Pynchon's Sound of Music

Pynchon’s Sound of Music Christian Hänggi Pynchon’s Sound of Music DIAPHANES PUBLISHED WITH SUPPORT BY THE SWISS NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 1ST EDITION ISBN 978-3-0358-0233-7 10.4472/9783035802337 DIESES WERK IST LIZENZIERT UNTER EINER CREATIVE COMMONS NAMENSNENNUNG 3.0 SCHWEIZ LIZENZ. LAYOUT AND PREPRESS: 2EDIT, ZURICH WWW.DIAPHANES.NET Contents Preface 7 Introduction 9 1 The Job of Sorting It All Out 17 A Brief Biography in Music 17 An Inventory of Pynchon’s Musical Techniques and Strategies 26 Pynchon on Record, Vol. 4 51 2 Lessons in Organology 53 The Harmonica 56 The Kazoo 79 The Saxophone 93 3 The Sounds of Societies to Come 121 The Age of Representation 127 The Age of Repetition 149 The Age of Composition 165 4 Analyzing the Pynchon Playlist 183 Conclusion 227 Appendix 231 Index of Musical Instruments 233 The Pynchon Playlist 239 Bibliography 289 Index of Musicians 309 Acknowledgments 315 Preface When I first read Gravity’s Rainbow, back in the days before I started to study literature more systematically, I noticed the novel’s many references to saxophones. Having played the instrument for, then, almost two decades, I thought that a novelist would not, could not, feature specialty instruments such as the C-melody sax if he did not play the horn himself. Once the saxophone had caught my attention, I noticed all sorts of uncommon references that seemed to confirm my hunch that Thomas Pynchon himself played the instrument: McClintic Sphere’s 4½ reed, the contra- bass sax of Against the Day, Gravity’s Rainbow’s Charlie Parker passage. I wondered if there was a way, based solely on the text itself, to prove that Pynchon was or was not a sax player—even an amateur one such as myself. That quest soon faded into the background and became less than interesting to me. However, it did spark my interest in a broader study of music in Pynchon’s work. Unable to find a monograph on the topic, I enrolled in the Doctoral Program in Literary Studies at the University of Basel, Switzerland, to write it myself. In my little world it is hard to imagine anything more fulfill- ing than to work on music and literature. Without a background in literary studies, I deemed it appropriate to first make myself familiar with the discipline’s theories, methods, and styles. Some four or five years later, the work was accomplished. The result is a book that spells out many of the stories that music tells in its various forms and appearances in Pynchon’s work, a story that inevitably also includes media and technology, warfare and social struggles, literature and other arts. In a way, what follows is a nonlinear history of music as seen through the lens of Pynchon’s writing, a history that radiates outward rather than being stream- lined into a central thesis or argument. Thankfully, the topic is not exhausted. Writing about Pynchon and music broadened my musical hori- zon immensely. Still, I am unable to play much more than “Hail to the Chief” on the harmonica, occasionally mixing up sucking and blowing, or “Rocky Raccoon” on the ukulele, sometimes taking a short break to rearrange my fingering. I did become a member of the Association of American Kazoologists though and I still try to play the Charlie Parker solos transcribed by Jamie Aebersold. 7 Pynchon’s Sound of Music By the time this book is published, the dissertation as I initially submitted it has produced a number of spin-offs: a commented list of bands, musicians, and record labels inspired by Pynchon’s work, currently encompassing about 120 items, published at thomaspynchon.com; a book chapter about Pynchon’s harmonica and kazoo published in a volume entitled America and the Musi- cal Unconscious; an abbreviated version of the last chapter—a quantitative analysis of Pynchon’s 925+ historical musical references including the database—published by Orbit; and, most excitingly, an album with interpretations of some of the many songs Pynchon wrote. Having invited my friend, the musician, poet, and high school teacher Tyler Burba, to accompany many of my talks on the East Coast, and after flying him in for a celebra- tion of Pynchon’s eightieth birthday at Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, it was a logical consequence that, once my academic work was accomplished, we should let the music speak for itself. Master- minded by Tyler and produced by me, the album was recorded by Tyler’s band Visit and is entitled “Now Everybody—” Visit Interprets Songs by Thomas Pynchon. It should be released any moment now. So it goes. Keep your ears and eyes open for our album. But for now, sit back, relax, and have, as the makers of South Park would say, a rootin’ tootin’ good time with Pynchon’s Sound of Music! 8 Introduction When Penguin announced the upcoming release of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice in 2009, they heightened the suspense with two marketing gimmicks. One was a series of short movie trailers with Pynchon providing Doc Sportello’s slurred voice. The other one was a playlist of songs that would be mentioned in the novel. The choice of media was fitting since film and music, as readers of Pynchon have long noticed, provide the two most con- sistently important cultural reference systems for his characters. Music and movie references—much more accessible to the aver- age Pynchon reader than, say, mathematical concepts or the fine points of rocket engineering—have long invited fans and scholars alike to chip in with their insights and interpretations, some of it wild and fascinating speculation, some of it carefully constructed criticism. Kathryn Hume and Thomas J. Knight, for instance, find signifi- cance in “the fact that the two art forms he refers to most fre- quently are music and cinema, the two that order and manipulate our relationship with the flow of time” (“Orchestration” 381). So does literature, one might add, but literature works with a different conception of time, one that allows the reader to apprehend the work of art at his or her own pace. In 1980, David Cowart noted that a first wave of reception and interpretation of Pyn- chon’s work focused on scientific allusions and references, most notably the concept of entropy, rather than references to the arts. He corrected this bias with his book Thomas Pynchon: The Art of Allusion in which he dedicated a chapter each to painting, film, music, and literature. The underlying message of the pictorial and film allusions, according to Cowart, was that “beyond life lies nothing more substantial than a blank white screen, a Void” (9). He observed a similarly bleak picture for the early reception that focused on entropy. He contrasted this with the musical (and literary) allusions: “The musical references seem always to hint at the extra dimensions of experience that we miss because of the narrow range of frequencies—physical or spiritual—to which we are attuned” (9). This pronouncement appears valid, particularly for the first three novels and for Cowart’s focus on more erudite, that is, classical and new classical music. Since the early 1980s, excellent contributions have been made on various aspects of music in Pynchon’s work but none of them 9 Pynchon’s Sound of Music exceeded the length of an article or a book chapter. John Joseph Hess voices a common sentiment when he writes: “[I]n spite of these important critical accounts of what music Pynchon has used and how he used it, music has remained strangely undertheorized in Pynchon criticism” (2). This study aims to fill this gap and present the first book-length monograph dedicated to cataloging, exploring, and interpreting the musical dimension of Pynchon’s work. My argument is that music is the most consistent and most central cultural reference point throughout the author’s career of more than fifty years; he writes, to speak with Mason & Dixon, “Novels in Musick” (263). Music is of symbolic and structural importance and it helps set the historical frame. It permeates the writing, from basic structural metaphors to its style. And, finally, throughout Pynchon’s work there is a strong moral undercurrent, an allegiance to the underdog, a solidarity with the preterite, which makes reactionary readings of his works almost impossi- ble.1 This moral undercurrent is particularly strong with the way he treats music. The present study reads some of the most salient passages con- cerning music and organizes them along different but intertwined trajectories—or pre-texts. Chapter 1 is dedicated to sorting it all out. I follow the convention of many monographs on Pynchon’s work by starting with a biography of the author. However, in con- trast to the others, I do not provide a general overview based on what little material is out there but limit myself to one aspect of his life, namely music. His vita is followed by an inventory of the most important ways in which Pynchon weaves music into his narratives. This catalog may not be exhaustive but it gives a good 1 Pynchon borrows the terms Preterite and Elect—key terms of his Weltan- schauung—from Calvinist doctrine. When Doomsday comes, so it goes, the Elect—the virtuous and God-fearing—will be saved while the Preterite will be passed over and left behind. Robert J. Lacey writes, “Pynchon celebrates preterition, the act of being disinherited or passed over. In a clever inver- sion of Calvinist theology, Pynchon suggests that preterites, the forgotten refuse of society, are the fortunate few who have received a kind of grace.

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