Word: finding
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Vian's heroes live unperturbed in a world where broken windows heal themselves, where clouds smell of wild thyme or cinnamon sugar, and where a rectangular bedroom becomes spherical when "The Mood to Be Wooed" is played. If we find these anomalies disconcerting, it is because, as Jacques Bens points out in his afterward to the French edition, we are used to fairytales where the supernatural of flying carpets or seven-league boots is inserted in an otherwise normal world. In Vian, on the other hand, the symbolic "pianocktail," which allows one to get literally drunk on jazz, is placed...
...Chloe dies, Colin's apartment shrinks into a prison, his records wear out, and to pay for Chloe's treatment he's forced to find work in a munitions factory, where guns are grown with the heat from human bodies...
VIAN maintains a kind of baroque humor throughout, but puns and word games (unfortunately badly translated) shade into black humor which at the novel's end becomes a Kafkaesque surrealism that we find frightening rather than funny. Sartre, who was a real-life friend of Vian's, is amusingly satirized as Jean-Sol Partre, the cult idol who enters packed lecture halls on elephant back, crushing his waiting fans. But when Chick, Colin's friend, sacrifices everything, including his girl-friend Alise, in order to buy Partre's work, the joke turns grisly. Chloe dies from a water-lily growing...
When, however, this objective theoretical framework is sensibly conceived and sounds reasonable, the opinions of the rock writer can trigger two kinds of reactions in the reader. Those who agree beforehand with the judgment being defended find that their joy is immeasurably heightened; and those who disagreed at the outset are lured, interested and sometimes converted. Paul Williams is a master at formulating conceptual aids to justify his choices of favorites. Which makes him an immensely satisfying and stimulating writer even when he is at his most provocative...
Williams' ability to find objective grounds on which to make judgments about the value of rock music combined with the sensitivity he generally displays makes him particularly qualified to pronounce authoritatively on three of the greater controversies of the rock world. About the Satanic Majesties Controversy (was it the Stones most disastrous mistake or was it a beautiful product?) Williams writes compellingly to point out the album's genius and its fine balance...