COLGR49: Bartok

[Dave Monroe]

And, again, from Charles Hollander, "Pynchon, JFK and
the CIA: Magic Eye Views of The Crying of Lot 49,"
Pynchon Notes 40-41 (Spring-Fall 1997), 61-106 ...

"Bela Bartok, a Hungarian nationalist forced into
exile by the Nazis during the Second World War, fled
to New York, where he wrote his Concerto for
Orchestra.  The concerto's frantic fourth movement has
no 'dry, disconsolate tune' (CL 10).  Maybe the ailing
Bartok was disconsolate, but the music is not.  This
inversion is Pynchon's way of flagging Bartok so we
will review his biography.  Bartok is mentioned in
'Mortality and Mercy in Vienna' as well: the category
of the exile was already important to the
undergraduate Pynchon.  Lot 49 also mentions the
Vivaldi Kazoo Concerto (a joke carried over from V.)
to offset the Bartok reference, to make it appear
equally casual.  But Vivaldi was not a dispossessed
political exile, as Bartok was--a fact the mention of
'a refugee Hungarian pastry cook' (13) reminds ud of
despite its joking context." (p. 71)

Well, here Hollander--or, if Hollander's correct,
Pynchon himself--goes to rather more trouble than
necessary.  Pretty much the mention of anybody,
anyplace, anything seems enough to "flag" said person,
place or thing for "review," but ... and having an
apolitical Vivaldi run interference for a politicized
Bartok seems even less necessary (if one doesn't buy
into Hollander's positing of a politically, mortally
feraful Pynchon here).  Nonetheless, again, excellent
research ...

--- Saioued Al-Zaioued <chicagoist at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> a tune from Bartok's

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
http://phonecard.yahoo.com/