Path: utzoo!hoptoad!amdahl!ames!aurora!agate!ig!uwmcsd1!uwvax!astroatc!gtaylor
From: gtaylor@astroatc.UUCP (Good Aim and a large Hunting Boomerang)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: still more musique pour le . . . . .
Message-ID: <826@astroatc.UUCP>
Date: 9 Feb 88 16:17:29 GMT
References: <2727@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <1630@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <3a16fe27.b263@hi-csc.UUCP>
Reply-To: gtaylor@astroatc.UUCP (Good Aim and a large Hunting Boomerang)
Organization: It's in Flux, like all Else
Lines: 30

In article <3a16fe27.b263@hi-csc.UUCP> giebelhaus@hi-csc.UUCP (Timothy R. Giebelhaus) writes:
>
>Besides, if they can have classical music in the milk bar in Clockwork Orange,
>why not have some classical music here.  

There's a serious, formal reason for Anthony Burgess' choice of 
Beethoven in Clockwork Orange-just as the choice of Russian as
the generating point for juvenile slang. The same ideas show up
later in Burgess' "1985" as well. A Clockwork Orange addresses 
specific issues about morality and choice [is one's choice free if
conditioned] which are rooted in the philosophical milieu of the
post-enlightenment Romanticism of which LVB is a part. The additional
connections to LVB as the emotional appeal of choice for persons who've
entirely disconnected their desire from their human sensibilities [Nazis
weeping through Wagner] is important to the novel's central arguments.
I maintain that if Burgess puts Beethoven in a milk bar, he's done it
as a formal decision that is directly connected to the world of the
text. When you do it with Gibson, you're projecting your personal tastes
onto Gibson's construct and imagining yourself as a cybercowperson
rather than taking Gibson's text as a starting point. Why, for example,
would you not have chosen gagaku music for Gibson? There's clearly more
than a little Japanese stuff spread out through his work, and the music
of the traditional Japanese courts would seem a good choice for what
orientophilia one finds in Gibson. If you're going to locate LVB in
Gibson's world, you'll have to have *reasons*.
-- 
the reach of the arm.                   Gregory Taylor Astronautics
the sweep of the eye.                   5800 Cottage Grove Rd. Madison
the stones thrown at the darkness       WI 53704 608-221-9001,x232a
outside the fire's circle of light.     ...uwvax!astroatc!gtaylor