Music with Motif: The Pynchonian influence

Over the course of Easter, I started the laborious task of reading Thomas Pynchon’s post-modern masterpiece, Gravity’s Rainbow. There’s secondary literature that just extensively details the references Pynchon drew from the novel, and it’s inspired me to think of music that wouldn’t be out of place in this encyclopaedic novel.  

The track subtly builds with soaring saxophones that emulate the rocket’s grand trajectory

The obvious starting point would be ‘Rocket Man’ by Elton John or ‘V2-Schneider’ by David Bowie, given that the central symbol of the novel is the V2 rocket, which haunts the protagonist, Tyrone Slothrop, in each encounter he has. After moving to Berlin in late 1976, Bowie worked on a trilogy of albums that coincided with the conquest of his struggles with substance abuse. What’s notable about the Berlin albums is the instrumental pieces on the B-side of each record, with the collaboration of Brian Eno and King Crimson’s Robert Fripp. The track subtly builds with soaring saxophones that emulate the rocket’s grand trajectory, and its minimalism is an homage to Kraftwerk’s signature blend of pop and classical music.   

In conjunction with classical inspiration, Terry Riley’s ‘A Rainbow in Curved Air’ from 1969 is also a seminal work of post-modernism. The piece is incredibly structured by constant repetition that doesn’t leave the initial beat pattern, with a controversial practise of surgically overdubbing each instrument in. Its post-modernism comes from its upbeat tone and dreamy qualities that invite you to analyse, but also serve as a statement against over-analysis, a common practice in the modernist tradition. Pynchon’s novel shares the same philosophy as its primary warning: that the West’s quest to over-analyse mankind culminated in the path to World War Two.  

It reminds me of the ominous bureaucrats and secret agencies that fuel the paranoid prose style Pynchon writes with

This theme is prevalent in Father John Misty’s track, ‘Ballad of the Dying Man’, which describes someone so analytical that he checks his news feed before he takes his final breath, only to realise that “We leave as clueless as we came.” Then, the track ends beautifully with gospel singers symbolically guiding the man to the afterlife. It reminds me of the ominous bureaucrats and secret agencies that fuel the paranoid prose style Pynchon writes with, who seem to be around each corner of the many plots in the novel. Apart from replacing man with machine, their worldview is, according to the track, ultimately fruitless when faced with the deathbed. Unlike Father John Misty, Pynchon doesn’t give the technocrats a redeemable character arc; they evolve beyond the war to dictate new regimes. In the modern world, where greater surveillance, big data, and AI is already the norm, Pynchon warns that intense analysis could be our downfall again.  

One of the most prominent symbolic motifs is the banana, from colonial exploits to the rocket’s shape itself, that seems to find itself everywhere across the novel. Their appearances in the background remind me of Ween’s tropical track, ‘Bananas and Blow’, care-free nature. Specifically, the hedonistic passages of randomness that trickle through the novel’s plot, without context, seem out of place in the setting of World War Two. The merry ‘Tra La La Song’ by The Banana Splits, that’s the theme for the 1970s kids show, used to play every morning on Chris Evans’ Radio 2 show, doesn’t seem out of place when counting the total of banana references. It’s also a nicer note to end on.