It's about music!

[John Bailey]

I'm no muso but I'll pay you this much: has any fiction writer gotten
away with original lyrics in the first ten pages of their debut novel?
Or even wanted to?

On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 10:57 PM, Kai Frederik Lorentzen
<lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
>
>
> Or at least also about music ... One may see bigger themes in Pynchon ---
> "the century's master cabal" (V, p. 226), technology, "the fork in the road
> America never took" (GR, p. 556), or (since Vineland) family --- but music,
> though this is rarely analyzed by the academic Pyndustry,  plays a certain
> role in all of Pynchon's books ... And not just one genre of music, music in
> general ... There's an ongoing interest in classical music, from Stravinsky
> in V to Wagner and Puccini in Bleeding Edge, including, among other things,
> fictional Kazoo pieces from Vivaldi  (TCoL49, chapter 1) and Haydn (GR, p.
> 711) ... But also - from McClintic Sphere's saxophone playing in V over
> Ragtime in Against the Day to the HipHop culture in Bleeding Edge - in
> African American music ... Plus lots of other musical phenomena popping up
> in Pynchon's books ...  With Zoyd Wheeler we have, in addition to McClintic
> Sphere, another professional musician as male protagonist, here from
> Pynchon's second work phase ... And with Mucho Maas, who goes from DJ to
> record producer (and from acid to blow), there is a music related character
> as an indicator of cultural change connecting Pynchon 1 with Pynchon 2 ...
> Equally relevant: Pynchon's phrasing as a writer follows the musical
> criteria of flow, he's the auditive type of writer (- in contrary to more
> visually orientated authors like, for example, Ernst Jünger or Claude Simon)
> ... Especially obvious this becomes with the incorporation of songs into the
> novels, which is, on this world-literary level, as far as I can see unique
> ... What do the musicians on the list say? Is Pynchon - as one could perhaps
> say in analogy to formulations like  'writer's writer' and 'musician's
> musician' - a, well, 'musician's writer?' Let me know! ... "The old man was
> singing, in a fine, firm baritone:/ Every night is Christmas Eve on old East
> Main,/ Sailors and their sweethearts all agree./ Neon signs of red and
> green/ Shine upon the friendly scene,/ Welcoming you in from off the sea./
> Santa's bag is filled with all your dreams come true:/ Nickel beers that
> sparkle like champagne,/ Barmaids who all love to screw,/ All of them
> reminding you/ It's Christmas Eve on old East Main." (V, pp. 9-10) ...
> Cheers!
>
>
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