McCintic McClintoc

[Don Corathers]

Yeah, yeah, okay. I took the presence of the other musicians to be an indication that Sphere was a player to be reckoned with. What I was interested in was not whether Sphere is a good guy or a good player, but David's observation (as I read it) that he is a representative of the inanimate, a "mechanical man." Seems to me that jazz is about the essential jism of life and is not accessible to anybody who is not, at least at the moment of playing it or receiving it, completely human.

Don 

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From: 	Jane Sweet[SMTP:lycidas2 at earthlink.net]
Sent: 	Tuesday, October 31, 2000 8:32 PM
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Cc: 	pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: 	Re: McCintic McClintoc



Don Corathers wrote:
> 
> David Morris wrote:
> 
> They might be describing
> his, what do they call a horn-player's mouth-muscules? Armature?  But w/ his
> hard skin I'd say this is a mechanical man's hinged mouth.
> 
> embouchure: the position and use of the lips, tongue, and teeth in playing a wind instrument.
> 
> Agree it's early to pass judgment on Sphere. The more perceptive people in the club seem to think he's a pretty good player, at least, though I don't suppose that has much to do with the condition of his mortal soul.

The more perceptive people? I would think that the people
that would provide the more perceptive commentary would be
the personnel from other groups uptown or cross-town, who
are listening hard and trying to dig. But are they digging
it? They are thinking about it. 

The people at the bar are disqualified, in terms of
perceptiveness, by the narrator's comments. 

Don't want to pass judgment and I don't want to argue about
the "Post-Dickensian names", but one of the crew present is
named Charisma. 

The narrator's comments about the group seem to be positive,
the drummer was a group man, but are mixed with stereotypes,
the evil-looking yellow eyed bass player, who by the way,
talks to his bass but it doesn't listen, not exactly a
compliment, I guess. 

Also, the horn of the "boy" and the Ivory sax, are described
as being in a knife fight or tug of war, consonant, but as
if cross purposes were in the air. 

So the drummer is a group player, doesn't go for the
show-off to the college guys, the pyrotechnics, but the bass
player is an evil stereotype with yellow pin point eyes who
talks to his bass, which is bigger than him, but it doesn't
listen. 

We have the people that write for the Downbeats and LP
liners, some of whom said, Bird Lives. Charisma? TRP, I
don't give a damn what Jules says about a man being God,
ridicules this type of hero worship, satirizes it
relentlessly in his fiction, for the best example that comes
to mind at the moment, JFK in GR. 

The narrator that sounds like TRP says that a lot of
nonsense had been written about Bird since his passing, a
negative will, a lunatic refusal to accept, a denial, and
this 10 percent, sees McCintic as a reincarnation of Bird. 

Again, he plays an IVORY sax. Ivory is the material most
associated with white death in this novel, TRP converts the
Gold to Ivory as a major symbol of V's inanimateness. We
have already had a few hints, the chess pieces, the
elephants, bones, Benny. 

The wind is another sign. 

Charisma and hero worship. 

The mechanical puppet-like description of McCintic. 


I'm not passing judgment on McClintic, he is, albeit a
fringe member, party to the sick crew.