Music in "The Crying of Lot 49"

Paper Summary:

This paper shows how Pynchon's use of music is not limited to just one of his novels but makes a profound impact on all his works, most noticeably "Gravity's Rainbow" and the book selected for this paper, "The Crying of Lot 49." It is Pynchon's love for sounds that made him comment on "modern and unreal" classical and popular music into his books including the most accessible of his works, "The Crying of Lot 49."

From the Paper:

"The way music is presented in this novel can be understood from the following lines taken from Gravity's Rainbow, "Imagine this very elaborate scientific lie: that sound cannot travel through outer space. Well, but suppose it can. Suppose They don't want us to know there is a medium there, what used to be called an "aether," which can carry sound to every part of the Earth. The Soniferous Aether." - Gravity's Rainbow, p. 695. Pynchon urges us to ask ourselves what if music similarly is not really what it appears to be on the surface. What if the bands and their popular music are just manifestations of something more solid but obscure? What if music as we know is only as fragile in substance as the reality that we encounter each day? Complex as they may sound, these are the questions that Pynchon poses when he discusses music in his novel, "The Crying of Lot 49.""

More papers on Music in "The Crying of Lot 49":

• Term Paper # 97875 : "The Crying of Lot 49"
• Book Review # 119055 : "Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49"
• Analytical Essay # 26206 : "The Crying of Lot 49"

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