Has Harold Bloom Missed the Point?

            Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo describes a fight between proponents of Jes Grew and the Atonists. The book itself is a rebellion against Atonist conventions of what novels should be, violating conventions left and right. The title page comes after chapter one. After finishing chapter 52, the reader finds another chapter 52. Typos litter the text. In some places, the placement of the letters on the page looks like it was printed badly (e.g. the word “astrologer” midway through page 16). In any traditional book, these things would be considered errors and be corrected before publication.

            It’s also a recurring theme that Jes Grew cannot be controlled by Atonism. The Talking Android plan assumes that the Atonists can find some person who can speak for Jes Grew, but that’s not how it works. Jes Grew cannot be pinned down as a single idea, preventing it from being exploited by the narrow-minded Atonists. When Safecracker Gould tries to distill Jes Grew into his poem “Harlem Tom-Toms”, he just writes bad poetry. Even more damning is that the Atonists listening in the room don’t realize it’s just bad poetry until PaPa LaBas bursts in and exposes Gould. Actual Jes Grew is incompatible with Atonist ways of thinking.

            But that whole message is undermined by a dependent clause on the back cover: “Cited by literary critic Harold Bloom as one of the five hundred most significant books in the Western canon…” The list, available online, does indeed contain five hundred works of literature and Mumbo Jumbo is one of them. But so are six works by John Milton, who is explicitly cited in Mumbo Jumbo as an Atonist apologist. Despite his best efforts, Reed’s novel has been absorbed into Atonist literary criticism.