Roxanne Harde
Pages 361-377 | Published online: 26 Mar 2010
Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction
Volume 43, 2002 - Issue 4
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https://doi.org/10.1080/00111610209602190
Abstract
After seeking the Book of Thoth throughout Mumbo Jumbo, PaPa LaBas, the novel's priest-detective-reader, discovers that the precious Text of the Work has been destroyed. Equal parts detective novel, conspiracy thriller, black manifesto, theological tract, exhibition catalogue, and alternative history, Mumbo Jumbo works allegorically with each of these, its pretexts. In addition, the novel grounds each pretext in icon and sets for each its own object of particular admiration, its own representative symbol. Having found the symbol at the center of each pretext, the novel then transforms its use of allegory into iconoclasm and attacks the symbol and worship behind the icon.1 Still, Mumbo Jumbo's impulse is not that of the fascist, to do away with history in the name of history, but rather to revise, to breathe new life into language. If allegory clings to things, then Reed, as iconoclast, deflates the thing with the allegory and destroys to rebuild by using the corpse of the old text as his locus of new meaning.2 I argue that Mumbo Jumbo is a tightly controlled allegory that draws from modernism its weapons, from postmodernism its tools, and negotiates, within the form, a hermeneutic of reverence for language's spiritual impulse.
Volume 43, 2002 - Issue 4
Download citation
https://doi.org/10.1080/00111610209602190
Abstract
After seeking the Book of Thoth throughout Mumbo Jumbo, PaPa LaBas, the novel's priest-detective-reader, discovers that the precious Text of the Work has been destroyed. Equal parts detective novel, conspiracy thriller, black manifesto, theological tract, exhibition catalogue, and alternative history, Mumbo Jumbo works allegorically with each of these, its pretexts. In addition, the novel grounds each pretext in icon and sets for each its own object of particular admiration, its own representative symbol. Having found the symbol at the center of each pretext, the novel then transforms its use of allegory into iconoclasm and attacks the symbol and worship behind the icon.1 Still, Mumbo Jumbo's impulse is not that of the fascist, to do away with history in the name of history, but rather to revise, to breathe new life into language. If allegory clings to things, then Reed, as iconoclast, deflates the thing with the allegory and destroys to rebuild by using the corpse of the old text as his locus of new meaning.2 I argue that Mumbo Jumbo is a tightly controlled allegory that draws from modernism its weapons, from postmodernism its tools, and negotiates, within the form, a hermeneutic of reverence for language's spiritual impulse.
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