo 7, Fire-Toolaz, Laibach, Yonu, Underscores, Googly Eyes, Cabaret Voltaire, Maurice, Phuture, Pan Sonic, VV Pete/Deela/Lisha G/Utility, Yeat & Swizz Beatz, Lifeguard, Harriet Tubman & Georgia Anne Muldrow, Irreversible Entaglements, Janel Leppin’s Ensemble Volcanic Ash, Leila Abdul-Rauf, Marilyn Crispell & Anders Jormin, Gregory Uhlmann, Ashra, Peter Baumann, Larrison, If Not Then, Neurosis and Leila Boudreuil & Kali Malone.’ ** Charalampos, Hi. The screening went really well, thanks. ‘The Same Place the Fly Got Smashed’ is lovely, of course, I agree. Bye from very hazy me. ** julian, Hi, julian! Is that true about Prada? That would be great, although all thanks to them for letting him build his compound. I was really good in Iowa, and now I’m temporarily zonked by the time change. The new film script is very, very close to finished. People can be blocked, but they can change their email address and get back in, but I’m going to be prepared. ** HaRpEr //, Hi! Thanks, the trip was great. Me too about what Ryan and Lizzy are doing at the moment. I guess they just did some big show in LA, but I don’t know much about it. Very happy birthday belatedly! I would never say that ‘Salo’ is a bad film by any means, I just don’t think it works for me. Pasolini’s stuff just doesn’t reach me in general. I know it’s my problem. The problem with doing an IP block is that others might get blocked too. But, yes, I will do that if I have to. All the ultra-best to you! ** Uday, Hi! Good to see you. I don’t know if Ryan influenced my stuff, but it wouldn’t surprise me. ** Bill, Hi, B. Apart from big plane problems and delays in stopover Chicago re: getting to Iowa City, it was wonderful. How is the Lee Bul show if you saw it? ** Okay. I can’t believe I made it through. Be grateful that you don’t have my brain this morning. So I decided to return by turning back on the spotlight that fell on a great novel by Ishmael Reed. Have at it, please. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
hi Dennis!
ugh, like ships in the increasingly early morning, so cut and paste time lol
—
you really helped me! thank you mate, i won’t forget it <3
think i figured out why i was suddenly so scared of the novel and it isn’t the novel, lol, it’s me. basically the way i open and close— when i was a little kid it mostly benefitted other ppl, so ofc as soon as i grew up enough i made sure it would mostly benefit me, or i’d be the one to decide it should benefit anyone else. but now i’m using it all as fodder for the sake of the writing and my power of decision there really has to go a bit beyond me so i eventually got all like ugh what if i close off like a coward and open up like a gormless child— unwittingly, which would be like the worst fucking part lol.
now i’ve put it to words and w your help i’m a lot happier to write again ^_^
do i give yellow belly gormless child tho? lmao tell the truth.
you’re def not extravagant! i think you’re made of v pure lines w a few underground passages, which i like. am i extravagant…? uh idk, i can be extra but that’s diff. i think my factory settings are painfully wide open.
i did end up reading a bunch of poesía culterana this week (Góngora mostly duh) to get into your idea of extravagance as inherently opaque, and i think i get you now, extravagance is def depersonalising when it’s v sublime. body art new and old, serious bridalwear lol. but! when extravagance shows its hand, whether in idk naïve opulence (which is all opulence lol) or in multiplicitous intensity of emotion or whatever, which rarely runs smooth, then it reveals a lot in the humanesque category. so maybe it’s really just execution that tips the stuff over towards you or towards me, and why emotionally needy clowns in full get up can be so effective.
yea ofc i made that little gif story lol, i put it together super quickly while ZDB was still fresh in my mind as it basically amounts to my notes on the subject, or my awakening to the subject lol ^_^
how many ppl are doing gif stuff by now, you think? bc it’s super fun. also this strikes me, like, ok, it’s a sort of semi-verbal art form, right? so whenever words do feature, are they still words or are they now mostly pictures? the verbal sign is so unstable or smth =D
anyway, you’re honoured? no, that’s me <3 ZFE is def my 2nd fav of yours, we quite agree on your semi-verbal assets here.
Trecantin! ugh i love A Family Finds Entertainment, which is also crazy Spanish-coded to me. Item Falls too. i’m always unclear on what his partner’s role is exactly, beyond acting obvi. but i feel i’m not giving her her due, which bothers me. now the young mode concept is like this total balm bc idt i can be old and i’ve always doubted i could be. so like, cheers etc.
been wanting to read Mumbo Jumbo! dunno why i haven’t yet. maybe bc i happened to page through it while i was zoned and the paranoia element went its own way. bumping it up the queue now i think. =)
tell smth weird and random about your recent trip? smth good in its absence and smth bad in the absence of that, tho i’m p sure goodness must have been a thing.
lol i see our problem boomer is back or whatever, cringe when rude ppl don’t earn the right to rudeness by being hands down the smartest mf in the room, and don’t know that. see what i said earlier? unwittingness. when is break?
love you v much! ^_^
P.S. oh fuck, afraid i just went back to yesterday’s post to explain to probably long gone crashed out guy why he can’t read lol, i’d hate to talk for you so i just talked for me— wasted breath most likely but you’re like my boy
d-
yes, falco. not the german pop star, but andrew falkous from mclusky/future of the left/christian fitness/he’s also a talented prose writer in his own right, though i seem to have lost my bookmarks of all his fiction writings. some of my favorite lyrics of his include:
sometimes i remind him of his father, who is not dead. he’s not dead yet. the problem is his father is an idiot; being dead would be a slight improvement.
from spock culture on mclusky’s newest EP/mini-album, i sure am getting tired of this bowling alley.
married life in prison is a lottery, conditions are dickensian at best.
from reviewing the reviewers, which is the secret track on mclusky do dallas.
and all of the lyrics to sheena is a T-shirt salesman by FotL, which is one of the better songs written about the commodification of punk rock and anarchism.
also, any band that starts a song with the line ‘all of yr friends are cunts’ is A-OK in my book. their music gave me the same response i had to reading yr work for the first time, which was an immediate sense of recognition and ‘these guys get it.’
i will start asking my contacts ASAP and do what i can to set up a screening. yr email’s still the same? i’ll reach out with any news.
that’s awesome about iowa city, reno’s similar in that we have a decent little scene with creative people doing creative things; the only problem is a lot of the music made by locals is pretty derivative and very genre-stuck, like we have lots of third-rate D-beat bands and one fairly mediocre noise rock band, but they manage to bring some cool bands through town every now and then so i guess it’s ok.
i finished black AF history and am currently reading death to the fascist insect, which is a book that transcribes and collects communiques and tapes made by the symbionese liberation army.
my little sister moved to reno last year, and she’s become something of a bookworm (not as much as me, the guy who takes extra books when i leave the house in case i finish the one i’m working on, but she likes to go to the used bookstore once or twice a week and she’s getting hip to some good writers (thanks to me, mostly)), so now i’m excited because it’s my turn to radicalize her. i’m trying to think up some good books to introduce her to leftism and anarchism (because of course, i’m the only one in my family who is a leftist; my parents are both reagan republicans, my brother’s probably a right-libertarian, and my sister doesn’t really have an ideology to speak of, but is registered republican, which i’ve told her she’s far too young to be at 26). so far, i’m thinking people’s history of the US by zinn, some frantz fanon and emma goldman, gramsci’s prison notebooks, definitely some michael parenti, of course some kropotkin, luxemburg, capitalist realism by mark fisher, and last of the hippies by penny rimbaud. i’m thinking society of the spectacle might be too heavy for her just yet. will probably loan her some of my saul williams books too, his poetry elucidates leftist thought in really easy to read ways. any biggies i’m missing?
mumbo jumbo looks right up my alley, i’ll be seeking out a copy posthaste.
i don’t remember most of my dreams either, except for this one recurring one i have where i’m in a casino in vegas that doesn’t exist and i’m trying to find the exit unsuccessfully. a shrink could prob figure that one out pretty easily.
ok, i need to sally forth to bed. one more day of work and i’m free for the weekend, during which i will not do much except get stoned and hang with my kitty. hope the jet lag isn’t kicking yr ass too hard today. talk soon. love.
-c.
oh, one more falco lyric, from the b-side open season:
it’s open season on spinless vermin, so take yr best shot before it’s not. you ever notice how superfluous characters have better haircuts now they’re married? i’ll forgive my kidnappers if you will, the only thing they took from us was time.
Welcome back Dennis, I’m glad you’re mostly unscathed. I’m glad it was so buzzing over there as well. Are there any particular names in amongst that vortex whose stuff is worth checking out?
For the launch, some good friends with connections in the experimental and techno-y music worlds want to help out with venue-hunting and programming, which is a relief because I’m pretty cack-handed with that kind of stuff and it’d be nice to mess with the usual book launch formula.
I guess I’m a little wary of, hm, basically there’s this ‘make reading sexy again’ scene that’s sprung up in London and that’s leading the charge with independent writing here, and I’m not really a fan of it as a whole (although I think certain writers within it are good) – it’s this very self-conscious and glamorous thing which to me feels like an affront to reading and writing being essentially solitary activities, and which is founded on social-hierarchical dynamics which I started trying to unpick in both of the stories (albeit pretty elliptically), and which I intend to continue unpicking in writing.
So what I’m wary of is swapping one conception of ‘coolness’ out for another that’s grubbier and less bourgeois, but having essentially the same M.O. and the same appeal to some sense of social-cultural exclusivity, and betraying or cheapening what was attempted in the actual work in doing so. If that makes any sense at all.
Not to end on a downer, but I’ve been feeling really out of sorts because the cat’s been missing for a week now. I think the writing is probably on the wall for him by now, unfortunately.
i mean i’m sexy when i’m solitary lol, reading or not, but i get you, they do mean smth else. high hopes for the cat turning up unharmed! one of mine once randomly moved into the neighbours’ bc kittens had been born and she wanted to act up and stuff. we found her just when we were starting to freak out!
Have been meaning to read Mumbo Jumbo for a long time, and checking out the Ishmael Reed Q&A featured here just brings that home. My eBay wish list has been duly updated.
Leeds United won a game on penalties last week vs West Ham and we got to the semi-finals of the FA Cup for the 1st time in 39 years! Really brought it home how sometimes football can lift us up out of whatever funk we might be in and provide some much-needed unscripted thrills. Now if we can only avoid relegation it will be a season to remember.
hi dennis!
youre back!!! eee im glad to hear iowa treated you well. you mentioned an exciting young artist scene out there…anyone/anything/anywhere that impressed you particularly?
thanks for the intro to reed! im really intrigued to check him out…from the excerpt above, his self-assessment as a ‘pugnacious’ writer seems really bang-on. and engaging!
i! am absolutely in love with newfoundland. its like…the most beautiful place, everyone is friendly and suuuuper fun, so much good seafood (altho i know thats not appealing to you lol), and people really ride hard for local arts and events and stuff. thinking i could see myself moving here…but maybe im being delusional idk. anyway i put up some pictures on my tumblr (evilamericanharlot.tumblr.com) if you care to peruse!
Hey Dennis! Welcome back, haha. Yes, my weekend was extremely lovely, and very much not in the rear-view mirror, I’m still pretty happy from it. There were tons of baby animals, which was kind of cute, the baby meerkats were kind of ridiculous looking, like some kind of insect. Really cute. I’ve been pretty shattered from work though, we had to do 3 all-night work shifts for a client who didn’t even turn up (!), but it was actually kind of great, in a weird masochistic way. Maybe all the slaves need to look into getting inner-city jobs, or something.
Oh, I’ve also been told to try something delicate with my hands, so I’m probably going to splash out on a middle-range digital piano keyboard, just to get my hands working a bit. Did you ever play the piano? Your parents kind of sound like the type to sprinkle very conventional piano or violin lessons in your schedule. Hopefully your jet-lag looks up soon, love from here!
P.S., sorry about the commenter this week, obviously your work wouldn’t be as amazing and (therapy voice) “healing” (haha), without the weird techniques and slightly blurry lines. I bet you can hold still being able to provoke a strong indignant response over the other controversial 90s authors at your next Illuminati-esque meet-up.
Hey, Dennis, this is David Margolis, Jude Margolis’ brother. ( I’m legally David Cady now, FYI.)
If you wouldn’t mind getting in touch with me at davidcadyclass@gmail.com, I’d like to discuss returning to you your correspondence with Jude from all those years ago. She lovingly kept everything you sent her, including postcards and poems. I know that she’d want you to have them back. I hope you’re well and happy.
Hey Dennis. I love Mumbo Jumbo! So lovely to see it here.
I have news. I moved to NYC! I was seriously down in the dumps in LA. I needed a change. So I did it. Moved in on Monday. Everything is exciting and beautiful here.
B
Can you tell how such a fertile arts scene in Iowa Cit developed, compared to other college towns?
Did you meet Graham Swon, who lives there? He’s directed two films himself and produced work by Dan Sallitt, Matias Piñeiro, Joanna Arnow and Ricky D’Ambrose. He did a very good job of making a period piece on a tiny budget, shooting on film.
I hope the jet lag eases up enough to let you get out this weekend. I’m planning to see the new FACES OF DEATH and the Croatian film FIUME O MORTE.
It’s supposed to get very hot here next week, with highs in the 80s. I installed my air conditioner again on Monday and thought I was premature, but maybe not.
Welcome back Dennis. Glad to hear the Iowa trip went well. Did you have any trouble at the airport, what with the ICE gestapo in place of unpaid ground personnel?
Had a pretty shitty week health-wise which laid me out for much of it. Got a standard cold initially, after everyone else in my house had one. Pretty inevitable, but also manageable. Was already starting to feel better when on Monday something hit me like a brick. Muscle aches, dry cough, overall weakness. And my head feels like it’s consistently under water. Turns out it’s sinusitis again, most likely caused by the ever-damp & probably mold-infested bathroom I’d been showering in. So I’m on antibiotics again, only three months after the last bout. I’ve dealt with moldy bathrooms before & always thought that visible mold is the worst kind. Here you don’t see a thing, no dark stains on the walls & those usual giveaways, but based on the smell & the humidity I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s deep in the walls. Eaten into the foundations rather than the superficial kind you can spot & easily treat with chemicals.
This time I feel like a walking corpse, & my worry is that extended exposure to mold spores might cause chronic sinusitis. We’ll see if the antibiotics will do the trick. Luckily I can avoid that bathroom, just wish I’d realized it sooner.
Anyway that & the troll spreading his own brand of fungus kept my nose out of the last comments section. My first impulse was to attack, but only a serious argument would warrant such engagement. The only thing more damning than using AI to do your arguing for you is writing in such a robotic, pedestrian & banal style that it gets mistaken for AI. What you’d call a lose-lose. Anyway, much respect for handling it so maturely, & my sympathies for having to sift through that morass whilst jet-lagged.
Used my bed-ridden time to watch some lenghty films & have much to say about Soderbergh’s “Che”, which I revisited with undiminished admiration, but it’s late & I’m beat so I’ll save that for tomorrow.
Wishing you a speedy jet lag recovery!
Oh & Ishmael Reed: one of our finest social critics & commentators. Always thought it a shame he didn’t reach Hunter Thompson-level recognition.
I love this book. Reed rarely comes up in discussions of the great metafiction writers of the era. This book is actually far more formally inventive than a lot of his contemporaries in that space IMO.
It’s very interesting what you said in the Big Toe interview about how ‘Salo’ is reductive in that it makes it all about fascism and to what extent being reductive is necessary in creating an adaptation. To me, the power in Sade is far more complicated than fascism and can be more about the individual body.
And it’s all about fantasy, too. How much it disturbs the reader is reliant on their own boundaries and imagination. In a film there’s no way that you can make something as disturbing as what can happen in one’s mind, but in literature the reader uses the words and imagines something themself, filling in the blanks with things that are perhaps far darker than what is actually there. In film there’s also much less omission. It’s much more difficult than in writing, seeing as you can simply choose not to mention or describe something, whereas in film you have a whole landscape and everything is laid out.
Also, Sade’s horrors are so endless that they eventually just take up single sentences in the note-taking part, matter of factly describing various tortures. But even throughout the entire book, the deadening, repetitive effect of such extreme acts where everything loses its meaning and the reader is forced to question the state of being numb to matter of fact violence is kind of lost in ‘Salo’.
I read the ‘Punk Rock is Cool…’ Ed Smith book spotlit here the other day by the way and really loved it. His voice is so infectious. For a couple of days my internal monologue was even like some of his poems haha. I watched the video of him reading from the ‘Fear of Poetry’ doc and he had such a way of doing it. So neurotically deadpan and devoid of any ‘literary’ pretence.
Now I’m reading Wayne Koestenbaum’s ‘Humiliation’ and am really loving that too. So intense and focused. Humiliation is a topic I’m really interested in and always at the front of my mind, so it’s really found me at a good time. I guess I’ve had an especially great reading week.
Anyway, sorry for the ramble, here’s to hoping your jet lag dies by way of coffee this weekend.
Ishmael Reed! Yes! Since we last talked I’ve been to Florida, which was unremarkable, and practiced romantic austerities in secret, which would be unremarkable except this time there’s a mutual (?) feeling that if only it weren’t for lost time…
How was Iowa? I’ve never particularly wanted to go but I’m also not opposed, as I was to Florida. In a weird space about graduating and no longer having access to my friends. But that’s everybody, and not just me, and I might be able to carry some friendships forward. I wish there was a version of sex that wasn’t sex that you could safely have with friends you don’t want to have sex with. I really wish there were.
Apologies for my over enthustiastic comment on your arrival. I can onyl imagine how overbearing and possibly annoying that is in a jet-lagged sluggish mindset.
Soo…my College english teache/ is one of the people who host the club for this magazine called “Portals” at my school, cape fear community, and im invited to the next meeting. Was gonna attend the last but had to do sister’s bday shopping…and also guess what else!? SHe encouraged me to submit one of the assignments I submitted as a grade to the magazine, which makes me very happy, honored, proud, and surrealy confident in myself. SHe also gave it a extra score on my grading.
Next semester im taking biology and Fundamentals to music
following that, the season after, i’d like to do introduction to jazz and then an art related class, oh and im also doing “writing and inquiry” a very bold and austere but intruiging name.
Oh i see the Florida viewing was postponed. Are you attending that one?
Tokyo pop was pretty good btw. ITs from 1988 about an American who goes to Japan to pursue being a rock star or something
Hey Dennis, thank GOD for the Ryan Trecartin post, I-Be Area has been on my radar for YEARS but I always forget the damn name of the movie and the guy that made it… this time it stuck!
I work at a thrift shop and I have to wait 2 days before i can buy an item… many times I have seen shit get swiped before the damn 2 days waiting period is up (usually books or ummmm, autoharps) and the last thing that happened with was… MUMBO JUMBO! So I’ve been really wanting to get my hands on it since… it may be at the library, which I have been using much more lately due to lack of book money and impatience with my own bookshelf…
for the flagship, i guess, zine of our lil mini “Epiphyte Press” thing, we are gonna use the name “Holobiosis” and we have all the texts and drawings gathered for issue 1, just gotta format everything… also just will be nice to have a little unifying umbrella press for if we decide to print up solo zines or any sort of other project… hope other people get psyched. i thrive on collaborations with like, music, but its fun to have a way to do that with prose and poems.
oh I said I was gonna read Marbled Swarm finally, the last of your novels I have to read, but I have taken a side quest to read every book on Throbbing Gristle I can get my hands on, as I am currently obsessed with then like i’m 15 again for some reason… but coming up for me is Marbled Swarm, more Pinget, some lil Perec oddities, never read him… oh also I read “My Life”, which was phenomenal of course… it was validating for me the way it was structured. i have this prose poem im working on about seven people (including me) and each person gets seven sentences, but mine are big long paragraph length sentences interspersed between other paragraphs of everyone elses own sentences, if that makes sense. anyway, with My Life, the playful sort or sentences feel sweet and personal, and the rigid structure is self-imposed in a very personal way too… it just makes for a very vibrant reading experience… and also very invigorated as a writer! great stuff!!!