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I'm not even into the meat of the book and it's trying to overpower me with the assumption of things I should know about! Am I going to have to learn jazz to understand it?! I mean, sure, it's a hefty book at over 1000 pages but I still didn't expect to be nearly pinned just after the table of contents! How much should I know about this guy Thelonious Monk?! And why would Pynchon choose a quote by him that boldly proclaims, "There is no day! It's all night, baby!" What am I up against then?!
Thelonious Monk (whose middle name is Sphere (Thomas Pynchon's middle name is Ruggles. Why does everybody else seem to have a cool middle name while mine is basically just Dave or Sally? (I mean, you'd expect somebody named Thelonious Monk to have a pretty cool middle name. But why would Pynchon get Ruggles?! It's not like he's Australian))) is, according to the Internet, an American jazz pianist. I point out that this is information from the Internet because I would have probably just said, "He's some jazz guy." Then everybody who loves jazz would have thrown Internet tomatoes at me and I'd become the disgrace of Buchser Junior High School.
I should probably be more careful about my identity since I'm on the Internet and I've just insulted jazz by not being into it enough. But just calling my junior high school a "junior high school" actually centers me in a quite specific time and place since before that, it was a high school, and after that, it was a middle school. So now people can already pinpoint my age and location if they wanted to throw actual tomatoes at me. Although, it's quite possible I've moved since then! Ha ha! Just try to find me, jerkos!
No, no. Please don't! I apologize!
Anyway, I'm not going to write a book report on Thelonious Monk. Either you know who he is or you can go read Wikipedia. I should probably, at least, read Wikipedia. He might be important to the rest of this novel! And anyway, what good is reading a Pynchon novel if I don't learn more about the stuff he seems to know everything about? Who is this guy? Is he a computer? I bet he's actually a computer!
As for the quote, it's pretty profound, isn't it? I mean, it's always night! Always! Everywhere! And the only reason we can see anything is by producing light. Sometimes we produce light by just sitting still on the face of the Earth and waiting for it to rotate around so the sun gives us some of that precious light. But it's still night if you were to take away the sun! That's a pretty cool way of looking at reality. Sometimes you need somebody like a comedian or an American jazz pianist to come along and sweep your legs so that your entire world view changes from staring at the acting tough scared kid in front of you being screamed at by his lunatic coach to the rafters of the gym where the tournament is being held. Then after you catch your breath (literally in the analogy and figuratively in the reality), you would probably wind up saying something like, "Whoa! I never noticed that before!" And sometimes, you can't ever go back to thinking like you did before!
As for now knowing that everything is always night, you'll probably forget that one. It feels less like a startling revelation and more like when your nerdy friend who probably has Asperger's says, "You mean today," when you find yourself up past midnight playing Dungeons & Dragons and you casually mention what time you have to work tomorrow.
So I decided to read Monk's Wikipedia page and this description of Monk struck me as something maybe Pynchon felt (or feels?) a bit close to:
"Monk was highly regarded by his peers and by some critics, but his records remained poor sellers and his music was still regarded as too "difficult" for more mainstream acceptance."
I wonder if Monk's music also had an inordinate number of references to boners?
Every section of Monk's Wikipedia page seems to end in a confrontation with police. I can't imagine the kind of person who reads that and thinks the police were just doing their job. How are we living with people who still don't understand not just systemic bias and systemic racism but actual boots on the ground racism?! The cops weren't just content to hassle, arrest, and, at times, beat him. They also tried to end his career by taking his New York City Cabaret Card which allowed him to play public venues where alcohol was served. And who except drunk and buzzed people enjoy jazz?!
Oh crap! Here come those Internet tomatoes!
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