OCD ALERT!!! Re: Interlude: If James Wood Supposes...

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          robin:
          After À la recherche du temps perdu, all other 
          novels look like miniatures, AtD included.

          MB: I liked the end quote you shared; I suppose it's 
          aberrant and uncalled-for to admit that the 
          picture of the aging people up on towers of time 
          made me think of War of the Worlds...

I know I'm gonna go through Against the Day more than three times, as 
there's so many great set pieces. At the same time, there's an eerie 
quality in Proust of life just going along and then, somewhere around 
thirty pages from the end of each partition---each 'separate' novel---
all plot elements suddenly tumble together in a way that feels painfully 
inevitable, as if you should have seen it coming, but you were just too 
busy being distracted by the Mauve Toques and Madelines, the 
not-so-mindless pleasures of chamber music salons, all those romances 
that really were not all that much fun. TRP, alas, will never pull off that 
trick, his summations tend to be catch-alls. In retrospect, the Theater of 
Cruelty ending of The Crying of Lot 49 is a cop-out. 

If you rotate on all of your sanitary pedestals, your clear as lake can be
chunk of Calcite Crystal, your hunk of Iceland Spar that was mailed 
to you by the Tibetan Chamber of Commerce---your copy of Against 
the Day---to just the right angle, you can find all the footnotes to your 
copy of The Crying of Lot 49, all the info Oed picked up post-apocalyp-
tically from the the Great Gengis Cohen, mostly in the form of a spiritually
inflected postal koan. OBA really doesn't want the book to end and who 
can blame him? If he's got time regained back there in his file drawers, 
I'll be game. As it is, a fair amount of AtD is there to display the author's 
sources and inspirations, and an extension of his family research into 
the halcyon days of Pynchon & Company, looking back into the light:

http://www.americanartarchives.com/parrish_edison_egypt1922.jpg

http://www.americanartarchives.com/parrish_edison_primitman21.jpg

http://www.oldchristmaslights.com/MAZDA+PARRISH+BAGHDAD+1923.jpg


          R: AtD has the best drug sequences of TRPV's corpus.

          MB: yeahp (some more of that hikuli, please...)

That episode with El Espinero is pure, uncut Witchcraft. Scrying, Crystal
Magick, Astral Travel, Messages in Clear from Spirit Animals,
"The Star", haunted goldmines, "mythic cities at the horizon."
---it's the whole nine, folks.

          R: Pink Floyd sucks.

          MB: But, Grantchester Meadows?  Careful With that Ax, Eugene?
          Grooving with a Pict (my absolute favorite by them)?

Pleasant enough. . . .

          R: Sex Pistols rule.
          MB: meh... I read that _Lipstick Traces_ but so help me, cannot
          develop any fondness for them.  It just seems like they are
          unwitting shills for Maggie Thatcher.
          I like Lydon post-Pistol, though.  And Sid's heartbreaking "My Way"

It's a new form of protest music. I like to call it "Catatonic Expressionism." 
"Bodies" is a fantastic example. It's bitterness served up raw and unapologetic.
I want to hear Johnny Rotten "do" Schoenberg's "Ode To Napoleon Buonaparte".

http://www.internal.org/view_poem.phtml?poemID=343

          R: Rod did his best stuff as a soloist for Mercury---
          Never a Dull Moment, usw. . . .

          MB: I will grant you that Gasoline Alley was worth the vinyl. . .

          . . .And Wake Up Maggie -
          He blows off this ladyfriend at the beginning and then
          expects her to listen to his soliloquy of what he might do next?
          And be all moved that he loves her?
          Or if he's not actually breaking up, then it's a chronicle
          of how whipped he is....either way, it's bad!

I remember "Maggie Mae" from when I was living with my Mom [I was 17,
actually ran away from "home" in Fresno to stay with my Hippie Mom in
L.A., went to Hollywood High and I don't mean maybe]."Bea" had a 
couple-two-three boyfriends just out of high school. "Maggie Mae" 
rings true enough for me.

          R: Bush's 2st term unmatched in evil accomplishments by any other
          presidential term in office [writ of Habeas Corpus R.I..P.]

          MB: pales in comparison to 9-11. . . .

          . . . and even trying to kill Habeas Corpus (which will not stand). . 

Problem is, nothing has been done to stop the decay of 
EVERYTHING CONSERVATIVES [THEORETICALLY] HOLD DEAR.
While everybody cries out against the erosion of essential civil liberties,
nothing has been done. The simple fact that Bushit hasn't been
impeached indicates how far the rot has gone.

          R: Sviatoslav Richter's recordings of Beethoven's late 
          piano sonatas kicks Artur Schnabel's to the curb.

          MB: Hmm, will check that out...

Check this:
http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2005/Mar05/Richter_92229.htm

          R: Miles Davis was a much better musician in his 
          radical electric phase.

          MB: Miles may have played a bad note sometimes, but I've 
          never heard one.

Try some of Yardbird's uptempo sides on Dial/Savoy, 
some mighty fine clambakes goin' on. . . .

          MB: Electric was great, cool jazz was fine, I'm not gonna 
          argue that his hot-jazz phase was his best (but it's my fave)

He's listening to and integrating with fellow musicians on a higher level. 
Miles' electric sides aspire to the density and variety of orchestral timbres.
And they make your butt move real good too.