AtDDtA(15): Uproar

Tue Aug 14 17:27:01 CDT 2007

   "Uproar.  Heads appearing over the edges of upper bunks.  Jumping
up and down, running around colliding wirth each other, looking under
furniture, in closets, everywhere for the vanished harpman.  The Chums
by now understood that this was the 'intro' to a musical number ..."
(AtD, Pt. II, p. 420)

"running around colliding with each other"

Cf. ...

She made the mistake of looking at herself in the full-length mirror,
saw a beach ball with feet, and laughed so violently she fell over,
taking a can of hair spray on the sink with her. The can hit the
floor, something broke, and with a great outsurge of pressure the
stuff commenced atomizing, propelling the can swiftly about the
bathroom. Metzger rushed in to find Oedipa rolling around, trying to
get back on her feet, amid a great sticky miasma of fragrant lacquer.
"Oh, for Pete's sake," he said in his Baby Igor voice. The can,
hissing malignantly, bounced off the toilet and whizzed by Metzger's
right ear, missing by maybe a quarter of an inch. Metzger hit the deck
and cowered with Oedipa as the can continued its high-speed caroming;
from the other room came a slow, deep crescendo of naval bombardment,
machine-gun, howitzer and small-arms fire, screams and chopped-off
prayers of dying infantry. She looked up past his eyelids, into the
staring ceiling light, her field of vision cut across by wild,
flashing overflights of the can, whose pressure seemed inexhaustible.
She was scared but nowhere near sober. The can knew where it was
going, she sensed, or something fast enough, God or a digital machine,
might have computed in advance the complex web of its travel; but she
wasn't fast enough, and knew only that it might hit them at any
moment, at whatever clip it was doing, a hundred miles an hour.
"Metzger," she moaned, and sank her teeth into his upper arm, through
the sharkskin. Everything smelled like hair spray. The can collided
with a mirror and bounced away, leaving a silvery, reticulated bloom
of glass to hang a second before it all fell jingling into the sink;
zoomed over to the enclosed shower, where it crashed into and totally
destroyed a panel of frosted glass; thence around the three tile
walls, up to the ceiling, past the light, over the two prostrate
bodies, amid its own whoosh and the buzzing, distorted uproar from the
TV set. She could imagine no end to it; yet presently the can did give
up in mid-flight and fall to the floor, about a foot from Oedipa's
nose. She lay watching it.  (Lot 49, p. 37)

http://www.innternet.de/~peter.patti/thomaspynchon-thecryingoflot49.htm

"the 'intro' to a musical number"

As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an
unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to
pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's
their lives that pursue them. Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual
business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the
most part stupid songs....

http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781594201202,00.html

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Against_the_Day

http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/thomaspynchon/

"every harmonica within reach"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonica#Harmonica_types

http://www.angelfire.com/music/HarpOn/

"That 'Zo Meat-man's gone A-WOL"

In the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and France, military
personnel become AWOL (UK: Absent Without Leave, pronounced "A-Wol";
US: Absent Without Official Leave, pronounced "A-Wall") or AWL
(Canada: Absent Without Leave, pronounced "A-Wall") when they are
absent from their post without a valid pass or leave....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertion#Absent_Without_.28Official.29_Leave

Punitive Articles of the UCMJ

Article 86—Absence without leave

"Any member of the armed forces who, without authority—

(1) fails to go to his appointed place of duty at the time prescribed;

(2) goes from that place; or

(3) absents himself or remains absent from his unit, organization, or
place of duty at which he is required to be at the time prescribed;
shall be punished as a court-martial may direct." ...

http://usmilitary.about.com/od/punitivearticles/a/mcm86.htm

86

http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/86

http://wordsmith.org/words/eighty-six.html

http://www.bartleby.com/61/7/E0060700.html

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-eig1.htm

http://www.alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxeighty.html

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0211&msg=72384

"Now, it ain't that I wouldn't, 'cause I can but I won't,
And I would if I wasn't, but I am so I don't"

This sounds very similar to a lyric from Frank Zappa's 'Stink-Foot:'

He said: "IT DOESN'T, 'n YOU CAN'T!
I WON'T, 'n IT DON'T!
IT HASN'T, IT ISN'T, IT EVEN AIN'T
'N IT SHOULDN'T . . .
IT COULDN'T!"
He told me NO NO NO!
I told him YES YES YES!
I said: "I do it all the time . . .
Ain't this boogie a mess!"

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_397-428#Page_420

Frank Zappa, "Stink-Foot" (1974)

http://wiki.killuglyradio.com/index.php/Stink-Foot

http://www.zappa.com/fz/discography/1974apostrophe.html

"[All] A-a-and,"

Cf. GR ...

"[Bing as treble soloist]"

http://www.barbershop.de/de/news/index.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbershop_in_Germany

"brief novelty effects, locomotive noise, barnyard animals"

Cf. ...

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/spiked.html

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_music_jones.html

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_spiked.html

Also ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Sounds

http://www.beachboysfanclub.com/ps-liner.html

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6553833/2_pet_sounds

And ...

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/6595610/1_sgt_peppers_lonely_hearts_club_band

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sgt._Pepper's_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band

http://www.thebeatles.com/sgtpepper/

A-and speaking of Hegel ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beachles

"a spirited cakewalk"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cakewalk

"playing harmonica through his nose"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjBqEEebKu4

"a draw-note problem"

http://www.harmonicaclub.com/common/note_bending_for_harmonica.htm

"unorthodox behavior"

Why is this italicized?  Another Pynchonism ...

And see as well ...

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_397-428#Page_420