“Someone once said that beneath or behind all political and cultural warfare lies a struggle between secret societies. Another author suggested that the Nursery Rhyme and the book of Science Fiction might be more revolutionary than any number of tracts, pamphlets, manifestoes of the political realm.”

ISHMAEL REED MUMBO JUMBO

“From the bedroom of the White House, where he sits sipping whiskey, Warren Harding glares down at his Attorney General. A mere Mason, he is helpless to prevent what is about to take place. Raids on Washington Speaks go on until dawn. NO DANCING! signs of huge black letters and exclamation points are posted throughout the city. Anybody caught Doing it! Doing it! Doing it! is a federal crime.”

“That 1 decade which doesn’t seem so much a part of American history as the hidden After-Hours of America struggling to jam. To get through.”

“We got reports from down here that people were doing “stupid sensual things,” were in a state of “uncontrollable frenzy,” were wriggling like fish, doing something called the “Eagle Rock” and the “Sassy Bump”; were cutting a mean “Mooche,” and “lusting after relevance.” We decoded this coon mumbo jumbo. We knew that something was Jes Grewing just like the 1890s flair-up. We thought that the local infestation area was Place Congo so we put our antipathetic substances to work on it, to try to drive it out; but it started to play hide and seek with us, a case occurring in 1 neighborhood and picking up in another. It began to leapfrog all about us.”

“DOCTORS IN YAKIMA WASHINGTON ANNOUNCE THAT “THE SOURCE OF MAN’S WICKEDNESS IS A ‘TORRID ZONE’ IN THE BRAIN, AN INCH AND A HALF THICK FROM THE EARS UP.…”

“By their studies and the ritual of academics the Man has made sure that they are people who will serve him.”

“And people like you will live in seclusion and your circle will be limited and the people who read you will pride themselves on their culture and their selectiveness and their identification with the avant garde.”

“Luckily your scientists are working on microorganisms; minuscule replicas of yourself capable of surviving the atmosphere of any planet. Your inventors are preparing a Spaceship that will transport these microorganisms to 3 planets you’ve had your eye on. You wish all of your subjects were like them. Loyal, passive, “just doing our jobs.””

The perfect candidate, Hinckle Von Vampton decides. He doesn’t mind the shape of the idol: sexuality, economics, whatever, as long as it is limited to

 1

ISHMAEL REED MUMBO JUMBO

ISHMAEL REED MUMBO JUMBO

“Why, when the seasons change on Mars, I sympathize with them.”

“According to the astrologer Evangeline Adams, America is born at 3:03 on the 4th of July, Gemini Rising. It is to be mercurial, restless, violent. It looks to the Philippines and calls gluttony the New Frontier. It looks to South America and intervenes in the internal affairs of its nations; piracy is termed “bringing about stability.” If the British prose style is Churchillian, America is the tobacco auctioneer, the barker; Runyon, Lardner, W.W., the traveling salesman who can sell the world the Brooklyn Bridge every day, can put anything over on you and convince you that tomatoes grow at the South Pole.”

*

“The people didn’t go for it and sarcastically called them The First Poets because in Egypt at the time of Osiris every man was an artist and every artist a priest; it wasn’t until later that Art became attached to the State to do with it what it pleased.”

“S.R.: UPON HEARING ETHEL WATERS SING “THAT DA-DA-STRAIN” AND A JAZZ BAND PLAY “PAPA DE-DA-DA” EUROPEAN PAINTERS TAKE JES GREW ABROAD. IT HAS BECOME WHAT THE WALLFLOWER ORDER FEARED: PANDEMIC. AT HOME, YOUNG PEOPLE CHEER THE BAYERDOFFER DEVILS WHO’VE CHALLENGED GRAND OPERA TO A DUEL AT THE METROPOLITAN THEATER IN LOS ANGELES… THOUSANDS BOO VERDI’S TRIUMPH AS A HOMETOWN DECISION… THE LOOTING CONTINUES UNTIL DAWN… WORLD-WIDE MU’TAFIKAH GIVE JES GREW ENCOURAGEMENT BY PUTTING IT UP TAKING IT IN AND HIDING IT OUT… ON WALL STREET SAXOPHONES MAKE A STRONG RALLY WHILE VIOLINS ARE DOWN. THE BALLET LINGERS ON DEATH ROW AND… THIS JUST IN! OUTBREAKS OF JES GREW 60 MILES FROM NEW YORK CITY. 30,000 CASES REPORTED INCLUDING COWS, CHICKENS, SHEEP AND HORSES, DISPROVING SPECULATIONS THAT ITS EFFECTS ARE CONFINED TO THE HUMAN SPECIES. EVEN THE SAP IN THE MAPLE TREES MOVES NASTY. LOCAL CHURCHES SCHEDULE LAST-MINUTE MIDNIGHT SERVICES TO INDULGE IN PRAYERFUL ANTIDOTES AGAINST THE PLAGUE. ”

ISHMAEL REED MUMBO JUMBO