antw. re: Billy the Mountain in Vineland

[lorentzen-nicklaus]

Hunter Felt schrieb:

> 
> >From: "Richard Romeo" <richardromeo at hotmail.com>
> >To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> >Subject: Billy the Mountain in Vineland
> >Date: Thu, 30 May 2002 21:02:34 +0000
> >
> >well, it must've been the NYC homegrown but whilst listening to 'Billy the
> >Mountain' that inevitable display of blissful zappa-ian chaos, it ocurred 
> >to
> >my california-addled brain that some bits of that album-side long stroll
> >through some strange folks in LA (w/ a dudley do-right wristwatch!)that 
> >bits
> >sounded liked some of the extended goofey riffs in that vineland saga.
> >
> >but what do I know
> >
> >yrs
> >
> >ethel

> Hmm, the fight against the "do-goody" (but actually fascist) government 
> agent vs. the (also satirized) hippie community.  It's certainly plausible 
> that this rather trivial song could have tickled Pynchon's funny bone.  
> Frank Zappa after all is namechecked a few times, if I remember, in 
> "Vineland" (I don't have a copy on me...), which suggests that Pynchon has 
> some passing familiarity with Zappa's music.  Zappa is a little too 
> idiosyncratic of a choice simply to be an "insert random sixities musician 
> here" moment on Pynchon's part.

°°° "what is most appealing about young folks, after all, is the changes, not the still photograph or finished character but the movie, the soul in flux. maybe this small attachment to my past is only another case of what frank zappa calls a bunch of old guys sitting around playing rock'n'roll. but as we all know, rock'n'roll will never die, and education too, as henry adams always sez, keeps going on forever." (sl-intro: final passage)

--- anywhere the wind blows ~ kai °°°  

 
> I for one see a connection between Pynchon's "paranoia of the reader" and 
> Zappa's "conceptual continuity."  (For the best example of willed listener's 
> paranoia on Zappa read Ben Watson's "The Negative Dialectics of Poodle 
> Play."  It's entertaining, to say the least.)  Both Zappa and Pynchon 
> introduce the possibility that "connections" and "repetitions" could simply 
> be an elaborate trap set up for the listener/reader/consumer.
> 
> Which is interesting and clever in Pynchon, but is kinda annoying when Zappa 
> does it.
> 
> - Recovering Zappa addict,
> Hunter A. Felt
> 
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