SOUNDTRACK: DAN MURPHY-“Drinion” (2013).
I never would have guessed that there would be a song called “Drinion.” But there it was, on Dan Murphy’s album, Undisclosed Location. Now, I don’t know anything about Dan Murphy. In fact, when I looked him up there also seems to be a country music singer named Dan Murphy (or maybe he is the same person?).
Anyhow, Undisclosed Location is mostly jazz piano. “Drinion” is instrumental (so there’s no clue for me about why it is called this–if it has any connection to The Pale King or what). There’s no levitating that I can hear.
I do hear a bit of the “All Things Considered” theme (the jazzy version, naturally), in part of it.
I like jazz piano a bit but I’m not knowledgeable about it at all. So, this was a fun find, and an enjoyable 6 minutes of jazz. Thanks Dan. Can you really be a country singer, too?
[READ: September 8, 2014] Pale Summer Week 9 (Notes & Asides and Bonus chapters)
As has been stated many times, The Pale King was unfinished. It was assembled by editor Michael Pietsch. Pietsch decided, based on the evidence given to him, what this book would look like. It’s an unimaginably daunting and thankless task, especially given how many ideas DFW was tinkering with. The Notes and Asides not only change the book, they change characters, emphasize nonexistent plot lines and basically make it seem like perhaps what we have here is but a small fraction of the overall work (rather than seemingly like a mostly completed book with a few pieces left out).
The final ten pages of the hardcover edition collects these notes and collates them in section by section fashion, with some overall notes about the book included at the end.
Since the notes are just notes, I’m not going to really go into them (otherwise I’ll just be copying the notes), but I would like to stress some that I think are interesting or revealing about what we might have gotten had he finished the book. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 