LAW(L)D

I'm beginning to like reading Mumbo Jumbo more and more. I think I am learning to appreciate Reed's writing style and I am understanding his sense of humor more. Reed clearly enjoyed himself while writing Mumbo Jumbo. I especially saw this come to light in the scene in chapter 45  involving Hinckle von Vampton, W.W., and W.W.'s dad. The ridiculousness of the entire scenario is just unbelievable. We have Hinckle going to desperate measures to turn W.W. into the ideal Android by lightening his skin with creme because he is "too dark", only to have a burly, black man barge in and yell, arguably quite stereotypically, things like "Lawd we axes you to pray over this boy......mmmmmmm". He then proceeds to punch Hinckle out cold and rough up Gould, then stuff his son in a cotton sack and take him back to Re-mote, Mississippi.

Looking past the hilarity and general chaos surrounding this scene for a moment, a point is made by W.W.'s father showing up in relation to the story. W.W.'s father is portrayed as a very rough character, yet he realizes that the Benign Monster magazine is not respectable and he doesn't want his son to write for it and be associated with it. In this way, the illusion that Hinckle has about how his magazine will undermine the Jes Grew movement is shattered in the reader's eyes since, along with Nathan Brown's rejection of the magazine earlier in the novel,  none of the black people take the magazine seriously.

When W.W.'s father is asked by one of the deacons with him how he's going to justify beating Hinckle and Gould, he simply replies "John 2:14"which is a bible verse. I looked  it up and it says "In the temple courts he found them selling oxen and sheep and pigeons, and the money-changers sitting there." (ESV translation). This doesn't really say much by itself, but in verse 15 it talks about how Jesus overturns the money-changer tables and takes out a whip and drives out the people doing business in the temple. I took this to mean in relation to the rest of the story that Hinckle and the Benign Monster were tarnishing the reputation of the black community by trying to pass off their garbage magazine as a black magazine, just as the money-lenders and merchants in the temple were tarnishing the holiness of the temple by turning it into a marketplace. WWJD? Punch Hinckle in the face.