MJJG 34 / 44-54

[Raphael Saltwood]

Chitterling switch - little Google search got a Chester Himes use of this phrase referring to a section of a small town, or even a separate small town, where blacks lived.
Guessing “switch” is from railroad, instead of station there’s just a switch there?

So to call that party a Chitterling Switch would be what - something like what Tom Wolfe would (in _The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test_) call “nostalgia de la boue”? - or something like a TAZ where the similitude of a small Afro-American town is erected and struck afterwards? Or is it simply referring to the locale where the money raised would be going to defend against lynchings?

Noblesse oblige may figure in. Those attending include luminaries of the black community and even Warren Harding (whose possible black heritage is something new to me.) Tom Wolfe parodied this element in “Radical Chic” - Mr Reed’s take isn’t completely dismissive of the gathering afaict, the seeming slight sneer of “not an authentic chitterling switch” countered by the approving tone of the ladies’ garb eg - although he would’ve had access to the “Radical Chic” text (1970)

—-
Berbelang - seen and scoots, with that Thor Wintergreen.
Earline goes right home to wait for him.

The historical Black Herman and Abdul Hamid and the fictional PaPa LaBas have an interesting discussion. Or maybe dispute.

Abdul Hamid sneers at LaBas’s theory that Jes Grew is waiting for its text.

If we take LaBas as an imputed mentor/precursor of Mr Reed’s own philosophy - then perhaps in MJ he is doing an historical deep dive to create this personage who will synthesize/critique the various cultural currents around the Harlem Renaissance with a view to what an author such as himself, a maker of text, could learn and use going forward.

LaBas himself is apparently an author. “When you reviewed my last work...” he upbraids Abdul Hamid on pg 42 - it’d have to be a written work to be reviewed in a magazine, right?

But the text Jes’ Grew seeks isn’t one written by LaBas. One of these guys, in fact, I think, has it - yes I read to the finish but I can’t remember who (so no spoilers here)

So the text becomes the MacGuffin, and by extension, if one looks at the book as an extended meditation on the place of literature in society, which would entail describing society, the text & its place  - and that does seem like an enjoyable door to open - a key.

But it’s not quite so simple, imho - a more complex, less describable notion is more appealing, which takes into account the existence of criticism, and parallels the simple joy of Jes Grew with that of writing a text, and adds as the conflict the effects of Atonism (for Jes Grew) or criticism (of texts) a-and even the anticipation thereof.

A much simpler view of the book (and decidedly more coherent) - and this is idiosyncratic rather than critical or suppositional of Mr Reed’s intent - is that it makes a good “memory house” to use its incidents, characters and settings to hold larger amounts of American history & organize them to some extent.

Cagliostro the Impossible wrote:
The character Abdul is fascinating to me, and if one looks at Stephanie St. Clair's bio she was married to the fellow :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sufi_Abdul_Hamid

The Harlem/Islam thread is interesting, though I think Reed is more or less satirical, but he does sympathize...