Dusty's Answer, or, Pop Song for Ali Smith

Abstract

Ali Smith’s 2001 novel, Hotel World, includes near its end a striking passage of musical description. All of a sudden and is if by magic, the ‘ghost of Dusty Springfield’ appears singing Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s song, ‘The Look of Love’ (1967). It is as if the singer has been conjured from thin air. The passage is fleeting and singular, in ways not dissimilar to those of pop music itself. This chapter proposes Smith’s Springfield ekphrasis as an instance of what Lawrence Kramer calls a ‘constructive description’: a ‘persistent or memorable’ account of music that offers an answer in kind to those qualities of the music conjured in the writing. Description thus practised, both creatively and critically, is one instance of the relation of literature and music at its most resonant and mutually enriching.