The Tell-Tale Rocker

[Paul Mackin]

Richard Duke of York exemplifies Poe's human compulsion toward death and
destruction. (HenryVI, part 3)

Let hell make crook'd my mind to answer it.
I have no brother, I am like no brother;
And this word "love", which greybeards call divine,
Be resident in men like one another
And not in me: I am myself alone.
Clarence, beware: you keep me from the light.
But I will sort a pitchy day for thee;
For I shall buzz abroad such prophecies
That Edward shall be fearful of his life,
And then, to purge his fear, I'll be thy death.
King Henry and the Prince his son are gone.
Clarence, thy turn is next, and then the rest,
Counting myself but bad till I be best.

        P.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Mackin" <paul.mackin at verizon.net>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2001 7:46 AM
Subject: Re: The Tell-Tale Rocker


> "The human compulsion toward transgression and distruction"
> Reminds me of that  human desire for war business.
>
>         P.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Dave Monroe" <davidmmonroe at yahoo.com>
> To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Monday, November 26, 2001 7:05 AM
> Subject: The Tell-Tale Rocker
>
>
> > From Jon Pareles, "Lou Reed, the Tell-Tale Rocker,"
> > New York Times, Sunday, November 25th, 2001 ...
> >
> > "In 1845, four years before his death, Edgar Allan Poe
> > first published 'The Imp of the Perverse,' a short
> > story about a murder. It identified a human compulsion
> > toward transgression and self-destruction. 'The
> > assurance of the wrong or error of any action is often
> > the one unconquerable force which impels us, and alone
> > impels us to its prosecution,' Poe wrote. 'Nor will
> > this overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong's
> > sake, admit of analysis, or resolution into ulterior
> > elements. It is radical, a primitive impulse -
> > elementary.'
> >
> > "Some 124 years later, Lou Reed offered a more
> > monosyallabic version of the same idea. In the Velvet
> > Underground's 'Some Kinda Love,' he sang, 'Let us do
> > what you fear most/ That from which you recoil/ But
> > which still makes your eyes moist.' It was not the
> > first, and hardly the last, song in which Mr. Reed
> > would contemplate, as a matter-of-fact observer or
> > playing a highly volatile character, what goes on in
> > the minds of people committing acts of desperation,
> > mania and depravity. Where Poe delivered his
> > narratives in elaborately sonorous prose, Mr. Reed has
> > used a different vehicle: the rhythm and clangor of
> > rock.
> >
> > "Yet perhaps it was destined that as the 20th century
> > ended, Mr. Reed would find himself delving into and
> > overhauling the works of Poe for 'POEtry,' a
> > music-theater collaboration with the director and
> > designer Robert Wilson that will be at the Brooklyn
> > Academy of Music from Tuesday to Dec. 8.
> >
> > "'I just love Poe's language,' Mr. Reed, 59, said
> > earlier this month.  'To me, it would slip right into
> > my idea of what rock could be: the fun of the rhythm
> > of rock and the sex of rock and the physical push of
> > it, with the real power of the language.'
> >
> > "Mr. Reed had to invent his own path toward
> > intelligent rock. He studied poetry with Delmore
> > Schwartz at Syracuse University ..."
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/25/arts/music/25PARE.html?todaysheadlines
> >
> > And so forth ...
> >
> > __________________________________________________
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>
>