Lotion and Pynchon

[Don Corathers]

Partly amused, partly appalled by how easy it is to get an argument going in
this climate, I will say only that my library and record collection contain
evidence to the contrary. And that, in the case of Farina's writing, Pynchon
agrees with me.

Hoffman, btw, also overlooked Bob Dylan, whose "novel" Tarantula is perhaps
the most outstanding example of literary crap produced by an important
musician.

Don


----- Original Message -----
From: "mike j" <michaelmailing at yahoo.com>
To: "Pynchon List" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2001 10:49 PM
Subject: Re: Lotion and Pynchon


> oh please, farina couldn't write *or* play!
>
> ps - recall somewhere Sam Shepard saying he'd rather
> have been in the Velvet Underground.
>
> -----
>
> Mr. Hoffman has apparently never heard of Richard
> Farina.
>
> Don
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Richard Romeo" <richardromeo at hotmail.com>
> To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, October 16, 2001 2:18 PM
> Subject: Lotion and Pynchon
>
>
> > fyi.  rich
> >
> > Copyright 2001 The Hartford Courant Company
> > THE HARTFORD COURANT
> >
> >
> > October 14, 2001 Sunday, STATEWIDE
> >
> > SECTION: ARTS; Pg. G8
> >
> > LENGTH: 988 words
> >
> > HEADLINE: GOOD ROCK STARS WRITE BAD BOOKS;
> > SWITCH FROM COLLABORATION TO ISOLATION THEIR UNDOING
> >
> > BYLINE: WM. FERGUSON
> >
> > BODY:
> > I had a dream that Rick Moody, the author of "The
> Ice Storm," was in the
> > band Jethro Tull. Now, this dream is ridiculous on
> many levels. First of
> > all, Moody would have been about 10 years old when
> Jethro Tull released
> > "Aqualung," the band's defining moment. Second, Rick
> Moody is a cunning
> and
> > successful novelist. And, as everyone knows, no
> musician ever wrote a good
> > book.
> >
> > This may sound impossible, but I think it might be
> true. I challenge
> anyone
> > to name a serious writer who first made a mark in
> music. I came up with
> Paul
> > Bowles, who wrote "The Sheltering Sky" and still
> considered himself a
> failed
> > composer. There's also John Barth, a founding father
> of the postmodern
> novel
> > who supported himself by drumming in jazz bands. (I
> spoke with Barth, and
> he
> > seemed to recall that Ralph Ellison might have
> played trumpet and that
> James
> > Joyce once considered a career as an opera singer.)
> But shouldn't there be
> a
> > whole pantheon of these guys? It isn't for lack of
> effort. In 1993, Pete
> > Townshend outraged the British publishing world when
> he was granted a
> > position as editor at Faber, which put out his book
> of short stories,
> > "Horse's Neck." Townshend has since returned to
> writing rock operas. More
> > recently, Graham Parker, Ray Davies, Mike Nesmith,
> Greg Kihn, Steve Earle,
> > and Nick Cave -- all respected rock figures-- have
> published works of
> > fiction. The reviews have been hostile: Earle's book
> is "clumsy, mawkish,
> > and preachy," Parker wallows in "self-pity and
> curdled fancy," and,
> compared
> > with his work with the Kinks, Davies' book is simply
> "superfluous."    Why
> > do good rock stars write bad books? For one thing,
> they're not exactly
> > encouraged to write at all. John Lennon, the first
> of all rock-star
> authors,
> > was allowed to publish only under the broadest
> qualifications. Lennon's
> > first
> > book, "In His Own Write," came out just before the
> Beatles released
> "Rubber
> > Soul." This witty homage to Lewis Carroll is
> hamstrung not only by its
> dust
> > jacket -- "The writing Beatle!" it helpfully
> suggests -- but also by the
> > Library of Congress, which files the book under
> "Nonsense Literature,
> > English." The border between music and literature is
> poorly guarded, but
> > those who take this as invitation to sashay back and
> forth do so at their
> > peril. Literary tourism, it turns out, isn't cool.
> >    For example: I played bass in a band called
> Lotion for most of the
> '90s.
> > We
> > did OK, had a song on the radio for a while, but I
> still kept my day job
> > working for magazines. And then, through weird
> happenstance, the band met
> > Thomas Pynchon, the reclusive author of "Gravity's
> Rainbow." For reasons
> > that still aren't clear to me, he agreed to write
> liner notes for our
> second
> > record. We thought it was a really funny and
> incongruous situation, and he
> > evidently did, too. He was so generous about the
> whole thing, visiting the
> > studio while we were recording and flattering us by
> occasionally taking
> out
> > a
> > note pad to jot something down, that we were
> ignorant of our
> transgression.
> > We
> > flew too close to the sun, and nobody else in the
> world thought it was
> funny
> > or charming or generous. The alternative press,
> almost without exception,
> > lavished its derision on the 200 benign words that
> Pynchon wrote.
> Mainstream
> > magazines, sensing an avenue to the great man,
> treated the band with the
> > clinical distaste of a doctor examining a patient
> with just the most
> > interesting disease. How ever was it contracted?
> >    But more than the will of the critics preserves
> the separation of
> > musicians
> > and authors. "Writing," Barth points out, "is
> essentially a solitary act."
> > To this day, Barth still needs to cram wax in his
> ears before he can write
> > (a
> > habit that survives from when his children were
> small).
> >    Writing demands an intense focus, and the rewards
> come only at the end
> of
> > the process. Music, on the other hand, gratifies the
> easily distracted.
> Mike
> > Doughty, who was the singer for the band Soul
> Coughing and who now
> performs
> > on
> > his own and writes a column for the New York Press,
> figures musicians need
> > to
> > have a lot of time on their hands. "Songwriting is
> the sort of thing you
> can
> > do eight hours a day," he says. "You kind of sit
> around waiting for that
> > third verse to finish itself. And it does."
> >    This is not the case with writing. Nobody ever
> whiled away an afternoon
> > noodling on a typewriter and staring at clouds. Even
> the most
> insignificant
> > piece of prose is excruciating. Trust me. And yet,
> we love books, and we
> > love
> > music. Can't we make this marriage work? I think so.
> For one thing, the
> most
> > recent generation of fiction writers grew up
> listening to college rock,
> > literate artists like Talking Heads, R.E.M., Elvis
> Costello and the like.
> I
> > can detect this very sensibility, gently out of true
> with the mainstream,
> in
> > a
> > number of recent writers. The finicky, hilarious
> over-explication of Dave
> > Eggers had him pegged as a fan of They Might Be
> Giants long before Eggers
> > actually collaborated with the band. (TMBG composed
> a "soundtrack" to the
> > recent issue of McSweeney's, the literary journal
> that Eggers edits.) And
> > for
> > the record, Eggers claims to listen to music every
> moment when he's
> working.
> > Can it be long before members of bands like Belle &
> Sebastian or Tortoise
> > grow
> > disenchanted with the rock life and sit down at the
> computer to render the
> > human condition?
> >    As for Barth's legend as a musician, he estimates
> that he possessed "a
> > not-bad amateur flair" for drumming. And yet his
> brief career in music --
> he
> > hoped to be an "orchestrator" -- had a lasting
> impact on his writing,
> > particularly in his reworkings of mythology. "I take
> a received melody
> > line," he says, "and arrange it to new purposes."
> >    See there? The seed of postmodernism itself lies
> in a kernel of jazz
> > syncopation.
> >
> >    Wm. Ferguson played bass in Lotion. His writing
> has appeared in The New
> > York Times Magazine, Esquire and The New York
> Observer.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > GRAPHIC: PHOTO: (b&w), CHRIS BUCK / SPINART RECORDS
> > PHOTO: (b&w)
> > ; BILL FERGUSON, second from left, played bass with
> the rock band Lotion
> > before turning to writing.
> >
> > LOAD-DATE: October 15, 2001
> >
> >
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