Discussion opener for GRGR(5)

[Alan Westrope]

On Fri, 15 Nov 1996, andrew at cee.hw.ac.uk (Andrew Dinn) wrote:

> 5) "Got a hard-on in my fist [. . .]" (61.30) Anyone know the song?

As previously mentioned, it's "Bye, Bye Blackbird."  It was originally
an innocuous 1920's Tin Pan Alley tune, so I suppose Slothrop could
simply have half-remembered it from, say, an Android Sisters broadcast.

However, 'black' resonates (and resin-ates, heh heh) with much of the
material in this section, and Charlie Parker's nickname was 'Bird.'  A-and
the song was remade into something of a jazz standard in the late 1950's
by Miles Davis, who dropped out of the Julliard School to join Parker's
quintet, become his roommate, and acquire his heroin habit.

>    There are all sorts of keywords or phrases in this section which
>    one could expound on. Anyone care to comment on "wasted Roxbury"

Roxbury was founded by TRP's progenitor William Pynchon (c. 1559-1662),
considered by some a partial model for William Slothrop.

>27) "Crutchfield [. . .] the Westwardman"

I always thought this was an interesting name -- and we all know that,
"Names by themselves may be empty, but the _act of naming_....[p. 366,
including emphasis and ellipsis].  The only potential source I've found
is an article cited by Zipf:

"Psychological distance as a function of psychological need,"
Journal of Comparative Psychology, Vol. 28 (1939), by R. S. Crutchfield.

-- 
Alan Westrope     PGP public key:  http://www.crl.com/~awestrop
<awestrop at crl.com>
<awestrop at nyx.net>
PGP 0xB8359639:   D6 89 74 03 77 C8 2D 43   7C CA 6D 57 29 25 69 23