Joan Didion’s South and West: Notes on Looking
Catch the Fever: On Ishmael Reed’s Mumbo Jumbo
I’m not really sure how to begin reviewing Mumbo Jumbo, mainly because I’m not entirely sure I’ve finished processing it. It is one of those books where you can understand what Reed is doing without necessarily understanding everything he is doing. There are so many historical references, characters, myths, political ideas and conspiracies packed into it that I often felt like I was reading one story while simultaneously being given five others.
Set in 1920s Harlem, the novel follows Papa LaBas, a Voodoo practitioner, as he investigates the mysterious spread of “Jes Grew”; a supposed virus causing people to dance, listen to jazz and embrace African-American culture. The people attempting to stop it see Jes Grew as something dangerous that needs to be contained. But the joke, and really the central idea of the novel, is that Jes Grew isn't a disease at all. It is creativity. It is music, movement, freedom and self-expression.
What I Learned About Living From Cookie Mueller
Last week, while sitting beside a pool in Lefkada, Greece, on a girls’ holiday, I started reading Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black by Cookie Mueller. I picked it up at a time when I felt unusually uncertain about where my life was heading. After one of the most turbulent years I have experienced, I found myself questioning everything: my family, my relationships, my ambitions, and the person I was trying so hard to be.
I realised something uncomfortable about myself while reading this book: how much of my life has been shaped by wanting to be seen. I want to be perceived as successful, as the overachiever, as pretty, as interesting, as someone people talk about and admire. And while those qualities are genuinely part of me, I hope. I started to wonder how much energy I had spent performing a version of myself rather than simply living.
Cookie Mueller’s writing arrived at exactly the right moment.