McCintic McClintoc

[John Bailey]

Anyways, perhaps I'm stretching some links here but...

Along with the Duck, one of the three automata which made M. Vaucanson so 
famous was the flauteur, or flutist, whose most remarkable property was the 
hinged mouth which allowed for a mechanical embouchere or pursing of the 
lips. The lifesized automaton was able to play 12 airs on a real flute, 
which was considered a rare and difficult instrument at the time. Vaucanson, 
in fact, became an important historical figure for flutists as he had to 
work out exactly how the mouth, lungs, lips etc cooperate to blow a tune. I 
found his manuscripts in my local Music library.

Maybe McClintic, through his exceedingly focused devotion to the instrument, 
becomes more than a little like an automaton. This seems to go against what 
I gather are TRP's feelings towards jazz, however.

Must say, I also re-read Kerouac's evocation of some jazz gigs last night. 
Pretty wild. You can kind of see how TRP was so impressed by On The Road. 
Not so impressed, meself.


>From: "David Morris" <fqmorris at hotmail.com>
>To: "Jane Sweet" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>,        "Pynchon_List" 
><pynchon-l at waste.org>
>Subject: Re: McCintic McClintoc
>Date: Tue, 31 Oct 2000 12:09:59 -0600
>
>Nice.  I hadn't noticed that.  It could just be describing his, what do you 
>call the musculature set of a horn-players mouth? Armature?  But Terrance 
>seems closer to the intention:  hinged mouth.
>From: Jane Sweet
>
>"twin lines running down from either side of his
>lower lip..."___________________________________________________________
>Get more from your time online.  FREE MSN Explorer download : 
>http://explorer.msn.com

_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.

Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at 
http://profiles.msn.com.