SOURCE: Ludwig, Sämi. “Ishmael Reed's Inductive Narratology of Detection.” African American Review 32, no. 3 (fall 1998): 435-44.

In the following essay, Ludwig addresses the critical confusion surrounding Reed's narrative technique in Mumbo Jumbo.

Words walking without masters.

(qtd. in Gates, Signifying 215)

Pallbearers did not read like Henry James.

(Chapple 18)

A salient feature of Reed's chaotic-seeming narratology is the fact that he presents voices in an unmediated way, which forces upon the reader the task of performing an act of narratological induction, of recognizing “Who speaks?” This procedure, which is quite the opposite of the traditional sorting out and establishing of a hierarchical system of narratological levels, can be traced back to animistic practices of the kind Reed presents in his Neo-HooDoo Aesthetic. In Voodoo, rather than starting out from given notions of origin and authority, one is first confronted with particular cases of possession by a voice and must...