Book contents
- Thomas Pynchon in Context
- Thomas Pynchon in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Times and Places
- Part II Culture, Politics, and Society
- Chapter 14 Family
- Chapter 15 Sex and Gender
- Chapter 16 Humor
- Chapter 17 Popular Culture
- Chapter 18 Music and Sound
- Chapter 19 Film and Television
- Chapter 20 Real Estate and the Internet
- Chapter 21 Politics and Counterculture
- Chapter 22 Drugs and Hippies
- Chapter 23 Ecology and the Environment
- Chapter 24 Capitalism and Class
- Chapter 25 War and Power
- Chapter 26 Conspiracy and Paranoia
- Chapter 27 Terror and Anarchy
- Chapter 28 Science and Technology
- Chapter 29 Mathematics
- Chapter 30 Time and Relativity
- Chapter 31 Philosophy
- Chapter 32 Religion and Spirituality
- Chapter 33 Death and Afterlife
- Part III Approaches and Readings
- Further Reading
- Index
Chapter 18 - Music and Sound
from Part II - Culture, Politics, and Society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 May 2019
- Thomas Pynchon in Context
- Thomas Pynchon in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Times and Places
- Part II Culture, Politics, and Society
- Chapter 14 Family
- Chapter 15 Sex and Gender
- Chapter 16 Humor
- Chapter 17 Popular Culture
- Chapter 18 Music and Sound
- Chapter 19 Film and Television
- Chapter 20 Real Estate and the Internet
- Chapter 21 Politics and Counterculture
- Chapter 22 Drugs and Hippies
- Chapter 23 Ecology and the Environment
- Chapter 24 Capitalism and Class
- Chapter 25 War and Power
- Chapter 26 Conspiracy and Paranoia
- Chapter 27 Terror and Anarchy
- Chapter 28 Science and Technology
- Chapter 29 Mathematics
- Chapter 30 Time and Relativity
- Chapter 31 Philosophy
- Chapter 32 Religion and Spirituality
- Chapter 33 Death and Afterlife
- Part III Approaches and Readings
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
For more than a half-century, Thomas Pynchon’s commitment to audition - the acts of hearing and of listening, and the attendant power of these faculties – has been so pronounced that sound in his fiction often arrives before the visual. Take Mason & Dixon (1997), for example. Lost in “late-Day Invisibility” on his way to the Mary and Meg, Dixon hears the premonitory church bells of America an ocean away, “peculiarly lucid in the fog” (MD 244); when he and Mason finally do arrive in the New World, their initial impressions are exclusively auditory: “Milkmaids quarrelling and cowbells a-clank, and dogs, and Babies old and new,— Hammers upon Nails, Wives upon Husbands, the ring of Pot-lids, the jingling of Draft-chains, a rifle-shot from a stretch of woods, lengthily crackling tree to tree” (MD 257). The sound of the scene reaches the reader before light enables sight. Not only is this a neat reversal of natural phenomena, but it is also an emphasis on re-vision, on modes of apprehension beyond the visual.
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- Thomas Pynchon in Context , pp. 146 - 153Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019
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