Wishy Washy Mumbo Jumbo

For a guy whose whole argument relies on the cultural conflict he describes being centuries old and spanning the entirety of civilization, Reed's evidence is drawn from a pretty narrow perspective. This is my main problem with Reed's argument in Mumbo Jumbo. From what I understand, he is saying that Western culture and monotheism, which are stiff and unforgiving, have been oppressing other cultures and polytheism, which are fun and accepting, for millennia. I think his societal commentary can be very accurate when applied to 1920s or 1970s American race relations, specifically between whites and African Americans.  I am less convinced when Reed claims this same dynamic uniformly exists at a larger scale. I told myself, "That's okay. He's just using hyperbole to make his main point, which is about 1970s America, not the whole world." But flipping through the book, I am less convinced of this excuse. The idea that the dynamic is universal is all pervading. It's clearly one of the main themes of the book. Reed never misses a chance to reiterate that this war has been going on for centuries, all over the world. The Ancient Egypt section seems to exist to illustrate this point.
Basically, my issue is that while Reed claims this is a universal conflict, the "western civilization" side is clearly based only on American Puritan culture, and the "all non-Western civilization" side is only African cultures (which Reed lumps together as being uniform despite the size and diversity of Africa). My reasons for this are several.

First, Reed seems to be at a loss as to how to characterize Islam. There are many things which make it sympathetic to him. It has, at least in the United States, become a symbol of Black power. It is constantly at odds with that Atonist institution Christianity. It came from and is primarily practiced by people from the Middle East. On the other hand, it is monotheistic. It shares roots with Christians and Jews. As such, Abdul is one of the only "grey" characters in a novel that divides most characters into two teams pretty neatly. Adbul's burning the Book of Thoth is definitively Atonist, but if we see this as a denunciation of Islam, it only happens at the end of the novel. Either way Reed landed on the Islam issue, it would weaken his argument. He would either have to call a non-western culture Atonist, or a monotheistic culture Jes Grew(ist?).

Islam is at least mentioned. Reed does not acknowledge non-Western cultures which have been stereotypically portrayed as restrictive. Ancient Japan, China and India all had strict social systems and norms which in many cases did not allow expressive emotion. But Hinduism is about as polytheistic as a religion can get. Not exactly strong evidence for Reed's proposed meta-narrative.

Finally, Reed's characterization of Atonism reminds me more of Puritan Americans or stereotypical WASPs than anything else. Perhaps it also conjures of an image of repressed middle age peasants, but it does not all of Western culture for the past 10,000 years. I'm not even thinking of fringe groups. Ancient Rome is often considered the cradle of Western Civilization, and they were a bunch of polytheistic, sexually adventurous libertines.

Maybe America is oppressed. Maybe Christianity is oppressing. Maybe African American culture is liberating. But Reed generalizes these statements so far, that, in my opinion, he ultimately undermines his own argument.

Medieval Dance Parties of Death

Reading the first chapter of Mumbo Jumbo's description of Jes Grew, something sounded familiar. Probably somewhere around page six, I realized what it was. Reed appears to describe spontaneous dancing as a disease, an epidemic even, as yet another ridiculous or odd to make the reader go "okay, maybe this is happening in an actual historical time period, but this is all fictional" and be reminded that they have a book in their hands. They are reading made up words and not a historical account. It has the added benefit of being a very entertaining thing to imagine. We laugh at the ridiculousness of it.

The thing is, dancing plagues are a totally real thing.

I had to google this to make sure I had not just dreamed reading about them years ago, but it's true. Dancing mania spread throughout Europe many times, predominantly in the 14th and 17th centuries, but the oldest documented case was as early as the 7th century. It affected thousands of people, and to this day has no commonly accepted medical explanation. These weren't just huge parties later decried as unhealthy; men, women and children were all affected and danced to the point of passing out. In one of the most well documented cases, the outbreak in Strasbourg, Alsace in 1518, four hundred people danced over the period of a month. Many died from heart attacks, strokes, or exhaustion. Various records from the time exist that agree the afflicted were dancing, not having seizures or other medically explainable symptoms. Three centuries earlier, in 1278, two hundred people were compelled to dance across a bridge, which collapsed under the combined weight. The number of outbreaks is surprisingly large and spans across centuries, but there have been no documented cases since the 1600s.

Whether or not Reed based his Jes Grew off of historical dancing plagues is unclear. I haven't seen much evidence to support his being aware of their existence, but I'm not sure what such evidence would look like. Realizing dancing plagues are real, though, felt very similar to first hearing about Michael Kohlhaas. Both Ragtime and Mumbo Jumbo are set in real historical time periods and chronicle real events, but with obviously fictitious elements added in. The distinction between historically accurate and not usually seems pretty obvious, or at least can be satisfied by a quick Google search. It is a comforting distinction to be able to make. Yet in both cases, there is a much older historical basis for something we have assumed to be made up. It is a little unnerving, as the line become fact and fiction becomes increasingly blurred.