Bibliography
Daw, Laurence. “More on Pynchon on Record.” Pynchon Notes 12 (June 1983): 46–47.
García Iborra, Juan and Oscar de Jódar Bonilla. “Cultural Confrontation in Pynchon’s ‘Entropy’ and Vineland.” REDEN: revista española de estudios norteamericanos, 17–18 (1999): 35–50.
Moore, Steven. “Pynchon on Record.” Pynchon Notes 10 (1982): 56–57.
Ocker, David. “Eight Facts About Thomas Pynchon, His Pavane and Galliard, A Piece for Cello and Piano.” Pynchon Notes, 28–29 (spring–fall 1991). 147–50.
Pynchon, Thomas. Against the Day. 2006. London: Vintage, 2007.
—. Gravity’s Rainbow. 1973. New York: Penguin, 2006.
—. Inherent Vice. New York: Penguin, 2009.
—. “Introduction.” Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. By Richard Fariña. 1966, 1983. New York: Penguin Books, 1996. v–xiv.
—. Mason & Dixon. 1997. London: Vintage, 1998.
—. Slow Learner: Early Stories. 1984. London: Vintage, 2000.
—. The Crying of Lot 49. 1965. New York: HarperPerennial, 1999.
—. V. 1963. London: Picador, 1975.
—. Vineland. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990.
“Radiohead’s Secret Influences, From Fleetwood Mac to Thomas Pynchon.” Rolling Stone, 28 August 2012.
Watts, Cedric. “Introduction.” Heart of Darkness and Other Tales. By Joseph Conrad. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Biography
Zurich-based Christian Hänggi wrote his first dissertation, Hospitality in the Age of Media Representation, at the European Graduate School (Atropos Press, 2009). His second dissertation from the University of Basel, Switzerland, investigated music in Thomas Pynchon’s work and was published as Pynchon’s Sound of Music (Diaphanes, 2020). Among his other publications are “‘Harmonica, kazoo—a friend.’ Pynchon’s Lessons in Organology” in America and the Musical Unconscious (eds. Julius Greve and Sascha Pöhlmann; Atropos Press, 2015) and “Stockhausen at Ground Zero” in Fillip (N° 15, fall 2011). He is a member of the Association of American Kazoologists (you could become one, too!) and plays the alto and baritone sax in various bands and orchestras.
Contents
1 Introduction
2 “Entropy” and V.
3 The Crying of Lot 49
4 Gravity’s Rainbow
5 Vineland, Mason & Dixon, Against the Day, and miscellaneous homages
6 Bibliography and Biography (this page)
For myself, reading Pynchon is such a personal experience that I really prefer providing my own soundtrack. This is still a very interesting look at the quite wide influence that Mr. Pynchon ‘s work has had on musicians. I hadn’t realised how wide. My personal preference is Devo’s “Whip It”. It is direct and to the point without extraneous extrapolation. Just sayin’.
Your preference for providing your own soundtrack for reading Pynchon is probably a feeling shared by many of the musicians on this list, I would think, which is why they did create their own soundtrack. Some of the above tracks and albums would still fit nicely into my reading.
I enjoyed this very much and look forward to reading more. A lot of this was new to me and I will seek a lot of these recording out, particularly those which have tried to create songs from the books. One of my favourite things about reading Pynchon is when characters burst into song.
The debut album of the ambient music project, Shadowy Lines is devoted entirely to Gravity’s Rainbow. The album is called “Mindless Pleasures”. You can download it on Bandcamp as a Name-your-price deal. Here’s their webpage:
http://www.autohypnosis.net/shadowylines/albums.html
Here’s the Bandcamp link:
https://shadowylines.bandcamp.com/album/mindless-pleasures
Thank you, Mike, for these additions! Thanks also to John Krafft and Thomas for a good number of other suggestions! I added them all. Now I count about 95 entries, but still not a single one for Inherent Vice or Bleeding Edge. Anyone want to do a recording of Meatball Flag’s timeless surf classic “Soul Gidget”?
Singer/Songwriter David Arthur Brown is a self-expressed Thomas Pynchon fan and often alludes to his work via his band Brazzaville. Most notably the song “Soft Parade,” from Morrow Bay (2013).
“Summer days remind me of the Soft Parade. Seventeen in L.A. and my heart kept breaking. So long ago—road trips down to Mexico—with ‘On The Road’ and ‘Gravity’s Rainbow.'”
The Jazz Butcher – Lot 49 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8EVyEaXu_I
Thanks! This one is already listed (with a different Youtube link) as “Looking for Lot 49.”
So “Life During Wartime” by Talking Heads isn’t a condensed view of GR?
What is GR if not life during wartime?
“I’ve changed my hair style so many times now I don’t know what I look like.” That’s not Tyrone Slothrop who changes his personality/name three or four times until his atoms just dissipate?
Yeah, possibly. Thanks for this. Before I add it to the list, I wonder if we can get more info to corrobate this. After all, there’s also a line that is very un-slothroppy: “No time for dancing, or lovey dovey I ain’t got time for that now.”
I am on the recording of “Unsung Pynchon” by Barry Koron, who was my partner at the time we recorded it in New York in the 1980s. We made a CD, of which I have a copy, but I don’t know if there are any of them left. I thought I gave you this information a few years ago, since you seemed to know so little about it. It’s a wonderful recording.
Sorry about my late answer… If you still have the CD, I think it would be wonderful if you could upload the MP3s somewhere and share them with the universe! That way I could link to those tunes.
Barry passed away last year and I don’t know what the copyright situation is (if any) regarding these songs now. I will ask his daughter.
Full of references in the track titles here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sombunall-Beneva-Clark-Nova/dp/B002RZZ14G/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Beneva+%26+Clark+Nova&qid=1594675035&s=dmusic&search-type=ss&sr=1-2
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sombunall-Beneva-Clark-Nova/dp/B002RZZ14G/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Beneva+%26+Clark+Nova&qid=1594675035&s=dmusic&search-type=ss&sr=1-2
I wonder if these are actual references and not just resonances that we as readers of Pynchon are sensitized to. Is there any other piece of information to corroborate that these songs were inspired by Pynchon?
The song in page 300 of my edition of V is very similar in content to “We Suck Young Blood” by Radiohead, who are previously known to have made several Pynchon references.
The song “V” by Golden Smog from 1995’s Down by the Old Mainstream. It’s a great song!
Thanks, Anthony. That is a great song! I’m just not convinced that it’s a reference to Pynchon. Except for “V” there’s little to make that assumption, I think, and I found the following on the internet: “V is an ode to a friend of the band’s, a bartender from the Uptown Bar in Minneapolis.”
Here’s a Gravity’s Rainbow playlist I put together as I read the novel over the past several months
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1IwJR1RYnxY2LARCnT1X6d?si=b52b7eedcc164aa1
Thank you, Eric. Would you like to explain what made you include songs? Inspiration, resonances, occasional reference perhaps?
All three of those. Some of the songs directly reference the novel, while some deal with similar themes. I also tried to imagine what Pynchon may’ve been listening to as he worked on the novel. But mostly the playlist was an exercise to help me make sense of the novel, even imagining what a film soundtrack would look like.
I think I may have written to you before about Barry Koron’s Unsung Pynchon. It was recorded in New York in 1987 and I am one of the performers on the recording. Barry was at that time my fiance and he wrote all the songs when we were living together, so I got to sing them all (but not on the recording).
Hi Carolyn, yes you did tell me a little over two years ago. It would be great if you could make the recording available! I will probably go through these pages soon and update some links, add a bit here or there.
Thanks for this – was prompted to come here when trying to locate some info about my own band, Greenfield Leisure, who are kindly included in your list (“too fat to frug, baby, that’s what you tell me all the time!”). If I recall correctly, we even tried contacting Mr Pynchon via his literary agent to get permission to “adapt” the lyrics, but something about the author living in a cave meant we didn’t get a definitive reply – so we thanked him anyway on the record sleeve. The late John Peel played “Too Fat To Frug” on his BBC Radio One evening show back in the day – there is an audio clip of Peel’s wry intro somehwere on the interweb. Greenfield Leisure still pop up from time to time on college radio, internet stations, eBay, Discogs and YouTube. Oh, and for die-hard fans, there’s a bunch of stuff on Bandcamp. Thanks for listening.
For the past twenty years i have been performing, live and on record, something I call Spirit Songs. They are all generated, William Burroughs/Bryon Gysin style, by cutting up Gravitys Rainbow and V. I improvise the backing to these pieces rendering each rendition completely different. No fixed harmony, tune or melody. There are many versions scattered across the music platforms. One of my favourites is this one – https://mikecooper.bandcamp.com/album/mike-cooper-spirit-songs-live
While many of these references are to single songs and less well known acts one should note that Mark Knophler’s entire album Sailing to Philadelphia was influenced by Mason/Dixon.