This monographic study catalogs, explores, and interprets the manifold
manifestations of
music in Thomas Pynchon's
novels.
Pynchon's Sound of Music is dedicated to cataloging, exploring,
and interpreting the manifold manifestations of music in Thomas Pynchon's
work. An original mix of close and distant readings, this monograph employs
a variety of disciplines—from literary studies and musicology to philosophy,
media theory, and history—to explain Pynchon through music and music through
Pynchon.
Encyclopedic and eclectic—though never exhaustive—in its approach, Pynchon's
Sound of Music discusses the author's use of instruments such as the
kazoo, the harmonica, or the saxophone and embarks on close readings of the
most salient and musicologically tantalizing passages. Zooming out to a
bird's eye view, all his historical musical references and allusions are put
into perspective to trace the trends and tendencies in the development of
the oeuvre's interest in music.
A treasure trove for fans and an invaluable source for future
scholarship, this book includes the Pynchon Playlist, a 900+ item catalog of
all musical references, and an exhaustive index of more than 700 appearances
of musical instruments.
Christian Hänggi studied Communication Sciences at the universities of
Lugano and Toronto. He received a PhD in Media and Communication from the
European Graduate School and a PhD in Anglophone Literary and Cultural
Studies from the University of Basel, Switzerland. He is the author of Hospitality
in the Age of Media Representation (Atropos Press, 2009) and has
published on a variety of topics such as outdoor advertising, Karlheinz
Stockhausen, and South Park. As an amateur musician, he plays the
saxophone in several bands and orchestras and is the producer of an album
with interpretations of songs by Thomas Pynchon.
