ATD: Re: Brevity's Raincheck

[pynchonoid]

Charles Ives, quintessentially American, Modern, &
Transcendental, and a Pynchon soul-mate, imo.  I wrote
a couple of posts for the pynchonoid blog back when I
was reading up on Ives for an editing project:

[...] I've been reading, and enjoying, Jan Swafford's
biography, Charles Ives: A Life with Music, about
another Yankee genius who managed to break out of his
milieu's cultural expectations box. "Creative artists
were something that, for the most part, old-fashioned
Connecticut Yankees notably were not," Swafford
writes. "Practical musicians they were....The rare
composers of concert music, however, had to justify
their profession to dubious countrymen....Connecticut
men of letters were less likely to write imaginative
fiction than to be teachers, such as Yale's Timothy
Dwight, or nuts-and-bolts scholars like Noah Webster,
the dictionary man....Born both a Yankee and an
artist, Charles Ives was predestined to a divided
nature." Pynchon's not from Connecticut of course, but
he shares Ives' Congregationalist roots, and as I've
been reading this biography I've wondered if Pynchon
might also have had to overcome a similar cultural
predisposition against art for art's sake. Another
similarity between the two artists: Ives mixed popular
American and high European culture elements to create
a native American music, just as Pynchon combines pop
and high culture elements in his work.[...]

...and a follow-up:

<http://pynchonoid.blogspot.com/2004/07/offhand-and-fragmentary-memos-show-one.html>




--- David Kipen <kipend at gmail.com> wrote:

> As I read everything about 1893-1920 or so that I
> can get my hands on, I'm
> wondering what to listen to while I read. In other
> words, how would the
> musically inclined among you complete the following
> by no means exhaustive
> series?
> 
> V. (Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Eric Dolphy,
> Clifford Brown)
> The Crying of Lot 49 (Bartok's Concerto for
> Orchestra)
> Gravity's Rainbow (Charlie Parker's Cherokee;
> assorted Rossini, Beethoven,
> Webern)
> Slow Learner (John Barry's James Bond scores?)
> Vineland (Bach's *Sleeper's Awake *cantata)
> Mason & Dixon (assorted Quantz)
> Against the Day (??????????)
> 
> All ears,
> David
> 
> On 8/17/06, pynchonoid <pynchonoid at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > 1000 pages is room for a lot. Wonder what he'll
> leave
> > out?
> >
> >
> > --- David Casseres <david.casseres at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > > I'm wondering if Sacco and Vanzetti will appear
> in
> > > AtD.  Their lives,
> > > prior to the crime for which they were arrested
> in
> > > 1920, fit nicely
> > > into the book's period.
> > >
> >
> >
> > __________________________________________________
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> >
> 


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