<div dir="ltr">This person needs to read the collected Gaddis ephemera book, The Rush for Second Place! The Player Piano stuff he collected for Agape Agape is incredible.<div><br></div><div>MT</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Mar 6, 2015 at 10:46 PM, Dave Monroe <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:against.the.dave@gmail.com" target="_blank">against.the.dave@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><a href="http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/catalogs/routledge_literature_research/1/10/" target="_blank">http://www.taylorandfrancis.com/catalogs/routledge_literature_research/1/10/</a><br>
<br>
The Academic Website of Justin St. Clair<br>
<br>
<a href="http://www.soundculturestudies.net" target="_blank">http://www.soundculturestudies.net</a><br>
<br>
These three audio technologies — the player piano, radio, and TV audio<br>
— all “aspire,†according to St. Clair, to the “condition of Muzak,â€<br>
or music as “aural anaesthetic, sonic persuasion, (im)pure<br>
background.†Muzak is, in a way, the fulcrum of the study, as it<br>
perfectly exemplifies an audio transmission that is supposed to be<br>
heard rather than listened to, but that is far from innocuous. Thomas<br>
Pynchon is famous for interrupting his narratives with song lyrics,<br>
the equivalent of foreground music, but St. Clair devotes the fourth<br>
chapter to his background music, the “wordless melodies†and<br>
“out-of-frame audio that reverberates in the corners and pervades the<br>
margins,†from kazoo concertos to buzzing metronomes. In The Crying of<br>
Lot 49, Oedipa Maas reflects on the role of the Muzak Corporation’s<br>
massive social experiment in shaping the American soundscape, one that<br>
in a “subliminal, unidentifiable way†influences our behavior: one of<br>
their actual slogans was “Boring work is made less boring by boring<br>
music.†Gravity’s Rainbow, for its part, exposes the philosophies and<br>
strategies of the Muzak Corporation, whose project “seeps†and<br>
“contaminates†the soundscape in the same way that the Pavlovian<br>
“Mystery Stimulus†(which is, significantly, auditory) does. Pynchon<br>
transforms the mystery stimulus into a plastic named Imipolex G, which<br>
despite its powerful smell, “behaves in an audible fashion,†and into<br>
Soniferous Aether, a kind of of “audioanalgesia,†heavenly and<br>
ethereal as Muzak is supposed to be.<br>
<br>
<a href="http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/listening-to-the-novel-the-soundtrack-of-postmodernism" target="_blank">http://lareviewofbooks.org/review/listening-to-the-novel-the-soundtrack-of-postmodernism</a><br>
-<br>
Pynchon-l / <a href="http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l" target="_blank">http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l</a><br>
</blockquote></div><br></div>