Abstract
The Pynchon Playlist is a catalog of 927 identified historical musicians and works of music in Thomas Pynchon's work to date. It allows for a bird's-eye view on the relative importance of different genres and time periods throughout Pynchon's career and is able to answer some questions that were hitherto mainly addressed in an intuitive manner: Which novels have the highest density of musical references? What musicians, works of music, genres, genders, performative settings are referred to most often? Are different groups of novels to be made out? If one were to draw two lines of influence for Pynchon's choice of musical material, it would be the technological and commercial developments on the one hand (in other words, a line that has much to do with a historically plausible depiction of the musical landscape) and Pynchon's own predilections and musical interests (or those of his and subsequent generations), which seem to have become less serious and less experimental as his career progressed.
Highlights
The result is a catalog of 927 references, about 190 of which have multiple entries
The database is provided as an Excel spreadsheet that can be downloaded as a supplementary file to this article
The entries in the catalog have not been weighed according to their relative importance for the narrative or the historical, philosophical, political, or musicological insights they offer: an entire passage discussing in depth the music of a particular composer may have the same weight as a pop song mentioned in passing
Summary
I put together every identifiable reference to non-fictional musicians and works of music in Pynchon’s eight novels, one short story collection, and his uncollected articles, essays, endorsements, and liner notes published to date. While this is true to a certain extent, my playlist reveals that, firstly, there is a good a number of tracks in Inherent Vice that are clearly not nostalgic and, secondly, that Pynchon always tends towards something like a musical mainstream. Such a bird’s eye view naturally has its limits, which is why it is designed to complement rather than replace close readings and historical contextualizations..
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