"More of a medley, I believe, encompassing Hawaiian and Philippino motifs, and concluding with a very tasteful adaptation of Monsieur Saint-Saëns's wonderful 'Bacchanale,' as recently performed at the Paris Opera."
* * * * * * * * * *
This reads like a clue on how to read Gravity's Rainbow so that a reader might understand what's happening in the fourth part, "The Counterforce." But you have to replace "Hawaiian and Philippino motifs" with "German and British and American motifs" and replace "concluding with a very tasteful adaptation of Monsieur Saint-Saëns's wonderful 'Bacchanale'" with some other work which I can't name because I'm still having a lot of trouble with "The Counterforce." It might be something less high brow artsy and could simply be "concluding with a disgustingly lowbrow and hallucinogenic adaptation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's 'Action Comics #1.'" I mean, a guy is shoved into a rocket and launched away from a world that seemed to be ending.
"tasteful adaptation of Monsieur Saint-Saëns's wonderful 'Bacchanale,'"
I just listened to this piece and now I'm picturing Pynchon listening to it and thinking, "I could see a woman practically stripping to this!" The opening movement and a few other movements within are evocative of "The Streets of Cairo," also known as the Snake Charmer's song, which became synonymous with belly dancing or the hoochie coochie.
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