MJJG 24-33 -

Thu Nov 26 14:41:36 UTC 2020

This may not be entirely pertinent to MJ, but perhaps tangentially so, and makes for good background info to Gravity's Rainbow... In reference to Raphael's:
As to the “Jew Grew” reference, foreshadowing 3rd Reich - does look relevant, what with the Teutonic Knights coming into play (p14, talking about how they fight, are mortally wounded - Versailles? - then come back to fight again; p170 “the Knights were holding meetings again at a resort called Berchtesgaden”)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmZKIqLcaeU&t=245s

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‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Thursday, November 26, 2020 4:56 AM, Raphael Saltwood <PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com> wrote:

> Hey, you also liked Kevin Wheeler’s (Zoyd’s nephew’s) honors paper? (Though he could’ve used an Ezra Pound to tighten it up imho - of course I imagine myself as that person: “Kevin Kevin, instead of being tired of the word ‘aesthetic’ you should’ve tired of the word ‘signifying’ or at least of using it repeatedly without further embellishments, and if you wanted to discuss rather than dismiss his later works there are ways to do that” and so on and so forth)
>
> The typography and embellishments I quite agree do get attention and have their own charm that they add.
>
> All part of an effect that has similarities to OBA TRP, esp. GR with the little middle-finger pointy hand icons & the tractor feed/movie film squares —
>
> In fact, MJ has a similar place in Mr Reed’s oeuvre to GR’s in Mr Pynchon’s. An early, energetic masterwork that stands out even from the best of what follows.
>
> While Mr Reed’s prolific career has included much out-and-out poetry, a major feature of Mr Pynchon’s work is also a poetic sensibility. It’s just that he doesn’t separate out the poetic parts and he apparently likes to write big books rather than smaller ones.
>
> As to the “Jew Grew” reference, foreshadowing 3rd Reich - does look relevant, what with the Teutonic Knights coming into play (p14, talking about how they fight, are mortally wounded - Versailles? - then come back to fight again; p170 “the Knights were holding meetings again at a resort called Berchtesgaden”)
>
> The effect of the Jewish influence “upon 2000 years of tradition” —
>
> A) which 2000 years? The Old Testament from 2000 bc or so, the chosen (atonist) people falling away repeatedly into polytheism, looks not unlike Jes Grew repeatedly arising and being quashed
>
> B) the 2000 years since Christ, the church fathers vs heresies like those troubadours in Languedoc and pagan traditions such as Yule with some Hegelian syntheses coming out of that...but also the Jewish Community as a source of innovation and a focus for suspicion!
>
> Jes Grew - the slow return of the oppressed? (PaPa LaBas tries to alert Freud on his visit to NYC)
>
> Also, & to wind down...the 1890s aside from any “gay 90s” considerations were when postwar progress for African-Americans ground to a halt:
>
> https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/links/misclink/1980s.htm
>
> Which is probably at least part of what he refers to on page 11: “[the Wallflower Order] thought that by fumigating the Place Congo in the 1890s ... that this would put an end to it.”
>
> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Square
>
> Get Outlook for iOShttps://aka.ms/o0ukef
>
> From: Becky Lindroos bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net
> Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2020 7:33:19 AM
> To: Raphael Saltwood PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com
> Cc: pynchon -l Pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: MJJG 24-33 -
>
> Yes - my Kindle has the Jew Grew on page 19:
>
> “Jes Grew is the boll weevil eating away at the fabric of our forms our technique our aesthetic integrity,” says a Southern congressman. “1 must ponder the effect of Jew Grew upon 2,000 years of civilization,” Calvinist editorial writers wonder aloud.
>
> I think it’s intended because the term, Calvinist fits right in to end that sentence. Also because if it were an error of any kind it would have been fixed on subsequent printings. Or, I suppose it could be a reference to the growing understanding of Nazi war crimes. But - in my final thought to this point I think it’s like the numerals and a way of making the Jes Grew reference unfamiliar - needing a second glance, a thought, a wonderment. ???
>
> https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1018&context=honorscollege_eng
> Riffing on The Past: Jazz and Signifying in Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo
>
> Bekah/Becky
>
> > On Nov 24, 2020, at 2:44 AM, Raphael Saltwood PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com wrote:
> > It does seem unlikely.
> > I do think he’s interested in the Harlem Renaissance and the cultural mixing that occurred there and elsewhere -
> > Would it be fair to say that non-hetero desires are a contributing factor to Bohemian scenes in general, or at least part of the mix?
> > Reed I think is not dogmatically hetero-normative, but more concerned with other aspects such as the art, the traditions embodied in the art, different “races” working together as you mentioned, and the opposing forces and/or allies such a movement encounters.
> > I think it all builds up to PaPa LaBas’s lecture at the close of the novel, which takes the building blocks from preceding chapters & builds a fine structure.
> > Hope that isn’t a spoiler!
> > —————————-/
> > I also meant to ask you, Becky, does your Kindle edition also have the “Jew Grew” phrase on page 19 that I took for a misprint?
> > Get Outlook for iOS
> > From: Becky Lindroos bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net
> > Sent: Monday, November 23, 2020 8:33:54 PM
> > To: Raphael Saltwood PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com
> > Cc: pynchon -l Pynchon-l at waste.org
> > Subject: Re: MJJG 24-33 -
> > Thank you, Raphael. I checked some more too. And I found the footnote on page (ta-da) 15 of the Kindle. It makes sense now - or at least some.
> > It looks to me like Reed might have been around some people who did read the Koran in English/Arabic form - notably Muhammed Ali (?) and Marvin X (old Black Panther current writer, poet). And Reed wrote the newish biography of Muhammed Ali (2015).
> > https://blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com/2015/06/marvin-x-interviewed-by-ishmael-reed.html
> > “In America, this literary tradition continued under the wretched conditions of slavery with the English/Arabic narratives of Ayub Suleimon Diallo, Ibrahima Abdulrahman Jallo, Bilali Mohammad, Salih Bilali, Umar Ibn Said. (Note:There is some suggestion that David Walker, Frederick Douglas, Booker T. Washington and Benjamin Banneker may have been descendants of Muslims.) In 1913, Noble Drew Ali, established his Moorish Science Temple in Newark, New Jersey, later Chicago, and created his Seven Circle Koran, a synthesis of Qur’anic, Masonic, mystical and esoteric writings.
> >
> > > 3.  by linking the Mu’tafikah with the Sodomites and Gomorreans (?) and both with the Bohemians, is he disparaging them? Or - since he seems to be sympathetic - is condemnation of the “cities of the plain” not part of his program?
> >
> > No - not to me. Not in 1972 (1920) . I can’t imagine that Reed would be sympathetic to the Mu’tafikah or the Bohemians while getting all judgmental about their sexuality.
> > Becky
> >
> > > On Nov 23, 2020, at 12:02 AM, Raphael Saltwood PlainMrBotanyB at outlook.com wrote:
> > > The Nook book has a footnote on pg 15
> > > “Mu’tafikah - According to the Koran, inhabitants of the ruined cities where Lot’s people had lived. I call the inhabitants “Mu’tafikah” because just as the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah
> > > were the Bohemians of their day, Berbelang and his gang are the Bohemians of the 1920s Manhattan.”
> > > While the serendipitous sound of the word didn’t make it less likely for him to use, he didn’t make it up:
> > > https://books.google.com/books?id=t-bBAwAAQBAJ&pg=PR13&lpg=PR13&dq=meaning+of+tafikah+arabic&source=bl&ots=I3DQtM7CWD&sig=ACfU3U0old7s2N0CfjKRfVrY1NpXAxd3Zg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjRmP-j-ZftAhXXTTABHfOpACcQ6AEwDnoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=meaning of tafikah arabic&f=false
> > > “Al Mu’tafikah” - overthrown cities
> > > This prompts a slew of questions:
> > >
> > > 1.  how interested was Mr Reed in the Koran - enough to read it in Arabic? Big dialogue coming up at the rent party including Koran commentary.
> > >
> > > 2.  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lot_in_Islam
> > >
> > >
> > > Slightly different take as noted in article.
> > >
> > > 3.  by linking the Mu’tafikah with the Sodomites and Gomorreans (?) and both with the Bohemians, is he disparaging them? Or - since he seems to be sympathetic - is condemnation of the “cities of the plain” not part of his program?
> > >
> > > Spoiler alert - sort of - in MJ,
> > > It’s probably important that
> > > monotheism is (like the excluded middle) bad sh*t
> > > Becky wrote:
> > > In the book, Berbalang is the head of the “Mu’tafikah”which is busily trying to liberate cultural artifacts from museums and centres of “Art Detention” in order to return them to their originating cultures.
> > > Best I can think is that Mu’tafikah is a slang deterioration of “mutha-f’ker.”
> > > Apparently within Mu’tafikah, Berbelang represents the Black race, Thor Wintergreen represents the White race , Yellow Jack is a Chinese American and Jose Fuentes is a Mayan seaman. They are all part of Mu’tafikah. (More references are coming up.)
> > > Becky
> > >
> > > Get Outlook for iOShttps://aka.ms/o0ukef
> > >
> > > -----------------------------------------
> > >
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>
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>
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