Two weeks ago I talked about Doctorow's usage of short and long sentences to captivate the audience in his book. Now we're reading Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed and once again, the author uses weird syntax. This time however it's much more different and apparent to the reader. While I discussed a reason why Doctorow uses long and short sentences to try to keep the reader focused, I don't have any really concrete ideas why Reed writes his book the way he does.
The most obvious weird thing Reed uses is misspelled words. He exchanges words that look alike but have no common meaning, like policy and police. Honestly, I'm not really sure what his intention is with this but it does bring some good questions to mind when reading and discussing the book. For instance, on page 18, "He went into the police station and knocked the captain cold when he didn't come forward with policy protection." We discussed this in class, how "policy" doesn't really make sense unless it was police. It's kind of interesting though how the police protect the government's policies so Reed could just be using a play on words.
Another weird thing Reed has in his book is adding a "wave" effect to some of his words. On page 30, the sentence "The train is in sight." is weirdly wavy. We established in class that every book has the same wavy words so it can't be a mistake of Scribner publishing. The sentence has no particular impact or emphasis in the plot since it's just a simple fact. The only reason why the sentence is wavy that comes to mind is the fact that the sentence beings a new paragraph. The previous paragraph is focused on something totally different and has no mention of trains. My guess is Reed put "The train is in sight" in wavy letters because he wanted to highlight the difference between the paragraphs and shift the focus from the tobacco man to a start of a new journey.
The last thing that Reed does differently than our normally accepted fiction syntax is using numbers for participles. For example, on page 29, "When he reaches the train depot, he comes upon 2 men sitting on the station's porch, playing checkers." The sentence appears normal and informational until you come across the "2". It reminds me of text language however the book was published in 1972 so text lingo wasn't around then. I highly doubt Reed was that ahead of his time and could see into the future so I'm guessing he found using numbers to be "edgy" or be concise.
As you just read, I listed and discussed three weird things Reed does in his writing. Obviously this isn't all of them but this are the ones that really stood out and interested me. Comment down below your thoughts and ideas!
The most obvious weird thing Reed uses is misspelled words. He exchanges words that look alike but have no common meaning, like policy and police. Honestly, I'm not really sure what his intention is with this but it does bring some good questions to mind when reading and discussing the book. For instance, on page 18, "He went into the police station and knocked the captain cold when he didn't come forward with policy protection." We discussed this in class, how "policy" doesn't really make sense unless it was police. It's kind of interesting though how the police protect the government's policies so Reed could just be using a play on words.
Another weird thing Reed has in his book is adding a "wave" effect to some of his words. On page 30, the sentence "The train is in sight." is weirdly wavy. We established in class that every book has the same wavy words so it can't be a mistake of Scribner publishing. The sentence has no particular impact or emphasis in the plot since it's just a simple fact. The only reason why the sentence is wavy that comes to mind is the fact that the sentence beings a new paragraph. The previous paragraph is focused on something totally different and has no mention of trains. My guess is Reed put "The train is in sight" in wavy letters because he wanted to highlight the difference between the paragraphs and shift the focus from the tobacco man to a start of a new journey.
The last thing that Reed does differently than our normally accepted fiction syntax is using numbers for participles. For example, on page 29, "When he reaches the train depot, he comes upon 2 men sitting on the station's porch, playing checkers." The sentence appears normal and informational until you come across the "2". It reminds me of text language however the book was published in 1972 so text lingo wasn't around then. I highly doubt Reed was that ahead of his time and could see into the future so I'm guessing he found using numbers to be "edgy" or be concise.
As you just read, I listed and discussed three weird things Reed does in his writing. Obviously this isn't all of them but this are the ones that really stood out and interested me. Comment down below your thoughts and ideas!
Reed's syntax is totally out of the ordinary, just like everything else in Mumbo Jumbo. He appears to have some sort of serious issue with literary convention, and he tries to throw it off at every opportunity. I would like to draw some more attention to the absence of quotation marks. I think he uses this to make his sentences flow without interrupting with the statement, "someone's started talking." This incorporates speech more thoroughly into his story, as well as adding to his grand statement that conventions are evil and must be ignored at all costs.
ReplyDeleteAnd importantly, the typos haven't been fixed by their reputable publisher, so we can only assume they're wanted there. Also, someone said in class that the lack of quotation marks makes it read like a screenplay, which makes me imagine we're watching events rather than being told about them (less of a biased narrative).
ReplyDeleteOne recurrent effect of all of this stuff is that it draws our attention repeatedly back to the fact that we are reading a novel, an artificial construction, a deliberate arrangement of text and images that generates a "world," but which we are never allowed to fully immerse ourselves in. The words on the page don't "reflect" some imagined "reality" outside the text; they constitute that reality. Analogies might be made to traditional history pretending to a transparent or objective account of events, versus a history that always reminds us it's made by people, with ideas, a point of view, an agenda. This novel tells a wild story, like a novel "should" do, but it's also full of ideas--and the author, or the source of those critical ideas, is a presence throughout our reading.
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