COLGR49: Bartok

[CyrusGeo at netscape.net]

Dave Monroe <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com> wrote:

>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 ...

Actually, as early as 1937, Nazi sympathizers in the press had attacked Bartok and Kodaly of "insufficiency of nationalism". Hollander is right in that the 4th movement has no dry, disconsolate tune. I'd say it's graceful, even playful. Which does make one wonder why Pynchon would say so. But I feel (and I think David is right on this) that Hollander is taking this too far. Calling Vivaldi, or anyone before the mid-18th century (i.e. a time when democracy was a virtually unknown concept in Europe), "apolitical" already seems an exaggeration. The kazoo thing also carries over to GR, and it's probably nothing more than a persistent musical joke.

Cyrus


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