FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for review. No money changed hands and all opinions presented here are my own.
Writing about World War II, in a fictional sense anyway, is tricky. Its real life horror is well documented, for one, so it’s hard to find much new to say. It’s also a difficult subject within which to inject fictional characters and events without cheapening the tragedy. It should be a writer’s dream: a looming, charismatic villain…the large-scale restructuring of an empire…a world populated with victims, bystanders and heroes…classic battles…and the ultimate, incredible triumph of the good guys. But, instead, it’s a minefield. After all, when the real-life version of events appears to adhere so strongly to classical form, what can a writer do but oversimplify?
It’s easy to write war wrong, and with the possible exception of Vietnam there’s no war more clearly ingrained in the social consciousness than World War II. The bar has been set, but — oddly enough — it’s been set by the way things actually played out in the world we currently inhabit, and not by the artists who have sought to set their stories there.
Cheapening tragedy is something we do all the time, whether it’s a school shooting trivialized by the media so that we don’t wonder if, maybe, unhinged American citizens don’t need to be carrying assault weapons everywhere they go, or the mass extermination of six million Jews being used as the backdrop for some saccharine love story. We do it easily.
Effective war writing is much harder. We already know the main players, the key events, and the general chronology. We know where it takes place, we know the major moves made by each side, and we know who won. There’s not much room to play with the formula, and if you don’t play with the formula then what’s the point of setting your story there?
Yet three of my all-time favorite novels utilize World War II as their backdrop: Gravity’s Rainbow, Catch-22 and Mother Night. And each of them, not coincidentally, tell stories that really do use World War II as a backdrop. All three novels feature active participants on both sides of the conflict, but their own conflicts are internal: struggles over their understanding of self, over their identity, over their place in a world that could allow this largely unseen tragedy to unfold. They all also, interestingly, all take place at the height of the war. It’s already come too far by the time we meet any of these characters, and they’re already scrambled. We watch them piece themselves back together again…or not. World War II is not cheapened. It’s there, unfolding, seething, devouring in the background. The characters that we follow in these novels are too small to deserve our attention…but that doesn’t mean they cease to exist. They’re beyond insignificance in a world with greater problems than they’ll ever have…and yet their personal problems are everything. Some of them come out the other side stronger for the conflict. The rest come out ruined and undone.
That’s how you write a World War II story that works. Don’t set it in a concentration camp, because there’s nothing you can say that won’t cheapen the reality. Don’t set it in Hitler’s bunker, because those aren’t characters you’d be able to handle. And don’t inject some American superhero into the conflict to help turn the tide in favor of the Allies, because there are real-life heroes who lived and died to do exactly that themselves, and they don’t deserve to be replaced by your self-serving cartoons.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying I was nervous about reviewing 28 Bunkers by Elizabeth Braun. Especially after both of the previousbooks I reviewed by self-published authors were total garbage. Braun had an uphill struggle ahead of her, but I liked 28 Bunkers. In fact, there are a lot of things about it that I really liked.
It’s not without its issues, but don’t worry, we’ll dwell on the positive aspects as well, if only because it’s a relief to finally have some.
28 Bunkers is a story, according to its back cover matter, about an American fighter pilot named Ray who flees to Canada so that he can enlist with the RAF and do his part for good. It’s actually, however, about Erich and Gerda Müller, a German couple who live in Ludwigshafen, which receives particular attention from Allied bombers due to the presence of high-priority target IG Farben.
It’s impossible for me to review this book intelligently without giving away at least one large spoiler, and that’s this: around a third of the way through the book, Ray dies. His plane is shot up by enemy fire, and while he makes an emergency landing in a farmer’s field his plane flips over and he dies of his injuries. Just like that, the character who has been set up as both protagonist and audience surrogate is gone. Dead. No longer alive.
He is replaced in the narrative by a second American flier, named Tom. Ray was a bit green and so eager to do the right thing that he took to the skies before his country even wanted him to. Tom, on the other hand, is a family man, with a loving wife and children waiting for him at home. Shortly after we meet Tom he receives mail similar to that which Ray received…a crayon drawing of himself from a younger relative. We also find out that he sent home similar Christmas gifts to his loved ones. It feels here as though Braun is doing something very brave in a narrative sense, setting up these pilots as individuals, but ultimately allowing their details to blur so that we, as readers, can see them as unwittingly interchangeable. After all, if one pilot dies, the Allies simply send up another. As a writer, if one protagonist dies Braun simply sends in another.
Unfortunately this isn’t a pattern she sustains throughout the book, which makes it feel like a grand stroke of metatextual bravery that is toyed with but never quite comes to pass. For that reason it’s difficult to see her roster of Allied pilots as much more than personifications of the good-heartedness and loyalty that may have been misguided in particular cases but ultimately won the war. That’s a disappointment because with just a small tweak, the stakes could have been raised substantially, and the moral could have been a bit more complex.
Instead the best writing is reserved for the Müllers, who find their simple lives dismantled, piece by piece, by their coincidental proximity to an important target. Erich and Gerda raise their children Emilie and Lukas amidst the ongoing destruction, and though their optimism wavers they never lose sight of the fact that though this isn’t the world they’d choose to live in, it’s the only one they have. Their chapters, which alternate with those centered upon the American fliers, are interesting little character studies, with wrinkles added with appropriate pacing…just as they adjust to their latest setback, something else makes a great impact on their lives, and it’s not always a bomb. It’s Uncle Matthias returning home from the war, one-armed and gangrenous. It’s Irene and Michael, two children with nowhere to go, being added to the family by bureaucratic oversight. It’s Lukas being drafted to shoot down Allied planes. It’s — in short — always something.
And it’s also the best writing in the book, because it manages to use the real-world horror of World War II as an effective backdrop for some very personal stories. We hear about Hitler on the radio, just as the characters do. We see German Jews shut down their places of business and flee the country, but the reason is too horrific to spell out. And we’re privy to the gallows humor that gets them by. The war is real, but life must go on…and whatever that might entail today is different from what it might entail tomorrow.
The title refers to the 28 bunkers that still stand in Ludwigshafen, but not all of them play a role in the story. Instead the book contains 28 chapters, and I’d like to think of the title as referring to these 28 pockets of humanity amidst the chaos, where life goes on even when it doesn’t. With some tweaking, 28 Bunkers had the potential to be great. The American flier chapters are good, but suffer from unnecessarily lowered stakes. The German family chapters are far better, but characters sometimes end up speaking like news bulletins in order to remind the reader of where in the war we are at any given time.
None of these criticisms are particularly important ones, but I do think they represent the difference between effective writing and great writing.
Braun makes a special note of the fact that the three main American fliers are all based on family members and their actual stories, while the Müller family is of her own invention. Let that stand as further evidence that the best World War II writing comes with inventing conflicts on the sidelines. Braun may have wanted to pay tribute to the actual heroes in her lineage, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But the real tribute comes where it’s least expected, with two parents terrified of what every new day will bring, who nevertheless have to hold their world together for the children who will inherit it.
It’s worth reading. But it always seems to be reaching for an even higher standard, and I do wish it managed to get there.
FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for review. No money changed hands and all opinions presented here are my own.
Bad News:Jane Henson has died. And everything that I said then applies now. Losing yet another connection to one of the most influential figures in my life. I’m sad. I have also now learned that they had actually divorced before he passed away. I never knew this, probably because, by all accounts, they remained great friends. Jane worked with Jim on his art from his humblest beginnings right up through his creative peak, so I don’t think it’s any exaggeration whatsoever to say that she was a guiding force, even if it was passively, for what The Muppets were able to accomplish. May she rest in peace.
Good News:Arrested Development season four has a premiere date. It’s May 26, which is a Sunday, which means I’ll be taking the entire following week off of work. Also, each episode apparently centers on a different character. I’m telling you right now that the three best episodes will be centered around, in order, Lucille, G.O.B. and Tobias. Prove me wrong, Netflix. Also, anyone out there want reviews for each episode? I’m considering it so let me know.
Bad News:Roger Ebert has died too. I can’t speak for the man himself, but he’s certainly battled cancer hard enough over the past few years, and has lost so much in terms of his quality of life, that I’m glad at least that he won’t have to fight it any more. Having said that, the man was and will probably always be a hero of mine. He was an extremely intelligent man and one of my idols in terms of elevating reviews to an art form. Even when I felt he was way off-base (and, in my opinion, he often was) he always found interesting, effective ways of establishing his viewpoint. More often than not I disagreed with his ultimate assessment of a film, but almost never did I find it hard to see where he was coming from. After the cancer took away his speaking voice, he blossomed into a profound, fascinating writer on so many subjects, and seemed to live from that point on a complete second life as an ever-present, humane narrator to the world. This is a genuine loss, and I will miss him.
Good News:Reading is good for you, emotionally speaking. This comes as no surprise to me whatsoever. It probably won’t to you either. But it’s always nice to have another reason to pick up and get lost in a great book. Who’d have thought that reading could serve as an effective workout for your emotional well-being? Well, readers. But still.
So it’s been quiet around here lately, and there’s absolutely nothing noteworthy about that fact. But I did want to pop in to let you know that, unlike every other time, I haven’t been totally unproductive. In fact, I’m writing a book.
It’s a project that I started for National Novel Writing Month a few years back. For those of you who aren’t familiar, the idea is that you are supposed to write an entire novel between November 1 and November 30. I’ve participated a few times now, and I’ve nearly always succeeded, but it’s very much worth noting that they define “a novel” as “50,000 words.” So you can very easily hit that number without bringing your story to a close, or even getting anywhere near an ending.
For many it’s just a writing exercise, which is great, but for me…I’ve always tried to do something more. 50,000 words of anything is a useful workout for a writer, but I feel a little let down at the end if I don’t have something I can share. Rework, rewrite, edit, extend, sure…but I at least need to come away with something I can show for my investment.
My first completed novel that I owe to National Novel Writing Month is Afterbirth: The Comedy of Miscarriage, which took me two years to write and another five to really shape into what I needed it to be. It’s a piece of work I’m immensely proud of right now, a book that manages to be clever and complicated enough that I can’t believe some schlub like me wrote it. In fact, it’s so good that nobody wants to publish the thing, and it’s sitting around doing absolutely nothing.
Detective Fiction was a deliberate response to Afterbirth. The former is massive in scope and scale, scrambling up scenes across generations and narrated by a self-serving trickster, leaving the reader to fend for himself or herself from paragraph to paragraph, trying to piece together the story that lies beneath what’s actually being said. It was hard to write. Heck, it’s hard to read.
So for my next project, my next real project, my next big novel attempt that I could actually spin into a finished manuscript at some point down the line, I went intentionally simple. It’s a straight-forward story without any significant leaps through time, with a manageable cast of characters, and with a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end. I didn’t want it to get too big. I didn’t want it to get too complicated. Because…well, I already had one of those. And it went–and continues to go–absolutely nowhere.
Detective Fiction, I reasoned, could make for an easier sell. It’s a simpler pitch, its first few chapters won’t scare people away, and I can make an effort to be a little more overtly funny. It should still be good, but it could be good in a way that plays more nicely with its readers.
My plan was to write a sendup of the detective fiction genre, starring a young man in the fictional Palmwood City, Florida, who decides to operate as an unlicensed private eye in order to draw focus away from a few other things in his life. I delved into some classic examples from Raymond Chandler to Arthur Conan Doyle and realized, shockingly, that these books were actually a lot better than I gave them credit for being. In fact, my attempt at a joke very quickly turned into a love letter, as I realized the reason that these stories endured: they only pretended to be about the mystery. They were always actually about the detective.
But I never finished the book. I wrote most of it, hit the 50,000 word goal, but never brought it to a conclusion.
And it languished for two years. While I did absolutely nothing with it. Honestly, I was afraid to go back. As simple as I wanted the book to be, I was still trying to provide three things at the same time to the reader: a good read, a genre pastiche, and a satisfying mystery…in roughly that order. And the more time passed, the easier it became to just assume that I had failed, that it was a scattered mess, and it wasn’t worth revisiting.
Recently, I revisited. And it was far, far better than I remembered it being. So I thought I’d dig back in, and give young Billy Passwater the conclusion his story so specifically deserves.
I have one chapter left to write. I intend to do that tonight. I will then spend months (at least months) rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting, and rewriting.
And before long, I hope to have something I can send out to agents. Something I can be happy to have my name on, and something they can be happy to have their names on as well.
I know I’ve been quiet, but I haven’t been unproductive. I hope you understand why I’ve decided to focus my energies elsewhere for a time…it’s now or never for Detective Fiction.
Noiseless Chatter isn’t dead. Detective Fiction doesn’t represent me having nothing to post here anymore. If anything, as the man himself once said, “Things should start to get interesting right about now.”
FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for review. No money changed hands and all opinions presented here are my own.
When we discussed A Soul’s Calling we talked a bit about the fact that not everything that happens is automatically a story. It takes a certain artistry on the part of an author to make something a story*…it doesn’t simply become a story because we would like it to be one. Lawrence Fisher, author of Kill Me Now!: A Middle Aged Man’s Maneuvers Through the Frontline of the Dating Battlefield understands this much. Frustratingly, however, he settles for minor interjections, irrelevant detours and repeated attempts at coining a catch phrase. The end result feels much less like a middle-aged dating handbook than it does like an awkward performance at an open-mic comedy club.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The book itself is structured as a journal, running for seven months’ time. It starts in December and ends in July, though we don’t get any idea of what year it’s meant to be. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does contribute to an overall feeling of detachment from the action. It’s difficult to care about the folks who appear on these pages simply because we never really get to know them, and there’s no opportunity to do so. We might hear that so-and-so is going to a wedding soon, or that Lawrence spoke to someone at the gym, or that somebody else is a nutritionist, but these things function more as labels than as descriptors, and by the end of the book we don’t know Ed — Lawrence’s most frequently referred-to friend — any better than we know a nameless woman who once confused Lawrence in a parking lot. He, like everybody else, is a faceless reference point that doesn’t have any reason to be referred to.
Each entry is given a specific date, for instance February 24 or May 2, but the action is often entirely removed from that date, with Lawrence describing things that might have happened days or weeks previously. Again, it really fuels a feeling of overall detachment more than anything else, and just serves to erect another barrier between us and the vague, hazy “action” that the book is trying to describe.
In many entries, but not all, Lawrence is on a date. His intentions for writing about these dates — which are clearly fictionalized to an extent, but that’s a good thing — flip-flop at various times throughout the book. Sometimes he’s writing about these things in order to “decode the signals of his enigmatic opponent” (as he has it on the back cover), and other times he seems to just want to make us laugh. Either of these ambitions is fair, and certainly they could be combined easily enough, but none of the anecdotes pull very far in either direction, let alone both.
If we are to appraise the book on its ability to “decode” anything we’d had to say it’s a failure, because we don’t really glean much direct insight into anything. (That “direct” is a key word there…stay tuned.) We’ll have, as a hypothetical but faithful example, a situation in which Lawrence is eating dinner with a woman. He’ll pick up on signals, but he won’t know what they mean…nor will he even make an attempt to figure them out. He’ll write something along the lines of, “She’s twirling her hair. What does that mean? And why did she turn down the wine? Does she not drink, or does she just not want to drink with me? Why is she looking over her shoulder?” and so on, essentially just reminding us that signals are being given…but with no attempt made to figure them out. He raises the question…and leaves it there. There’s not much decoding going on; just a constant series of reminders that Lawrence doesn’t know what’s going on.
If we are to appraise the book as a purely humorous work, we find it inching a bit closer to success. After all, dating can be very funny. We’ve all been on bad dates, and it’s probably safe to say that we’ve all been on at least a few outright terrible ones. Some of those might make for a good story, but none of Lawrence’s dates seem that bad. Perhaps he just chose the wrong unidentified year to record in print, but overall these dates are more awkward than awful, making it puzzling that he’d want to single any of these out as hilarious anecdotes. It also makes his constant entreaties to the reader to “Kill me now!” (attempt #1, of approximately 20, at a catchphrase) feel that much more overwrought.
In one instance, the worst thing that happens on one of his dates is that the woman turns out to be shorter than he thought, because she was wearing boots when they met. Another time he is approached by a woman at a coffee shop who asks him “Is this seat taken?” He says no…and she takes the seat with her to go sit with her friends. These may indeed have been funny moments in Lawrence’s real-life dating adventures, but on the page they don’t feel like they warrant much more than a footnote, and they certainly don’t deserve several pages of build up apiece. Why is Lawrence shouting “Kill me now!” when the worst thing that happened is that a woman talked too much on their date? That’s really not that bad…it’s not as though she tried to mug him or became verbally abusive.
What’s really problematic about some of these stories is that Lawrence comes off as more than a little shallow and condescending. A good portion of the time he wants his readers to kill him now simply because his date isn’t attractive enough. Yes, we know, people use misleading photos in their online dating profiles all the time, but it’s a bit harsh, once a woman has made the effort to meet with you, to fixate entirely on her looks and write for page after page about how she isn’t up to your standards, physically.
Kill Me Now! makes fun of people who are unattractive, people who are too old, people who have speech impediments, and so on. It begins to feel rather cruel, as these aren’t decisions that people have made. It’s one thing to pick on a woman for boasting about her achievements all night, or something, but it’s another thing entirely to say she’s too fat and leave it at that. That’s, to put it simply, just not very nice, and absolutely nothing that deserves to be immortalized in print.
The fact is also that these women are in the same boat Lawrence is, and that’s something that goes almost totally unacknowledged throughout the entire book. These women are lonely too. They’re trying just as hard to find love, but the narration would have you believe that they’re just out there to waste time and mislead strangers.
It would have made for a far, far better book if Lawrence really did try to decode their signals, because then perhaps the book would reveal the grand truth that they’re all lonely people, and they’re all being shallow and picky, and they all need to slow down and figure out what they want before rushing into every opportunity that presents itself.
Both Lawrence and these women are pouncing on everything that comes along…so of course they end up feeling disappointed more often than not. That should imbue our narrator with a sense of kinship toward these women. They’re all making the same mistakes, and they’re all in search of the same thing in the same way. Instead, however, his “opponent” remains just that, and he’s free to simply dismiss them for being too ugly. It’s disappointing on a number of levels, and the rampant homophobia doesn’t help things either.
In a few chapters Lawrence lets the mask slip somewhat. Instead of shoehorning meaningless references into his text (everything from Alf to Seinfeld to, you guessed it, Don’t Mess With the Zohan) and attempting to coin catchphrases, he takes a moment to write about the truth of his situation: he’s a lonely man. He just wants somebody who will be happy to see him, and be with him, and start a family with him.
That’s sweet. That’s human. And that’s something that would make his story much more humorous if we got to see it more often. When somebody picks on others for being less than perfect, it’s not funny. When somebody picks on others as a defense mechanism because he himself is less than perfect and would rather project his insecurities onto others, well, you’ve got something there. Something worth reading. And maybe even, in some gloriously twisted way, something moving.
Instead we have a series of monologues — I’d coin a phrase for a corresponding male version of The Vagina Monologues, but I can’t think of anything that wouldn’t sound incredibly mean-spirited — in which Lawrence fails to understand which story he’s even telling.
As with A Soul’s Calling, we have something here. But the author would prefer to focus on something else…and it’s something that, unfortunately, doesn’t get him very far. Kill me now.
—– * Someone I knew years ago referred to this as a necessary “romancing” of our experiences. I thought that that was a fantastic way to put it, and it’s stayed with me ever since. The fact that his writing was awful only further proved to me that even bad writers — and he’d be the first to admit he was, at least at the time — can understand that raw material needs to be spun into art if it’s going to be worth reading.
FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for review. No money changed hands and all opinions presented here are my own.
So this is what I was originally planning for Valentine’s Day…only I planned for it around five months in advance and then forgot to do it. It’s a collection of love songs from Thomas Pynchon’s novels. I’m a huge Pynchon fan (DID YOU KNOW THAT??) and the little original ditties he embeds in his text are like charming, reliable life-rafts amid the glorious, chaotic sprawl. And I’ll be honest…every time I’ve picked up a new Pynchon book I’ve looked forward to the songs the most. They range from silly to clever to genius, and, in some way, I love them all.
When I used to run a different (much more personal) blog, I posted The Love Songs of Thomas Pynchon for Valentine’s Day, and it very surprisingly became the most popular post on my site. I have no idea why, but it was certainly a great feeling, and with that site long gone I thought I’d post it again. This time I’m including a few songs I left out of the first post — no real reason, I just wasn’t as big a fan of them — and I’m including the love songs from the two novels that have come out in the meantime. So this is much more complete.
Pynchon deliberately blurs lines between love, lust, friendship and fondness, so there are a few arguable love songs that were left out, and maybe a few that leaned in another direction that might have crept in instead. But here you go. In some cases Pynchon assigns his own song titles, but he usually does not. Any song titles that I’ve taken the liberty of assigning are in brackets, so blame me if you don’t think they’re appropriate. I’ve also left in a few textual moments if I felt they contributed to the “feel” or understanding of the song. Otherwise they were trimmed out for the sake of easier reading.
I hope you enjoy. Reading Pynchon is a blast, and his songs are a huge part of that. Some of them are silly, some of them are genuinely moving, and some of them are just absurdly fun. I threw in a gorgeous interpretation of “The Eyes of a New York Woman” at the end, just because it’s wonderful…and it’s always fun to get a glimpse into how these songs sound to somebody else. I can only ever hear my own versions, in my own head. And I hope you enjoy the ones you hear, too. Happy late Valentine’s Day.
“Serenade” The Crying of Lot 49, p27
As I lie and watch the moon
On the lonely sea,
Watch it tug the lonely tide
Like a comforter over me,
The still and faceless moon
Fills the beach tonight
With only a ghost of day,
All shadow gray, and moonbeam white.
And you lie alone tonight,
As alone as I;
Lonely girl in your lonely flat, well, that’s where it’s at,
So hush your lonely cry.
How can I come to you, put out the moon, send back the tide?
The night has gone so gray, I’d lose the way, and it’s dark inside.
No, I must lie alone,
Till it comes for me;
Till it takes the sky, the sand, the moon, and the lonely sea.
And the lonely sea…etc. [FADE OUT.]
[“Little Grass Skirt”] Vineland, p63
Whoa! Come ‘n’ let me roll that
Little grass skirt,
In the Zig Zag, of my em-
Brace!
Light on up, With th’
Flame of love, take
The frown right, off o’ your face!
Put it in a roach clip,
Pass it to and fro,
In between your lips and let th’
Good smoke flow, oh
It won’t cost much, and
It ain’t gonna hurt, just
C’mere with that uh little, grass skirt!
[“Esther’s Nose Job”] V., p111
Have I told you, fella
She’s got the sweetest columella
And a septum that’s swept ’em all on their ass;
Each casual chondrectomy
Meant only a big fat check to me
Till I sawed this osteoclastible lass:
[Refrain]:
Till you’ve cut into Esther
You’ve cut nothing at all;
She’s one of the best, Thir,
To her nose I’m in thrall.
She never acts nasty
But lies still as a rock;
She loves my rhinoplasty
But the others are schlock.
Esther is passive,
Her aplomb is massive,
How could any poor ass’ve
Ever passed her by?
And let me to you say
She puts Ireland to shame;
For her nose is retroussé
And Esther’s her name….
For the last eight bars she chanted “No” on one and three.
“The Englishman’s Very Shy (Fox-Trot)” Gravity’s Rainbow, p184
(Bloat):
The Englishman’s very shy,
He’s none of your Ca-sa-no-va,
At bowling ladies o-ver,
A-mericans lead the pack–
(Tantivy):
–You see, your Englishman tends to lack
That recklessness transatlantic,
That women find so romantic
Though frankly I can’t see why…
(Bloat):
The polygamous Yank with his girls galore
Give your Brit-ish rake or carouser fits,
(Tantivy):
Though he’s secretly held in re-ve-rent awe
As a sort of e-rot-ic Clausewitz….
(Together):
If only one could al-ly
A-merican bedroom know-how
With British good looks, then oh how
These lovelies would swoon and sigh,
Though you and I know the Englishman’s very shy.
[“For Susannah”] Mason & Dixon, p143
I was only sixteen, upon your wedding day,
I stood outside the churchyard, and cried.
And now I’m working for the man, who carried you away,
And ev’ry day I see you by his side.
Sometimes you’re smiling,– sometimes you ain’t,
Most times you never look my way,–
I’m still as a Mill-Pond, I’m as patient as a Saint,
Wond’ring if there’s things you’d like to say.
Oh, are you day-dreaming of me,
Do you tuck me in at Night,
When he’s fast asleep beside you,
Are those Fingers doing right?
How can Love conquer all,
When Love can be so blind? and you’ve got
Bradley on your Name,
And Mason on your Mind….
[“Cheap Romance”] Vineland, p281
Whoo! is this the start of a
Cheap ro-mance,
Nothin’ much to do with
High fi-nance,
Is it th’ start of,
Another cheap ro-mance?
(Here Scott Oof, as he had for thousands of identical renditions, filled with a phrase stolen from Mickey Baker on “Love Is Strage” [1956].)
This hot tomato’s lookin’
Mighty sweet,
Uh just th’ thing to git me,
Off my feet,
Oboy, the start of,
Another cheap ro-ho-mance!
Yep — looks like the start of
Another cheap ro-ho-
Ma-a-a-a-ance…
Gits ya thinkin’, is it
Me, or is it mah
Pa-a-a-a-hants?
Well cheap romance is my
Kind of thing,
Uh just in case you were
Wondering,
“Is it the start of,
Another cheap ro-wo-mance?”
[“Be My Hottentot Bondsman Tonight”] V., p252
Love’s a lash,
Kisses gall the tongue, harrow the heart;
Caresses tease
Cankered tissue apart.
Liebchen, come
Be my Hottenton bondsman tonight,
The sjambok’s kiss
Is unending delight.
Love, my little slave,
Is color-blind;
For white and black
Are only states of mind.
So at my feet
Nod and genuflect, whimper for me:
Though tears are dried
Their pain is yet to be.
“Pavlovia (Beguine)” Gravity’s Rainbow, p232
It was spring in Pavlovia-a-a,
I was lost, in a maze…
Lysol breezes perfumed the air,
I’d been searching for days.
I found you, in a cul-de-sac,
As bewildered as I–
We touched noses, and suddenly
My heart learned how to fly!
So together, we found our way,
Shared a pellet, or two…
Like an evening in some café,
Wanting nothing, but you…
Autumn’s come, to Pavlovia-a-a,
Once again, I’m alone–
Finding sorrow by millivolts,
Back to neurons and bone.
And I think of our moments then,
Never knowing your name–
Nothing’s left in Pavlovia,
But the maze, and the game….
[“The Austo-Hungarian Blues”] Against the Day, p915
No need for feel-ing so down,
Just spend a night-on-the-town,
The-Dan-ube won’t, look-so blue–
not if you do, like I do–
Just get on out-to-the ucca,
Take a stroll up–the a-ve-nue,
You’ll find that ci-ty beat puts-a
–Synco-pation in-your shoe,
Find-one-of-those
Austro-Hun-gar-i-an ladies,
So super-ficially deep,
Down where the gi-golos creep,
Too full of rhyth-m to sleep,
All-you-need’s-a
Good-time girl from the K and K,
Who can’t tell you if it’s night or day,
And slip away on a cruise, from
Those Austro-Hungarian blues!
[“Love Never Goes Away”] Gravity’s Rainbow, p294
Love never goes away,
Never completely dies,
Always some souvenir
Takes us by sad surprise.
You went away from me,
One rose was left behind–
Pressed in my Book of Hours,
That is the rose I find….
Though it’s another year,
Though it’s another me,
Under the rose is a drying tear,
Under my linden tree….
Love never goes away,
Not if it’s really true,
It can return, by night, by day,
Tender and green and new
As the leaves from a linden tree, love,
that I left with you.
[“Cutie in a GTO”] Inherent Vice, p78
Thought I musta been hallu-cinating,
Waiting at the light she called to me, “Let’s go!”
How am I supposed to refuse an 18-
Year-old cutie in a GTO?
We took off north, from the light at Topanga,
Tires smokin in a long hot scream,
Under the hood of my Ford Mustang, a
427 cammer runnin just like a dream–
[Bridge]
Grille to grille, by the time we hit
Leo Carrillo [Horn section fill],
And it still, wasn’t over by Point Mugu–
Just a Ford Mustang and a sweet GTee-O,
In motion by the ocean,
Doin what the motorheads do.
Shoulda filled-up when I got-off, the San Diego, it’s
Been pinned on empty for the last ten miles,
Next thing I know she’s wavin hasta lu-ego, flashin
One of those big California smiles–
Bummed out on the shoulder, couldn’t feel bluer,
Here comes that familiar Ram Air blast,
What’s that on the front seat, right next to her,
It’s a shiny red can full of high-test gas–
So we grooved, back on down, past
Leo Carrillo [Same horn fill],
Grille to grille all the way down to Malibu,
Just a Ford Mustang and that sweet GTee-O,
In motion by the ocean
Doin what the motorheads do….
[“P’s and Q’s”] V., p307
It is something less than heaven
To be quoted Thesis 1.7
Every time I make an advance;
If the world is all that the case is
That’s a pretty discouraging basis
On which to pursue
Any sort of romance.
I’ve got a proposition for you;
Logical, positive and brief.
And at least it could serve as a kind of comic relief:
[Refrain]
Let P equal me,
With my heart in command;
Let Q equal you
With Tractatus in hand;
And R could stand for a lifetime of love,
Filled with music to fondle and purr to.
We’ll define love as anything lovely you’d care to infer to.
On the right, put that bright,
Hypothetical case;
On the left, our uncleft,
Parenthetical chase.
And that horseshoe there in the middle
Could be lucky; we’ve nothing to lose,
If in these parentheses
We just mind our little P’s
And Q’s.
If P [Mafia sang in reply] thinks of me
As a girl hard to make,
Then Q wishes you
Would go jump in the lake.
For R is a meaningless concept,
Having nothing to do with pleasure:
I prefer the hard and tangible things I can measure.
Man, you chase in the face
Of impossible odds;
I’m a lass in the class
Of unbossable broads.
If you’ll promise no more sticky phrases,
Half a mo while I kick off my shoes.
There are birds, there are bees,
And to hell with all your P’s
And Q’s.
[“On Yashmeen”] Against the Day, p598
Her idea of banter
Likely isn’t Cantor,
Nor is she apt to murmur low
Axioms of Zermelo,
She’s been kissed by geniuses,
Amateur Frobeniuses,
One by one in swank array,
Bright as any Poincaré,
And…though she
May not care for Cauchy,
Any more than Riemann,
We’ll just have to dream on…
Let
it occur in spots in
Whittaker and Watson–
Unforeseen converging,
Miracles emerging,
Epsilonic dances,
Small but finite chances,
For love…
“Julia (Fox-Trot)” Gravity’s Rainbow, p248
Ju-lia,
Would you think me pe-cul-iar,
If I should fool ya,
In-to givin’ me–just-a-little-kiss?
Jool-yaaahh,
No one else could love you tru-lier,
How I’d worship and bejewel ya,
If you’d on-ly give-me just-a-little-kiss!
Ahh Jool-yaaahhhh–
My poor heart grows un-ru-lier,
No one oolier or droolier,
Could I be longing for–
What’s more–
Ju-lia,
I would should hallelujah,
To have my Jool-yaaahh,
In-my-arms forevermore.
[“Constables in Love”] Against the Day, p679
You know, it’s…
Only copper propa-
gaaaan-da, that
Policemen never woo, woo, woo!
–You
Know I’d be just as cud-dly as a
Paaaan-da,
If only-I-knew,
You wan-ted-to-cud-dle-me too! E-
-ven in Ken-ya, Tangan-yi-ka and U-
gaaaan-da,
It’s not that unheard of…
Coz it’s a
Proper crop o’propa-
gaaaanda, that
A flat-tie can’t fall in love!
“Just Like a William Powell” Vineland, p162
Oh it’s like layin’ bricks, without a trowel,
Like havin’ a luau, with no fish ‘n’ poi,
When you’re just like, a William Powell,
Lookin’ for some, Myrna Loy!
And just think of how Tarzan, would start to how-l,
If he only was hangin’ out, with Cheetah and Boy —
I feel like th’ alphabet, without a vowel,
Like Flatfoot Floogie, with only one Floy —
Guess I’ll just, throw in the towel,
Aw I’ll never find the, real McCoy,
Just another William Powell,
Lookin’ for that Myrna Loy….
“Too Soon to Know (Fox-Trot)” Gravity’s Rainbow, p198
It’s still too soon,
It’s not as if we’d kissed and kindled,
Or chased the moon
Through midnight’s hush, as dancing dwindled
Into quiet dawns,
Over secret lawns…
Too soon to know
If all that breathless conversation
A sigh ago
Was more than casual flirtation
Doomed to drift away
Into misty gray…
How can we tell,
What can we see?
Love works its spells in hiding,
Quite past our own deciding…
So who’s to say
If joyful love is just beginning,
Or if its day
Just turned to night, as Earth went spinning?
Darling, maybe so–
It’s TOO SOON TO KNOW.
[“A Deutschesüdwestafrikaner in Love”] V., p282
I know what you want,
Princess of coquettes:
Deviations, fantasies and secret amulets.
Only try to go
Further than you’ve gone
If you never want to live to see another dawn.
Seventeen is cruel,
Yet at forty-two,
Purgatory fires burn no livelier than you.
So, come away from him,
Take my hand instead,
Let the dead get to the task of burying their dead;
Through that hidden door again,
Bravo for ’04 again; I’m a
Deutschesüdwestafrikaner in love…
[“Mister Farenheit”] Mason & Dixon, p552
Say, Mister Farenheit,
She doesn’t treat me right,
Wish you could warm up that Lady of mine,–
Look at you, on the wall,
Don’t have a, care at all,–
Even tho’ our love has plung’d,
To minus nintey-nine,– now, Doctor
Celsius, and ev’ryone else, yes,
Say, you’ve plenty to spare,–
Don’t let us freeze, can’t you
Send some Degrees, from where-
-Ever you are, out there,–
Damme,
Mister Farenheit,–
Here comes another night,
I shall once again be shiv’ring through,
With no help from your Scale,
‘Tis all Ice and Hail, and
I’ll turn-into a Snow-man, too.
[“Dance it Away”] Gravity’s Rainbow, p558
And all the world’s busy, this twi-light!
Who knows what morning-streets, our shoes have known?
Who knows, how many friends, we’ve left, to cry alone?
We have a moment together,
We’ll hum this tune for a day…
Ev’ryone’s dancing, in twi-light,
Dancing the bad dream a-way….
[“Durango Dove”] Against the Day, p202
Out on the wind…
Durango dove,
Ride the sky,
Dare the storm….
We never once
Did speak of love,
Or I’d be free,
And a long time gone….
When the lamplight
Comes on in town,
Rings and rouge,
Satin gown…
Oh, but my
Lost…
Durango dove,
Do they believe it all,
The way I do?
Would they fall
Into your sky,
Even die,
Dove, for you….
[“A Girl in Cuxhaven”] Gravity’s Rainbow, p639
I dream that I have found us both again,
With spring so many strangers’ lives away,
And we, so free,
Out walking by the sea,
With someone else’s paper words to say….
They took us at the gates of green return,
Too lost by then to stop, and ask them why–
Do children meet again?
Does any trace remain,
Along the superhighways of July?
[“Teenage Romeo”] V., p387
Little teen-age goddess
Don’t tell me no,
Into the park tonight
We’re going to go,
Let me be
Your teen-age Romeo….
“Serge’s Song” The Crying of Lot 49, p120
What chance has a lonely surfer boy
For the love of a surfer chick,
With all these Humbert Humbert cats
Coming on so big and sick?
For me, my baby was a woman,
For him she’s just another nymphet;
Why did they run around, why did she put me down,
And get me so upset?
Well, as long as she’s gone away-yay,
I’ve had to find somebody new,
And the older generation
Has taught me what to do–
I had a date last night with an eight-year-old,
And she’s a swinger just like me,
So you can find us any night up on the football field,
In back of P.S. 33 (oh, yeah),
And it’s as groovy as it can be.
[“A Loser at the Game of Love”] Gravity’s Rainbow, p684
Just a fool-who-never-wins, at love,
Though-he-plays, most-ev’, ry night…
A loser-to-the-Ones, Above,
Who stack-the-cards, of wrong, and right….
Oh, the loser never bets-it-all, and-he never-plays, to win,
He knows if-once, you don’t-succeed, you can al-ways lose-again!
Just a loser at-the-game, of love…
Spending night after night a-lo-o-o-one!
[“Cape Girl”] Mason & Dixon, p80
Oh,
Cape Girrl,
In the Ocean Wind,
Fairer than the full Moon,
Secret as a Sin,–
You’re a,
Light Lass,
So the Lads all say,
Sitting on your Stoep, hop-
-Ing Love will pass today…
You keep your Slaves about,
As don’t we all,
Yet no one in love is brave,
And even a Slave may fall…
In love with,–
Cape Girl,
When South-Easters blow,
Thro’ my Dreams, I know,
To your Arms I’ll go,
Cape Girl, don’t say no.
[“My Singing Bird of Spitalfields”] Against the Day, p684
Oh, Sing-
-ing Bird,
Of Spital-fields–
How lonely i’-all-feels,
Wiv-out your mel-
o-dee! When shall my
Brick Lane bunt-ing
Chirp-again,
To my throbbing-brain,
Her dear refrain,
Soft-leee? Al-
though it’s spring
In Stepney, so-we’re-told,
Here in my
Heart-it’s-cold
As any-win-
try sea–until my
Singing Bird of
Spit-alfields,
Perched on her lit-tle heels,
Comes trip-ping back,
To meee!
–(My dar-ling),
[D.C.]
[“Es Posible“] Vineland, p343
Mention…[rattle of bongos] to me, [picking up slow tropical beat] “Es posible,”
And I won’t need a replay,
My evening, is yours….
Yes that’s all, it takes, Incre-íble,
Would it be so…ter-reeb-lay,
To dare hope for more?
¿Es posible?
Could you at last be, the one? Increíble,
Out of so many mil-lyun,
What fun,
If you [bongo rattle, as above] would say, “Es po-ho-seeb-lay,”
While that old Mar Carib’ lay
‘Neath the moonlight above, Es posible,
Increíble,
It’s love…[fill phrase such as B-C-E-C-B flat]
It’s love…[etc., board-fading]
[“Skyful of Hearts”] Inherent Vice, p337
There’s a skyful of hearts,
Broken in two,
Some flyin full fare,
Some non-revenue,
All us bit actors
Me him and you,
Playin our parts,
In a skyful of hearts…
Up there in first class,
Ten-dollar wine,
Playing canasta,
Doin so fine,
Suddenly, uh-oh,
Here’s ‘at No Smokin sign
That’s how it starts,
In a skyful of hearts…
[Bridge]
To the roar of the fanjet…
You went on your way…
I’ll sure miss you, and yet…
There ain’t much to say…
Now I’m flyin alone
In economy class,
Drinkin the cheap stuff,
Till I’m flat on my ass,
Watchin my torch song
Fall off the charts,
But that’s how it goes
In a skyful of hearts…
[“The Eyes of a New York Woman”] V., p145
The eyes of a New York woman [he started to sing]
Are the twilit side of the moon,
Nobody knows what goes on back there
Where it’s always late afternoon.
Under the lights of Broadway,
Far from the lights of home,
With a smile as sweet as a candy cane
And a heart all plated with chrome.
Do they ever see the wandering bums
And the boys with no place to go,
And the drifter who cried for an ugly girl
That he left in Buffalo?
Dead as the leaves in Union Square,
Dead as the graveyard sea,
The eyes of a New York woman
Are never going to cry for me.
Are never going to cry for me.
FTC Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for review. No money changed hands and all opinions presented here are my own.
