Mumbo Jumbo by Ishmael Reed

Author:Ishmael Reed [Reed, Ishmael]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780684824772
Publisher: Avon
Published: 1972-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

31

SLIGHT-OF-BUILD, WIRY, SINEWY and melancholy, resembling the drawings of Charles Cullen, Nathan Brown walks down the steps of Salem African Methodist Episcopal where he comes to meditate about the Black Christ. Black-caped, he is impervious to the rain. The poet whose work commingles Death and Nature in haunting ways reaches the corner of the street. He sees upon a building’s wall a foreboding shadow closing in behind him. He turns to see a regally dressed, elderly gentleman wearing a black seal coat. He is carrying a cane and wearing a top hat.

I didn’t mean to startle you…I admire your collection of poetry Dark Crepuscule. It’s solidly in the Western tradition and convinces me that you are the foremost bard of your race. It’s about time they produced such a bard!

If you will excuse me, sir, I have another engagement, answers Brown, rather embarrassed, looking down at the pavement.

But surely you will sign this autograph to your volume of poems. I would be most grateful, Hinckle continues, extending a pen for Brown’s use.

Nathan Brown interrupts his walk to stop and sign an autograph for this stranger. He then resumes his walk, moving along the street, the stranger alongside him.

Do you reside in Manhattan? Nathan decides to inquire of the gentleman who persists in accompanying him on his journey.

I have a modest place…a cottage…on Long Island. Spiraling Agony. It’s where I spend my time during my declining years, courting the muse and feeding sea gulls. I am what you could consider a gentleman editor. I publish a magazine called the Benign Monster. You’ve heard?

Haven’t I! It has a bad reputation in these parts…lurid, tasteless like an overgrown glossy tab.

We’re short of staff but we do the best we can. That’s why we need someone like you to give it class, taste.

I am committed to teaching school. I wouldn’t be in any position to help you…

But your vast knowledge of civilization, Christ, Abelard, Prospero, your word order, Think Not instead of the vulgar Don’t Think, your consciousness of your Black heritage but never allowing it to become a mystification as J. A. Rogers, Hughes, McKay and some of that contingent; the way you recorded that Simon, the servant, the servant who carried our Lord’s Cross, was colored.

I have been educated in both cultures and so I use the advantages of both.

That’s why you would be such an addition to our staff, the publisher of the Benign Monster insists to this poet whose biographer has written “[his problem] was that of reconciling a Christian upbringing with a pagan inclination…”

You never become bogged down in Marxist clichés and nationalism: all of these qualities are needed with the plague occurring. Look, we can make you the dominant figure in Negro literature today: King of the Colored Experience.

“All Coons Look Alike to Me,” mutters Nathan Brown vacantly, examining the trees which lined the street, uncomfortable as he listens to the stranger’s extravagant praise.

What was that?

I think that when people like you, Mr. Von Vampton, say “The Negro Experience” you are saying that all Negroes experience the world the same way.

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