Chapters 52 and History as Fiction

Mumbo Jumbo was certainly a unique experience: at times very entertaining, but equally confusing and full of abstruse references.  Initially, Chapters 52 felt incredibly irrelevant to the loose plot that Reed had been constructing in the novel, but ironically it is this arc that really forms Mumbo Jumbo's alternate perspective into a coherent metanarrative.  As we mentioned in class, it seems that Reed is speaking directly through Papa LaBas, and the rest of the novel merely serves to warm us up to this condensed paradigm of American and world history.

Chapters 52 functions as a standalone postmodern work in many ways, but not necessarily in the same ways that Mumbo Jumbo as a whole is.  The line between myth and fiction is unclear, and it is self-referential in a humorous and engaging way, incorporating pop culture references wherever possible and using very modern casual language (Osiris giving Isis his "rod", Set pulling chariots to the side of the road to ask for licenses, etc).  At the same time, the metanarrative's agenda is very present, and Reed is unapologetically biased against the Atonist power structure, with whom he bunches Moses and Jesus to name a few.  However I would argue that these provocative/offensive aspects of his narrative are included consciously; Reed is replicating the Western-biased metanarratives which are ubiquitous in America, and instead flipping the perspective completely.  Not only is he making the unfairness more apparent to a white audience, but he is also showing how incredibly convincing and powerful metanarratives can be when using limited evidence to make larger conclusions.  In addition, Reed's fusion of fiction and history and both casual and sincere language makes his narrative much more appealing, which in itself is a postmodern invention that we are using more and more often as a society when telling our stories.

History vs. Fiction Revisited

Something that I believed at the outset of this course that I have now called into question regarding the differences between history and fiction is that history is more capable of constructing reliable and useful metanarratives than fiction.  I based this on the inherent limitless nature of fiction; history must always depict and interpret events that the author asserts truly happened, whereas fiction can make the choice to include some or no factual events in its text at all.  However after reading Hayden White's essay on this topic, I realized that he and others had largely removed fantasy and fantasy/sci-fi from consideration, and I think this addresses the issue that I had presented earlier.  By cutting out the useless (at least to a historian) aspects of fiction, we are left only with the historical/realistic stories that provide some commentary or insight on reality, whether that be through untold stories or from untold perspectives.

Another problem that I had with equating of history and fiction as equally relevant narrative-constructing tools is that a work of fiction will ultimately come from a single author's perspective; no matter how learned and open-minded they are, it is up to them to present information in a certain way.  Yet history is no different.  It too begins as a retelling by a single person, and is only useful when considered from a variety of other perspectives.  Even history books themselves usually have many authors.  To examine a fictional story such as Ragtime with no context, and simply judge it based on its presentation of factual information is therefore useless and unfair.  If one believe the mission of narratives is to explain the events that led to where we are today, then history may indeed be more relevant.  But if one believes that we consume narratives to dictate proper actions and improvements from the past, then fiction may be a better solution, where we often see a greater and more honest emphasis on the human experience.