As Hänggi explains, it is also significant that “ith the exception of deriding Andrew Lloyd Webber, virtually no musician or form of music is portrayed or referenced in a condescending manner, no matter how ‘high’ or ‘low.’” 6 This does not mean, however, that Pynchon’s treatment of music can be reduced to a none-more-zany, postmodern free-for-all. They are saturated with allusions to musical forms ranging from hymns to opera to psychedelic rock. While none of Pynchon’s works could be described as “about” music in any sort of direct sense - here I duly acknowledge the simultaneously wise and stupid dictum that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” 5 - they nonetheless feature extensive ruminations on musical history and theory, on the lived experiences of brilliant and jobbing musicians, on the symbolic and technical particularities of instruments such as the saxophone, the harmonica, the ukulele, and the kazoo. There is surely no other living author who has engaged so resolutely with music. 4 It is accompanied by statistical analysis of factors such as density, frequency, and genre distribution. Compiled by Christian Hänggi, this remarkable undertaking catalogues all 927 of the “identifiable reference to non-fictional musicians and works of music in Pynchon’s eight novels, one short story collection, and his uncollected articles, essays, endorsements, and liner notes”. In May 2018, Orbit published “The Pynchon Playlist”. Combining immersive close work on Bleeding Edge with extended discussions of the musical worlds beyond the novel's immediate parameters, the article ultimately moves towards a more expansive thesis: Music, I contend, can tell us as much about Pynchon as Pynchon does about music. It uses a strategically-chosen selection of tracks as ports of entry into the “musical unconscious” (Julius Greve and Sascha Pöhlmann's term). The analysis ranges across the novel’s sonic extremes, from the inescapable mega-hits of Britney Spears to the infamous Norwegian black metal scene. In doing so, Pynchon’s fiction resonates with much-debated critiques of popular music by theorists such as Attali and Adorno, while at the same time significantly departing from them. This practice compellingly highlights some of the ways in which music is both uniquely subversive and uniquely vulnerable to co-optation. I argue that Pynchon’s engagement with music can not only be understood in terms of its periodizing function but also as an intricate practice of historical and prophetic/proleptic layering.
This article explores Pynchon’s allusions to popular (and unpopular) music in Bleeding Edge (2013).
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