Commencement Speaker's Address: Laurie Anderson

[Dave Monroe]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zthU59YvuqY

SVR:	 Who are some artists you admire and why?

Anderson:	 Thomas Pynchon I admire very much. And now I'm using
"artist" in the broadest sense of the word. Gravity's Rainbow is just
so beautiful because it's very multidimensional. I really like books
that you can kind of hear as much as think about, that are so graphic
and visual. I wanted to make an opera of that book, actually, and I
wrote to him and asked him if that would be OK (I actually found him;
he's quite reclusive). And he wrote me this funny letter. He said,
'You can do it, but you can only use banjo.' And so I thought, 'Well,
thanks. I don't know if I could do it like that.' I suppose it was his
polite way of saying, 'No. No way can you do this.'

http://www.transmitmedia.com/svr/vault/anderson/ander_transcript.html

Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow," the Laurie Anderson opera that
never came to pass

http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/2012/01/thomas-pynchons-gravitys-rainbow-the-laurie-anderson-opera-that-never-came-to-pass