To start out, I'm not going to lie and say that I like or even mildly enjoy this book. I completed the entire novel about five minutes ago and thought to myself, "Wow. I really didn't like that book at all...." This is actually fairly uncommon--I am generally very tolerant of almost all genres but I just couldn't really stomach Mumbo Jumbo. The reading was dense, the ideas were difficult to latch on to, and the characters seemed distant and difficult to connect with. Of course, I realize that this may have been the entire point, but that still doesn't make me like it.
That being said, I think I'll get to the actual point of my blog: the 30 page story told by Papa LaBas that spans two of the same chapters (in my eyes, 52 parts A and B).
This enormous, Scooby-Doo-wrap-up-esque reading was the actually my favorite part of the entire book. Not only was the story interesting, the characters were memorable, and the story followed a logical path. An unexpectedly amusing part was the seemingly out of place, and yet hilarious interjections of Reed/Papa LaBas's humor. I also noticed an interesting connection between Ragtime and this book as well.
Like any other person, I get a feeling of satisfaction when, after a long while of scratching my head and wondering what could have possibly gone down to explain the situation in Mumbo Jumbo, I finally realize the entire story behind it. However, I also really liked the weird and yet oddly hilarious comments Reed (or maybe LaBas, I'm not even sure who's actually doing the talking in this part) such as, "The only remedies the Church knew was to 'beat the living shit out of them'." or "the minor geek and sorcerer Jesus Christ." I think the former is pretty self-explanatory and although the whole Jesus-was-a-sorcerer is not an unexplored concept, I just had to stop and chuckle to myself when I read "minor geek".
Finally, there was a short section concerning Freud in the story. I read over it, realized that there was a similar section in Ragtime concerning his trip to America and how utterly horrified/disgusted he was. In Mumbo Jumbo, Freud appears a little more dramatic as he actually faints because of just how awful the situation in America seems to be. Later (as in, not in the storytelling section), Reed says that Freud believed America was a "mistake", like a failed European experiment. I remember that Doctorow used a highly similar, if not identical, description and I was just wondering to myself if this holds more significance than a mere interesting coincidence.
Well, one difference between Doctorow and Reed's uses of Freud's famous visit to America is that, in Doctorow, he's reacting negatively to the whole loud, crude, commercial bombast of urban America at the turn of the century--he sees a civilization that's out of control, crass, and gaudy. Reed takes this same basic reaction and recasts it in terms of his own concerns--so Freud is aghast at "the Black Tide of Mud" or "occultism," which Reed figures as his horror at the incursions of black or "Osirian" culture into the traditional European "roots" that America is supposed to represent. Maybe these two portraits are compatible--reactions to the same basic thing. Doctorow's Freud is certainly an Atonist, with his horrow at the lack of regard for long-established European traditions stateside.
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