It's about music!

Fri Apr 1 07:06:53 CDT 2016

 > ... 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 ... <

While Homer could write his 'novels' still in verses ("Versepen"), 
modern writers have, even if they're poets like Rilke ("Die 
Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge", 1910), to write their novels 
in prose. The quoted or - like most often in Pynchon's case - created 
verses respectively song lyrics thus are a) poetry in prose, b) graphic 
interludes and c) music in literature. All three aspects play a role in 
Pynchon's use of songs.

The idea to turn his texts temporarily into a jukebox Pynchon must have 
had early on. Already in "Low-Lands" this becomes obvious. This early 
short story not only contains three lines from a Noel Coward song - "Is 
this Noel Coward or some shit?"(GR, p. 709) -, but also, later on, four 
lines of a song Pynchon himself seems to have written (at least the 
lyrics of it):

"/A ship I have got in the North Country//
//And she goes by the name of the/ Golden Vanity,
/O, I fear she will be taken by a Spanish Ga-la-lee,//
//As she sails by the Low-lands low."

/Note the "Ga-la-lee" which emphasizes the actually musical dimension. 
In other cases, Pynchon also gives hints about the way how to arrange 
the songs, which gives the reader the opportunity to intuit the musical 
details. Like in the third song ("Yes---I'm---the---/Fellow that's 
ha-ving other peop-le's fan-tasies ...") of Gravity's Rainbow which 
appears on page 12 and where it says in between:

"[Now over a lotta tubas and close-harmony trombones]"

Can you hear them?

By the time of V, Pynchon was very sure about this special style feature 
of his and already used it with a certain self-evidence. The first 
chapter of V contains four songs on 34 pages. No song appears in the 
first chapter of The Crying of Lot 49, but in the second there are no 
less than three on just 14 pages. "The Secret Integration" has drunken 
soldiers singing "Mine eyes have seen the misery of the coming of the 
draft,/ And the day I got the letter ...". (I was a 
Kriegsdienstverweigerer and did Civil Service instead of going to the 
army, taking care of seniors who were still able to live alone in their 
condos. It was twice the time it would have been in the army, 20 instead 
of ten months, and thus rather long when you're young, but it was an 
experience - actually I had a client, her condo contained a samovar and 
an incredible number of books, who had experienced the Bolshevist 
revolution as a teenager and had stories about it to tell - I wouldn't 
like to miss.) In Vineland, the first song appears on pp. 43-44, the 
second on page 51, and the third on pp. 78-99; Mason & Dixon offers the 
first song on pages 18-19, the second on pages 27-28, and the third on 
page 34; in Against the Day the first two songs appear on pp. 15 and 
49-50; in Inherent Vice the first three songs can be heard on pp. 43-44, 
51 and 78-79. Although Pynchon seems to have grown a little tired of 
song writing by the time of Bleeding Edge - after the initial five lines 
from the fictional Leonard Bernstein musical (pp. 55-56) where Robert 
Moses sings "Throw those Puerto/Ricans out in the/street---It's just 
a/slum. Tear it all/do-o-own!", the reader has to wait until pp. 152-153 
before he gets to hear another song -, I could imagine that this, 
perhaps, has to do with the problems music itself is facing in our 
retromanic times. People don't read anymore - and certainly not in 
Pynchon novels like Vineland or Bleeding Edge! - and the music is just 
there to provide your mobile phone with a catchy ringtone or to present 
yourself on a Karaoke night.

Here are the page numbers for the songs or fragments thereof from Beyond 
the Zero:

8-9, 11, 12, 14-15, 61-62, 66 ("Down the toilet, lookit me,/What a silly 
thing to do!/Hope nobody takes a pee,/Yippy dippy dippy doo ..."), 67, 
68, 108 (Dutch traditional), 129/136 (Suso: In Dulci Jubilo), 163, 
174-175, 177. This makes a song density of 14 tracks in 174 pages. The 
best songs are, imho, to come later on in the book.  Here's one from pp. 
229-230, sung by "rats 'n' mice", which I chose because of our recent 
debate on behaviorism:

PAVLOVIA (Beguine)

It was spring in Pavlovia-a-a,
I was lost, in a maze ...
Lysol breezes perfumed the air,
I'd been searching for days,
I found you, in a cul-de-sac,
As bewildered as I---
We touched noses, and suddenly
My heart learned how to fly!

So, together, we found our way,
Shared a pellet, or two ...
Like an evening in some café,
Wanting nothing, but you ...

Autumn's come to Pavlovia-a-a,
Once again, I'm alone---
Finding sorrow by millivolts,
Back to neurons and bone.
And I think of our moments then,
Never knowing your name---
Nothing's left in Pavlovia,
But the maze, and the game ...

I wish you all a weekend with music!

On 21.12.2015 12:57, Kai Frederik Lorentzen 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!
>
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l
>
>

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