Grammar and Postmodern Style in Mumbo Jumb

     Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo uses grammar and structure in ways that completely break the normal rules of writing. The sentences are uneven. Words suddenly appear in bold. Paragraphs stop without warning or begin in the middle of a thought. Sometimes there are images, sometimes headlines, sometimes long stretches that make no sense. And somehow it ends in a clean, straight thought.

    As a reader, I found this style very strange. It felt messy and hard to follow, causing me to take more time than usual to really understand what was going on and sometimes I could not really understand what I was reading. I wanted the story to stay still and follow a pattern a 'normal' book would. As I was slowly understanding what was going on, the bold words and random shifts distracted me.

    But I think that reaction is part of what Reed wanted. The confusion becomes part of the message. People who lived outside the postmodern movement often thought the writers and artists were crazy, that they were destroying form and meaning. When I struggled to make sense of Reed’s style, I was feeling what those people felt: resistance and anger towards something that refuses to fit the norm and be convenient.

    I believe Reed uses this wild grammar and style to show how the outsiders of the post-modernism movement felt. His grammar moves like music and dance; all over the place, but somehow uniformed. What first feels like inconvenience turns into a story once you take a step back and put it together piece by piece to see it’s not really just words on the pages but an unique story Reed is trying to get across

Reed, Ishmael, Mumbo Jumbo. Scribner, 1972.