Word: mumbo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...such original comic novels as The Free-Lance Pallbearers, Yellow Back Radio Broke Down and Mumbo Jumbo, Ishmael Reed displayed powers of camouflage, mimicry and verbal play that drew praise from his peers-though very little cash from his publishers. As a black writer with a ticklish touch, Reed had to sit in the back of the literary omnibus until the white audience tired of having their heads whipped by the Cleavers and Joneses...
Andreski is convinced that "much of what passes as scientific study of human behaviour boils down to sorcery," and suggests that the lay reader learn to differentiate between the mumbo jumbo and the occasional work that is valuable. How? By testing his brainpower on a few hard books like Bertrand Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy and J.H. Woodger's Biological Principles. If these volumes are comprehensible but the work of a particular social scientist seems obscure, "then you can justifiably suspect that it might all be nonsense...
...MUMBO JUMBO...
...bargain prices for some time, but his laughs are not cheap. The outrageousness of his comic vision and the sinister coils of his prose beg comparison with William Burroughs. Survivors of the 1920s Harlem Renaissance may also be reminded of the orneriness of George Schuyler, the Black Mencken. Mumbo Jumbo is set-or rather cut loose-in the Harlem of the '20s, although Reed's ideas of renaissance slide all the way back to ancient Egypt. Like a street-hustling Norman O. Brown, Reed jives Western civilization into its mythological parts. There is the power of light, reason...
...scatological rereadings of history, Reed comes up with an idea called Neo-HooDooism, a pastiche of an imaginary, ancient African aesthetic and a rip-off from the HooDoo coven of black poets to which Reed belongs. What plot there is to Mumbo Jumbo deals with a search for the ancient, original HooDoo text...