Cahokia Jazz

This novel is HUGE!  Even taken simply as a thriller it is brilliant, with all the plot twists, desperate chases, lowlife locations, brutal action, suspense and gore you could possibly want, if they are your thing. However it has so very much more… It’s about a critical point in history affecting the future of millions… It’s a reflection on politics, tensions between socialism and capitalism, aristocracy and republicanism… It’s about the mystique and mythology which society demands of its rulers and the crushing expectations those demands bring with them… It’s about race, living together, dealing with hatred, but potentially, sometimes at least, being blessed in the sharing of varied cultures… It’s a romance, the inception, rejection, and final flourishing of love… it’s a Bildungsroman, showing us how an uncertain character, Barrow, raised as an abandoned, directionless orphan, develops and matures during the few days’ course of the story… And of course it is good versus evil, what else? With such a huge reach it undoubtedly qualifies as an epic of the order of Les Miserables or, whisper it, in many fewer words, War and Peace… it even has a cavalry charge! 

Further to all the above, Cahokia Jazz is also a tragedy in the classical sense that the same forces which have awakened Barrow to find deeper meaning, confidence and vitality for his life also drive him to his final destruction. So many beautiful prospects open up for him – domestic bliss with Miss Chokfi, a successful career in the police service, above all the jazz music that so greatly inspires him. One by one he refuses them all in pursuit of his deeper calling. The strong new person he has discovered in himself is thrown away, and his own character brings it about. We have known and loved this man Barrow as he has struggled towards the light. To lose him like this is the true tragic pity and terror. Yet in the extraordinary final scene he embraces this ending as the completion of his life, not its dissolution. He gets through to a space beyond tragedy in which his sacrifice is a fulfilment, not a waste, an ending he himself embraced as the complete expression of the new person he has now become.

Without doubt this climactic moment represents a yet further layer of Cahokia’s world. This is its spiritual, specifically Christian, foundation. The novel turns out to be an exploration of the greater love that lays down life for its friends which is described, and enacted on the cross, by Jesus. The timing of Barrow’s ending, at the climax of the celebration of the Feast of the Annunciation, connects it to the coming of a great new hope from God into the world: as the fatal event unfolds, the crowd sings Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi. The fall of the would-be assassin Drummond parallels the fall of Satan and echoes the prayers of the worshippers to “deliver us from evil.” As the dying Barrow lets Drummond fall he says to him, “It’s about love,” and kisses him on the forehead.

Spufford simultaneously uses the celebration of the Feast of the Annunciation to affirm the rule of Barrow’s lover as the new Sun ruler of Cahokian society. Without the sacrifice of love, he seems to propose, the bonds that keep society together, that unite people’s values and enable rule by consent, that set up boundaries against corruption and hatred, cannot subsist. His Notes and Acknowledgements quote Ursula LeGuin: “Without the blood bond the arch would fall, you see.” Or as W H Auden puts it, “Without a cement of blood, it must be human, it must be innocent, no secular wall can safely stand.” Both they and Spufford have in mind the ancient Native American custom of adding blood to their mortar.

Spufford’s Cahokia is a world teetering on the brink of genocidal hostility and economic rapacity. It is saved and healed by the blood sacrifice of its hero. But is there, underlying the so narrowly averted threats to the peace of Cahokia, an anxiety that the same abyss is opening up beneath contemporary Western society? Traditional wisdoms and values are flouted, culture wars rage, politicians exploit and foment hatred and division instead of working for unity, people and relationships are commodified. People are being pulled apart by the forces of stress-related illness, poor mental health, the aridity of materialism, the vacuity of anti-rationalism, the false promises and endless lies of our post-truth era. The bond of blood has been repudiated and yes, the arch is falling… 

Yes there are some loose ends. I long to know what happened to Miss Chokfi, to the red-headed reporter, to the Moon after Barrow dies. Nonetheless there’s still more to this wonderful book - music, sex, tradition, leadership, culture, comedy… I’ve been a fan of Spufford ever since Unapologetic (see review elsewhere on this blog) but this far surpasses his previous already inspiring work. Cahokia Jazz connects with us through amazing prose, never preachy about its monumental themes, always bringing people, places and events fully to life: it’s beautiful and ugly, tender and violent, witty, challenging and overpoweringly awesome. What an orchestra! What music! Read it!