Less than half-way through Mumbo Jumbo, Hinckle Von Vampton and Hubert "Safecracker" Gould kill Abdul in order to take the anthology of the Book of Thoth he had assembled, so they could burn it, but they find that the safe where he had kept it was empty. At the very end of the novel, we find out in a letter Abdul sent to PaPa LaBas that he had already burned it, making his murder essentially pointless. Just as everything else in Mumbo Jumbo, this murder pokes fun at just about everyone involved in it.
Abdul, of course, is most heavily satirized here, most of it originating in the letter he sends to LaBas. While for most of the novel, Abdul is depicted somewhat favourably, because he is the one taking the initiative to collect the pieces of the Text, therefore seeming to support Jes Grew, well after he is killed, the depiction of his character swings from a positive one to that of the unwitting villain. As and academic, Abdul would be considered successful if his work outlasted him, and, as we can see in his letter, it does. However, his work temporarily stifled Jes Grew, which LaBas explains never actually dies out and will be back, making Abdul's contribution to the world short-lived and decidedly negative. Yet, he has nobly laid down his life for the burning of the Text, despite having already burned it. This is clear satire of academics.
Next are Hinckle and "Safecracker". The description of them getting to Abdul's office and killing him is that of a failed pair of super-villains. They climb up to the office on "an invisible chord", seemingly a science-fiction burglary trick, but them this is undermined by the fact that they are climbing up the stairs, and don't need an invisible chord. Then, Hinckle tries to convince Abdul to give him the no-longer-existent anthology by being complimentary and sly, which requires complete intellectual control of the situation, which he plainly doesn't have, as he won't believe Abdul when he says he doesn't have the anthology. Then, "Safecracker" undermines his efforts by insisting upon taking the Text by force and pulling out a gun, which leads to Abdul's murder, and points out how uncoordinated their efforts are. When all this is viewed in the context of a thousand-year-old order trying to reclaim its dignity in the eyes of the Wallflower Order, it all looks rather pathetic, especially because the person they killed was apparently aligned with them; Abdul found the Text to be "lewd, nasty", and had done with it what Hinckle was planning to do.
Finally, PaPa LaBas's reaction to Abdul's letter is a clear satirization of LaBas. After having explained all of history since Ancient Egypt to convince people to let him take Hinckle and "Safecracker" to the Haitian authorities for the sake of Jes Grew, he finds out that its Text is in ashes, and he suddenly becomes passive, with the statement, "Better luck next time". This makes all of his work seem as pointless as Hinckle's, compounded by his subsequent revealing that Jes Grew was never in danger of dying out anyway.
This is just one example of a part of Mumbo Jumbo where Reed pokes fun not only at the villains and side-characters, but also the protagonist, showing that Jes Grew, not any character, is the real protagonist in Mumbo Jumbo, as it is the only entity that totally escapes satirization and an apparent pointlessness.
I think the satirization of LaBas is interesting. In this book, it seems nobody is immune to it. However, I think his passive actions help show that Jes Grew will never stop, even if its supporters are passive. The apparent lack of a leader/struture in the Jes Grew cause (is there even one?) only furthers the non-atonist practices in Jes Grew. I don't think LaBas's work is meaningless, but I think the movement can and will survive regardless of his actions LaBas knows it.
ReplyDeleteI never thought about how by satirizing Abdul's interpretation of what to do with the Book of Thoth was satirizing the way academia would view Jes Grew. I think this hold true because when we learn about the history of places we rarely learn about the culture as well.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there is a comic and satirical element in the deflation of LaBas's big reveal--literally, the box is empty ("we should've checked it first!"). But that doesn't mean that his long explanatory narrative (chapters 52) is all for naught. It doesn't culminate in the revelation of the Text, as we come to expect, but within the framework of the novel he is still telling the "full story" behind the present-day cultural conflict, and the connections between ancient Egypt and the conflicts over jazz in the 1920s are indeed vital for the reader to grasp--not to identify the text per se, but to identify the larger cultural "crime" of which Hinckle and the W.O. are convicted. Within the framework of the narrative, LaBas's connect-the-dots narrative *is* treated as ample evidence for HVV and Gould to be turned over to Haitian authorities. (Again, though, not because of LaBas's detective work, but because Battraville has spelled it all out . . . but still.)
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