Subversive instruments, continued

[Penny Padgett]

This appeared in a column called "In the Spotlight" ("News,
reviews, and gossip from the entertainment world") in
today's Portland _Oregonian_ (7/17/96, p. C4):

  Performance artist Laurie Anderson's recent show at the
  Aladdin Theater was lighter in both tone and impact than
  her usual work, but it did make a passing reference to
  what should be a more substantial forthcoming project.
  A segment of the show in which she compared and constrasted
  "Star Trek" with "Moby Dick" no doubt grew out of her
  preparations for an opera based on the classic Herman
  Melville novel, which she'll produce with a theater
  company in Hamburg.

  Melville, who died in 1891, is unavailable for comment.
  But that wasn't the case with an earlier idea of Anderson's.
  
  "The only other time I felt like trying to take a book
  and make it into something was 'Gravity's Rainbow,'" Anderson
  said in an interview last month.  "And I wrote a letter to
  Thomas Pynchon asking, 'Can I have your permission to try to
  make an opera out of your book?'  And I had no idea that he
  would answer me, because he's pretty elusive.  But he did send 
  a letter back that said, 'Yes, you can do that -- as long as
  the only instrument in the opera is a banjo.'

  "I thought, '*That's* an interesting was of saying "No."'"