Scope and Contents Reader Amazon.com: Reed's Mumbo Jumbo is, in the words of the author himself, a "gumbo" of styles and content, and consequently it reads quite differently from a more conventional narrative guided by a single style and voice. In fact, in some of his earliest interviews Reed explains that his interest in this novel (as well as a couple previous ones) was to explore dadaistic-collage forms of writing, and in the opinion of this reviewer he succeeds beautifully in Mumbo Jumbo. The use of literary collage immediately brings to mind W. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, the latter of whom Reed actually met in the mid-Sixties. It's likely that Gysin's views on extending collage techniques from the visual arts to the literary had at least an indirect influence on Reed's approach to Mumbo Jumbo. Another novel (which even mentions Reed by name in its narrative on p. 588!) called Gravity's Rainbow shows similar use of collage as a means of subverting more normal narrative tendencies. So then,...