Pynchon & rap

[jbor]

> Of course we discussed the music in M&D in the original MDMD, and I expect
> you'll be hard pressed to find the words "rap music" in that novel.  My
> point is that "jbor" has a rather flexible approach to what is or isn't
> "direct reference" in Pynchon's text.  If somebody else points to Pynchon's
> use of the word  "holocaust" in GR and says that might be a direct reference
> to the Holocaust, for example, you get an argument and lecture about textual
> support for an interpretation. But now a passage in M&D that does not refer
> once to rap music has been called a "direct reference" to same. A great
> example of "no facts, only interpretations" perhaps?  Or just fuzzy logic
> used in the service of an intellectually dishonest argument?

Rather than going berserk about it, wouldn't an idea be to refute the actual
point, which was that the reference to "South Philadelphia Ballad-singers"
on page 264 of the text of M&D is a reference (direct or indirect -- that's
not really the issue, of course) to modern rappers? As Ethelmer describes
them, they are "generally Tenors, who are said, in their Succession, to
constitute a Chapter in the Secret History of a Musick yet to be, if not the
Modal change Plato fear'd, then one he did not foresee."

Or, to put the discussion in its broader context, in this exchange between
the family members Pynchon intimates that "the Negroe Musick" has pre-empted
the whole array of modern popular music styles: ballads, folk songs, rock
and roll, "Surf Music", reggae, even New Romantic.

> And of course I've expressed no "final opinion about Pynchon's taste in
> music"

Oh, sorry. It must have been some other Doug Millison who wrote that Pynchon
"seems to demonstrate a real fondness for folk and rock and roll music".

best