Kevin Linehan
asked:
I tried to read V a long time ago. There is a scene in a NY jazz club. The narrator says two musicians were playing in "minor fifths". Anyone who has taken music lessons enough to know what the interval of a fifth is, knows there is no such thing as a minor fifth. Fifths are perfect or diminished. Were all the other factoids mixed into the story, that I took on faith, baloney as well?
To answer questions about
V.,
please sign up.
Casey Glover
If he mentions a minor fifth, it is either in (perhaps intentional) error, or he is referreing to a microtonal/non-Western scale. A minor fifth appears between two notes that are fixed on a piano, but not fixed on all instruments. The southeast Asian roots music known as gamelan uses such frequencies in tuned, metallic percussion instruments. The Beat writers (from which Pynchon spawned) famously were "searching for that note between C and C#." It may have been Kerouac who said this first. Subdividing systems such as the Western scale is a motif common in Pynchon.
Nathan Milos
In Vineland, he mentions that the musicians are playing from the Deleuze and Guattari fakebook. But Deleuze and Guattari aren't musicians; they are particularly bizarre critical theorists. Pynchon loves making obscure jokes about music.
Sandro
In Pynchon we trust:
“Horn and alto together favored sixths and minor fourths and when this happened it was like a knife fight or tug of war...�
“Horn and alto together favored sixths and minor fourths and when this happened it was like a knife fight or tug of war...�
About Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
