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literature. Yet certain formal problems remain , not the least of which is the
introduction of a great deal of unfamiliar material. In
Yellow Back Radio
Reed filters these arcane legends and strange terms through the student wars
in Berkeley and Oakland , sticking close
to
evident historical parallels, but
even then he needs an operatic Pope
to
intervene finally with the larger mythic
perspective. In
The Last Days
he simply allows Papa LaBas to catechize the
reader , and the result is a heavyhanded underscoring of the text. A rich and
complex history underlies these narratives, a history in which Marie Philome
and Doc John are important figures . Yet how does one get these names and
events
to
resonate and refer without footnotes and glossaries?
In
Mumbo Jumbo ,
his best work
to
date, the satirist and mythmaker
work in unison . Reed 's subject is the phenomenon of)es Grew, the develop–
ment of ragtime in American culture, and in pondering its significance he
calls into question the whole of the Harlem Renaissance . How did Black
writers interpretJes Grew? Why did they fail to incorporate its meaning into
their art and effectively create a new fiction and poetry as innovative and
forceful as jazz? Reed grapples with the figure of Carl Van Vechten who, as
Hinckle Von Vampton, moves elusively through the novel seeking
to
capture
the essence of Osirian wisdom (as transcribed in
The Book o/Thoth)
in order
to contaminate its purity . Papa LaBas scrutinizes the various attitudes taken
toward "primitivism" during the renaissance and comes to learn , thanks to
certain Haitian emissaries , the correct approach. The question really is how
the phenomenon of
Jes
Grew (that sudden awakening of Osirian conscious–
ness) is to inform one 's art. Black writers in the twenties dealt with "primiti–
vism " through a system of values that were not natively Black, Reed argues,
and thus wrote fiction that was tortured in its sensibiliry, torn between mind
and body, fiction that never shook loose from its mooring in Anglo-American
literature . They gave consent to Van Vechten's exploitation of their exper–
ience and themselves wrote versions of
Nigger Heaven,
novels in which
" primitive" heroes lived high and quick in a constant state of coarse sensual–
ity. There were writers, however, like Zora Neale Hurston, who took the
mumbo jumbo of "primitivism" seriously , who learned its language and
lore, and it is in their work that Papa LaBas discerns the relettering of the lost
sacred text. For here the
very
concept of " primitivism" is abolished, Black
consciousness is mythically reconsecrated, the integrity of knowledge restored
to the Dance, and the cultural dualism that plagued the renaissance is
effectively resolved. Improvisational, working out its own myths and forms,
not solemn but witty , Black writing thus escapes from American literature ,
returns via West Indian ritual to its African sources , and becomes at last itself.
If only in the range of its assumptions, Reed's achievement in
Mumbo
Jumbo
is considerable .
Yet
Papa LaBas's vision of a reformulated and clarified
