Grace's History as Fiction Blog

As I started reading Mumbo Jumbo and gradually realized what Jes Grew really was, I was constantly reminded of what I learned in Race Class Gender class last semester with Mr. Leff. For one unit, we talked about the Roarin’ Twenties, specifically the cultural conflict of Old vs New. We discussed challenges toward the old, criticisms against the new, and what came out of these perspectives. For this blog post, I wanted to share Mr. Leff’s wise teachings and apply them to what we’ve seen in Mumbo Jumbo thus far. First, modernity - a mixture of the growth in mass production, mass consumption, and urbanization - revealed two ideologies of cultural consumption in the 1920s. The old prevailing ideology glorified thrift, deferred gratitude, and hard work. Now, the new ascendant ideology idealized desire, gratification, and spending. With this new ascendant ideology came challenges toward “the elders’ way of life”, including Freudianism (freeing of sexual desire) and cultural relativism...

As we have been reading through Ragtime and discussing the novel, I have developed a particular interest in Harry Houdini. As members of the 21st Century, we are still fascinated by the idea of magic and defying reality - horror movies, virtual video games, and even simple card or object tricks all continue to keep us on the edge of our seats because of their various effects of tricking our brains and tapping into illusions. As children, we have grown up knowing the name “Harry Houdini” and recognizing him as a really good magician/escape artist. However, every person is more than just a name with a label. Who really was Harry Houdini, and for our purposes, how true-to-life is Doctorow’s depiction of him? To try to answer this question, I started researching (shoutout to Gale and Credo) Harry Houdini. More accurately, I learned about Erich Weiss (real name indeed is mentioned on page 35 of the novel), born in Budapest on March 25, 1874, and immigrated to the US with his poor fami...