It's about music!
Kai Frederik Lorentzen
lorentzen at hotmail.de
Sat Apr 2 03:43:14 CDT 2016
And then there's "Say a prayer for the common informer ..." (p. 541)
which riffs on the Rolling Stones' "Salt of the Earth" where it says
"Say a prayer for the common foot soldier". And I swear that I,
listening a lot to the Stones back then, had figured that out before I
got myself a copy of Weisenburger's companion!
On 01.04.2016 21:14, Keith Davis wrote:
> Then there is the "Himmler has only one left ball" thing, which does
> fit a tune, which I can't remember the name of right now, but I seem
> to remember is a military thing...That might not even be an original
> lyric of Mr. P's...
>
> On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 3:12 PM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com
> <mailto:kbob42 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Isn't there a Pynchon fakebook out there somewhere? Maybe I'm
> thinking of Monty Python...In any case, I think at least the
> majority of the songs are just lyrics which imply a certain type
> of musical phrasing. Some of them are trickier to get than others,
> and I haven't taken the time to analyze them all. I'm not
> convinced that they all work as real tunes, but if one took the
> time to explore them, that theory could be proven wrong. Knowing
> Mr. P's work, he probably took the time to make sure they do.
>
> On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 3:02 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Everything you say here, Laura, I second. Including especially
> compliments to Kai.
>
> On Apr 1, 2016, at 1:39 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com>
> <kelber at mindspring.com <mailto:kelber at mindspring.com>> wrote:
>
>> Great stuff, Kai. It's always been a source of frustration
>> for me that I don't have the musical knowledge to make sense
>> of what the songs might potentially sound like. Hints such as
>> "close-harmony trombones" are lost on me. On first hitting
>> those Pynchon songs, I thought it was only a matter of
>> figuring out the popular tune it was based on (like the old
>> Mad Magazine satirical songs, "sung to the tune of …"). Is it
>> your sense, Kai (or anyone) that Pynchon had exact tunes in
>> mind when he wrote these, or is he just riffing with words?
>> I know there've been a number of attempts at adding music to
>> Pynchon's lyrics (Just a Floozy With an Uzi). But what a
>> great project for a musicologist to write/compose a
>> definitive written/audio work on the music, employing as many
>> hints as are available.
>>
>> Laura
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>>
>> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen
>>
>> Sent: Apr 1, 2016 8:06 AM
>>
>> To: pynchon -l
>>
>> Subject: Re: It's about music!
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > ... 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
>>
>> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
>
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