Question 1 : 250 words
In “Parody, Heteroglossia, and Chronotope in Don DeLillo’s Great Jones Street,” critic Robert E. Kohn describes the concept of the “chronotope” by Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin:
Bakhtin’s [describes] “literary artistic chronotope,” in which “spatial and temporal indicators are fused into one carefully thought-out, concrete whole,” time “thickens, takes on flesh, becomes artistically visible,” and “space becomes charged and responsive to the movements of time, plot and history” (84).
Kohn then writes:
The sense of time in Great Jones Street is ambiguous or vague, sometimes reading “as if it has no duration” (Bakhtin 248). Bucky is “never sure of time while [Opel] was there,” and speaks of “the crisis inherent in time” and how “[e]ach day passed, detached from time” (55, 56). The word “ timeless” appears at least three times within ten pages (62, 67, 71). Bucky has had “the feeling that time is stretchable,” that “time did not seem to pass as much as build, slowly gathering weight,” and has sensed “the perilous context of time” (121, 126, 136). It is not clear what DeLillo meant when he told [an interviewer] LeClair that “Great Jones Street bends back on itself,” but this may explain the enigma surrounding the tapes of “The Mountain Tapes,” which appear to have been written after Bucky’s voicelessness, though he claims to have taped them “fourteen months earlier,” when Opel was still alive (147). His lack of surprise when Opel dies in the apartment is so unexpected that the reader may wonder whether he had already experienced her death. It is well known that Albert Einstein proved that space bends around anything that has mass. Perhaps Great Jones Street bends back upon itself in such a way that incidents from the future tangibly intersect the present. There is the kind of ontological uncertainty in the temporal progression of Great Jones Street that, for Brian McHale, is the hallmark of postmodernist fiction.
How do you see this “chronotope” played out in DeLillo’s novel? Why would DeLillo write a novel in which time and space collapse, and how does this play into the story itself?
Question 2 : 150 words
The critic Jesse Kavadlo notes in his essay “The Terms of the Contract: Rock and Roll and the Narrative of Self-Destruction in DonDeLillo, Neal Pollack, and Kurt Cobain,” that Great Jones Street wasn’t particularly well received:
New York Times book critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, DeLillo’s biggest supporter for previous efforts Americana and End Zone, called the book “sophomoric,” explaining that “a thousand gags do not a novel make” (36). But Lehmann-Haupt’s secondary objection is equally significant: “the world of rock simply doesn’t lend itself to verbal parody…. Who (or rather who over the age of 30) can tell the difference between [DeLillo’s] lyrics and the songs they are supposed to be satirizing?” (35). Decades later, Anthony DeCurtis, another DeLillo booster, echoed Lehmann-Haupt’s complaint: “When I read [a passage from Great Jones Street] to a friend of mine—a friend who is, like me, a rock fan and a reader—he said, ‘That’s exactly what a writer would think a rock star thinks like.’ He wasn’t being complimentary” (132).
Do you think this portrayal of a rock star is accurate or inaccurate? What did you think of DeLillo’s lyrics? Please be sure to quote from the text!
New York Underground in Film, Music and Literature 1955-85 
1. As I read through “Great Jones Street,” I got the sense that time itself was an almost oppressive concept within the text: “Time did not seem to pass as much as build, slowly gathering weight. This was the sole growth in the room,” Delillo writes at one point. Then, near the end, Bucky describes himself as “sinking into history.” I felt that perhaps this conception of time as an abstract yet personified thing reflected Bucky’s own mental state through the novel, time seems to strengthen in its intensity, as does his awareness of time, as he lives in isolation, but it also felt like a reflection of his perception of himself as an individual contrasted with his identity as a celebrity in the public eye. Like time in the text, Bucky’s identity in the public eye is distorted beyond recognition (I believe this also connects to the theme of speaking, voice, words, the mouth, etc, where there is such a focus on the importance of someone being able to literally speak for oneself, something Bucky grapples with). The complex chaos of Bucky’s life seems to manifest in the way that time is so often weighing into him and he is hyperaware of its oppressiveness as a force.
2. Although I disagree with the quote “the world of rock simply doesn’t lend itself to verbal parody,” because I do think that virtually any world can be explored to its fullest extent in text, I will admit that the accusation that Bucky is “what a writer would think a rock star thinks like” made me laugh. I do agree to an extent, Bucky felt very much like a parody of a rock star more than someone uniquely his own. His song lyrics were the most extreme example of this, they all sounded very much like lyrics that someone would throw together as a jumble of a bunch of different “rock and roll sounding” phrases without rhyme or reason (although the phrase “pee-pee-maw-maw” is given “reason,” the absurdity of the phrase itself still makes it feel like a joke). The worst offender to me felt like “VC Sweetheart,” since it seemed over the top violent and random “extreme” or “fake poetic” sounding phrases (like “Twelve years old … She knew what to do with a man” or “You are Christmas Tree of Easter”).
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1. In the end of the novel, DeLillo summaries Bucky’s time living on Great Jones Street. It is as if DeLillo goes back in time and watches Bucky live a brief alternative version of reality. In the last chapter, as Bucky is walking down a street, a little girl starts following him, “she remained alongside” (259). This girl represents Opel who follows him wherever he goes and shows up unexpectedly, “Opel was standing in a corner of the room, barefoot, removing her clothes” (52). When Opel arrives, Bucky is not surprised to see her because he knew she would eventually find him. In addition, in the last chapter, he sees a disabled woman who symbolizes the wheelchair bound boy who lives in the apartment beneath him. DeLillo summarizes aspects of Bucky’s life this way to provide the reader with a distanced perspective of Bucky’s reality. DeLillo collapses time and space to facilitate readers understanding of Bucky’s escape from his life where time is consistent. In Bucky’s life time is constant when he is a rock star and on tour. For Bucky, Great Jones Street is an example of one of the “various timeless lands” on Opel’s postcards (67). Great Jones Street highlights the existence of a rock star removed from his normal everyday life of fame and fortune.
2. Since I do not know what the life of a rock star truly entails behind the image tailored by the media, I cannot be certain Great Jones Street is an accurate representation of a rock star. However, based on other stories and movies about stardom I think Don DeLillo accurately portrays the life of a dissatisfied entertainer. Bucky hides away in an apartment on Great Jones street intent on “returning the idea of privacy to American life” (DeLillo, 17). The idea that a star can be fed up with a constant audience and reporters is not far-fetched. He becomes involved with drugs and women- from Opel to “his lady of the hour” Mazola June -which is what I would expect for a rock star (116). Bucky also writes a song about his lover Opel called VC Sweetheart in which he underscores his love for her “What do we have to live for/But each other” (98). Often musicians are inspired by lovers, convincing readers Bucky is just another rock star writing about a lover. In addition, although DeCurtis is known for his writings about music, neither he nor his friend are stars so his claim that Great Jones Street is what “a writer would think a rock star thinks like “is not warranted (DeCurtis,132). Neither lived the rock star life so they cannot be completely certain that a musician would not react to fame the way Bucky did.
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I have never heard of chronotope before, so it was interesting to go back and look for passages when time was jumbled, or I found it difficult to follow along with the story. Besides the actual mentioning of time, DeLillo mentions ‘Facsimiles’ and I didn’t even think that was a real word. Once I searched it up I learned it meant an exact copy of. Bucky messes with the reporter, “That wasn’t Gobke you talked to. That was the facsimile of Gobke… At this precise moment in duplicate time, Bucky Wunderlick is having his toenails clipped…(24). As I read this, I felt as if he was mentioning alternate dimensions and playing into chronotope. Bucky accuses an exact replica of his manager talking to Hanes, which incorporates the idea of a multiple dimensions and timelines. It warps the reality of the time that Bucky and Hanes are presently in. He also associates time with Opel which is very obvious, in the ways Bucky describes Opel’s leaving or vacations as timeless. The constant connection between opel and timelessness perhaps is used to highlight how her constant drug use affects her day to day life. Also Bucky seems to battle a mental illness and the idea of chronotope might correlate to the idea that Bucky does not have control over his life or the way in which his time is spent. Overall chronotype is played throughout the entire story within Bucky’s relationship with Opal and with his battle in mental illness and how there is a lack of awareness with time.
I feel like Kavaldo mentioning Lehmann and how he does not feel people under a certain age would understand the difference between the lyrics and the songs they’re satirizing is pretty accurate. I personally don’t follow rock and I would not have assumed DeLillo’s portrayal of a rock star was completely inaccurate. I feel there is a lot of pressure that comes with fame and that Bucky withdrawing himself from the spotlight is a common occurrence. I felt indifferent toward the lyrics they were a little weird but ‘rock’ or pretend rock is not my cup of tea. I particularly found the lyrics, “Twelve years old/ Tiger soul/ She knew what to do with a man” (98) interesting. The following song follows this theme or idea of youth where he sings “Untouched by aging” (101). I feel like the first song sexualizes a young girl, and it’s overlooked because its just a song and because of the time period. I also feel like the lyrics reminded me of Fenig and his unusual genre that he wants to start. Fenig mentions how the kids in his story are pure because of the lack of old people in the story. Overall my lack of knowledge in rock lead me not to really care about the lyrics and my background with rock made me feel the novel was an accurate representation of a rock star.
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1. I think the chronotope, or, at least what I can understand about it, and how it plays out is that it forces you to feel out Bucky a bit more. Bucky is a man who has lived so much in the amount of time he has been given, already it feels like he’s lived lifetimes over, and felt more with the time he’s been given than many others get to. In the novel, his time is demanded, as he is sort of a reclusive counterculture legend, and when asked to be interviewed, “You power is growing, Bucky. The more time you spend in isolation, the more demands are made on the various media to communicate some relevant words and pictures… the less you say, the more you are” as Bucky responds, “can’t it wait?”(128). I found this part funny, in that, this is a man who has all the time in the world, and yet he can’t spare any time for anything or anyone that furthers the infatuation the world has of him. And yet the more silent he stays, the more people are interested. So it’s not just the way time interacts with him, but the way he interacts with time, and what he deems worthy of his time.
2. I think this is a sort of funny depiction of a rockstar, and the answer for the last question can sort of bleed into this one. Where this is a man who has really felt the world already, and can afford himself to withdraw, and act strange. I don’t know if this written portrayal is supposed to taken too seriously. Again, when asked by a reporter about being interviewed, he says, “Make it all up. Ho home and write whatever you want… Make it up. Whatever you write will be true.”(21). I think this is a fair assessment of a reclusive rockstar, and perfectly exaggerated in their mystique. I think he does a good job at not wandering too far outside what could be plausible. So, overall, with the knowledge of knowing that he is satirizing rockstars, I think Bucky is a plausible character. His lyrics are another story, they are very ridiculous. I guess he is trying to satarize some old sock hop songs, like here, “listen what I say, bay-bee, this be doo-wop here, bop and groove, yow yow yow…”(130). Now, I don’t know much about this genre in general, but I guess it’s funny for the sake of it being ridiculous.
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Delillo’s novel integrates time and space all for the exposure of intimacy among the relationships within his novel. While a quick glance into Delillo’s novel suggests the absence of specific times replicates the confusion Bucky experiences within his own life, a closer examination reveals this portrayal of time as inconsistent. However, the author maintains a consistent level of intimacy through Bucky and Opel’s interactions. As Bucky describes his experience with Opel he inserts his declaration of time as he states:” We lived in be as old couples rock on porches, without the need or hurry”(89). By integrating Bucky’s time with Opel as slowed down unlike the rest of his life, Delillo magnifies his relationship with Opel as intimate beyond others within the novel. Through implementing “ without need or hurry”, the author suggests that it does not become essential for his moments with Opel to speed up. Rather, he desires to stop time when he is with her, these desires become visible as he reflects on them as “old couples”. In doing so, the author indicates time and space as a non-linear relationship, both constituting each other. The differentiation of time within the novel unveils the levels of intimacy each character experiences with Bucky. By addressing Bucky and Opel as an “old couple”, the author not only freezes time yet simultaneously accelerates it. He further reflects on the intimacy within their relationship as close through Bucky’s longing for time to slow down, and as instantaneously lost through Opel’s unexpected death. Through these fluctuating times, the author pinpoints the various experiences of life as holding different levels of speed. Where portions of Bucky’s life becomes sped up and others slow down, the author reveals the significant aspects of his life, and those he wishes to repress. Among these events, Opel’s death holds a different speed then Bucky’s interactions with Globke and other characters. Furthermore, space expands within quicker time frames, unlike more intimate interactions where space collapses among characters and time speed up.
2) While others may oppose Delillo as he attempts in describing a rock star through characters such as Bucky, a closer examination of his character reveals the accurate portrayal of a rockstar’s life. As Delillo implements Bucky and Globke’s conversation regarding his departure from the band Globke states: “It’s a business thing,” he said. “Diversification, expansion, maximizing the growth potential. Someday you’ll understand these things”(24). Bucky’s departure from the band becomes not only a means to gain more privacy yet a retrieval from the contract implemented money-hungry life. By suggesting that often aspects within Bucky’s life were just a “business thing”, the author exposes Bucky’s life as abnormal. Furthermore, his description of this life as purely one for-profit strips away the chance if Bucky leading a normal life. In doing so, the author reinforces Bucky’s own life as one centered around gaining profit, often reflecting the actual life a rockstar. A life challenging other individuals through music and competing for a mass profit. Suggesting that Bucky’s own life falls into the spectrum of rock and roll as he hits some key points of the franchise’s desires in making money and dissociating himself from others.
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Question 1: 250 Words
I felt as though the concept of “chronotype” within the novel plays such an important role within the novel due to the nature of Bucky’s lifestyle and the way in which the music industry works as a whole. Through personally working for the managers of many iconic rock legends, it is very difficult to portray a steady timeline when the artists are in no shape or form “steady”. The narration through Bucky’s eyes evoked feelings and thoughts of someone like Jim Morrison, or even almost reminiscent of John Lennon at certain times. Many artists aren’t just musically inclined, but they also have an overall sort of aura that oozes some sort of poetry that is almost philosophical. When Bucky is first introduced to his poet neighbor, he states, “Americans pursue loneliness in various ways. For me, Great Jones Street was a time of prayerful fatigue. I became a half-saint, practiced in visions, informed by a sense of bodily economy, but deficient in true pain” (DeLillo 19). I feel as though this quote is a great example of “chronotype”, because Bucky is reflecting upon his time at Great Jones Street and introducing it in a way that sets up the multi-faceted approach of a chronotype. Despite the lack of “time” within this specific quote, it calls attention to the way in which the many types of existences within the novel take place and the way in which Bucky is unsure of who exactly he was, not due to a lack of clarity but due to there being so many different types of existence for him during this time.
Question 2: 250 Words
Personally, this question is difficult to answer for me because I have read quite a number of biographies of musicians, as well as watched countless hours of tape and documentaries. The trouble with this question is that there is accurate or inaccurate portrayal of a rock star. I felt as though Lehmann-Haupt and Anthony DeCurtis are generalizing a group of people who really can’t be generalized at all. The thing that makes rock stars memorable is their ability to change a facet of the industry. An artist can’t become a rock star unless he/she is inevitably different from prior legends. With that being said, I feel as though this criticism is null because what book critic even understands the inner-workings of the music industry. I feel as though anyone who has actually worked in the industry can’t judge this novel in any way because there are always going to be artists who surprise. I really felt as though this criticism was uncalled for because an imaginary artist can literally do WHATEVER and it wouldn’t be questioned within the industry. As for the lyrics, this is the only thing I can critique. Throughout everything I barely noticed one single rhyme. Without some certain scheme or melody behind it, I can’t really see whether or not it is even possible to be a song. However, I did really like the content of some. Especially “Cold War Lover”. The opening verse is so great, “I worked her body with a touch / Learned from the hand of a blind old man / Living in a one-room duplex / In Nashville’s Chinatown” (DeLillo 107). I wish I could hear how it sounded within DeLillo’s mind, whether or not it had an actual melody or chord progression.
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1. While I do agree with Kohn that the sense of time in Great Jones Street is ambiguous and vague, I feel as though DeLillo’s writing which feature the collapse of time and space is much clearer than many readers might think. Indeed time feels confusing during the most of the novel all the way until the end. Indeed scenes such as Bucky and Opel’s sexual interactions in their bed which became “shelter within the room” and home to their “immer[sion]” in “love and conersation, favorting the latter, ready to settle for the pastels of sex”, without “hurry or need”, are perfect indication of this idea of time coming to a standstill or in other words, the lack of a sense of time at all. Similar scenes occur further along the novel as well. Chapter 15’s opening dealing with the mountain tapes is one such example in which DeLillo is bending time back on itself within his novel–as noted by Kohn–through his writing of Bucky’s dreamlike and reminiscent behavior when recounting his story with past music recordings and performances. With that said, towards the end of the novel, time becomes more concrete and clear. Specifically when Bucky boldly claims that he is “going back out on tour” and that “Time’s up”. When reading this I immediately got a sense that time isn’t as vague and ambiguous anymore since now it is coming to a potential halt. Moreover is Bucky’s “want to become a dream” due to tiring out of his body. This makes the concept of time and space very clear to me and essnetially shows me that DeLillo’s uses the collapse of said matters to showcase the life of Bucky–which now is coming to and end. I wasn’t surprised at all either about the immediate response Bucky receives of “You have to die first.” This blunt and seemingly apathetic response in dealing with the loss of life is written in the exact same regard as that of when Opel passed.
2. I do indeed agree with this portrayal of a rock star. From the very beginning, I get the sense that Bucky is being satirized and parodied as a rock star–most importantly due to the emphasis of fame. Chapter one immediately shows me that Bucky is obsessed with his popularity and ability to win over his crowd. He even refers to himself as “a hero of rock ‘n’ roll” a line that is clearly meant to be comical. Personally, I feel that his lyrics further underscore this satirization in that they fit the stereotypical sad and rebellious rock lyrics filled with youth. Yet, I think his songs take things further–hence the parody. For example, “VC Sweetheart” tackles some relatively disturbing, almost taboo subjects, specifically within the repeating chorus of “Twelve years old/Tiger soul/she knew what to do with…” echoed eerily as I read them out loud.
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1.When describing his studio in the mountains, Bucky says it is “absolutely soundproof and free of vibrations …. I just sat there, wedged in a block of silence, trying to avoid the feeling that time is stretchable” (121). Often in his descriptions of timelessness, silence is present. The lack of sound and any physical marker like vibrations signifies a state of being frozen. Without the other sense, time seems to be frozen in place. The solid nature of silence is in opposition to Bucky’s feeling that time is fluid. It is malleable and able to be pulled apart for examination. These descriptions of a collapsing space and time are key to establishing DeLillo’s main emphasis that reality is similarly malleable. The story allows for reality to take whatever form it wants, especially after Bucky’s departure from the band. An example of this is his interview in the beginning of the story. He tells the reporter “Everything you report will be true. I’ll personally vouch for every syllable” (24). The reality of Bucky Wunderlick is whatever someone makes it out to be. he claims that “Bucky Wunderlick is having his toenails clipped in the Waldorf Towers. You’ve been conducting an interview with his facsimile” (24). Both aspects of Bucky, his presence in the Waldorf Towers and his “facsimile” in the apartment, are real at the same time. Reality can be multiple things since time can be stretched. If the public thinks he is dead, he is dead. At the same time, he is taking a vacation in his mountain studio and transporting arms through Belgium. This distortion of reality is comprehensible for Bucky and he is indifferent to it.
2.I think there are some parts that are accurate and some that are inaccurate deliberately since DeLillo is satirizing the lyrics and lifestyle of a rock star. His reflections on reality and the lives of more “normal” Americans seem more symbolic than most rock songs I have listened to. At one point Bucky says “There’s the facsimile of a house …. My present state of mind doesn’t accommodate the existence of mountains” (24). His psyche is only able to imagine and hold so much at a given time. For him, mountains are nonexistent at this point, but he understands that they are still real because others can imagine them. Another example of atypical rock star behavior might be the lyrics to “Protestant Work Ethic Blues.” I am not too familiar with rock music, but lyrics like “Dropping down behind your desk/ Crumpled in a puddly heap …. Waiting for the strength to take that existential leap” seem out of place. The description of a mundane life is a reflection on someone else’s life, not a rock star’s.
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Question 1
In order to fully encompass the life of Bucky, Dellilo used not only the grotesque imagery of his environment but also the endless, confusing state of time and space to fully immerse the story with the character. As a drug fueled depressive and manic rock star living in post fame, his life had no real direction and in some ways he seems to be floating through time and space just waiting for life to finally take him to his end. “If you could stretch a given minute, what would you find between its unstuck components? Probably some kind of astral madness. A bleak comprehension of the final size of things.” If time could be dissected, Bucky would never see a point to it because time is nothing more than a meaningless loop that leaves him trapped in a reality he can’t escape. Chronotope works in that same manner where there is no real direction, but rather time folds in itself collapsing different moments in time together, sometimes through flashback memories or symbols that Bucky sees in his life that trigger memories to come to him in the future. Just like seasons and chapters, characters come in and out of his life like his girlfriend Opel when she died or the band he originally left for a normal life. Some moments with new characters triggering memories with old ones bring together time and space in a chaotic way. He seems to have all the time in the world, but he chooses to stay in that grimy, cold apartment, meaning there is no real sense of time and space because when in that confined space in time, everything stays the same. “Why are free spirits always so fucking dumb?” From what I can take from that is that you are never truly free, and even though he is technically free to do what he wishes, he prefers to stay stuck in that apartment because the whole concept of being free is just a structured concept that hides the fact that societal demands and the insanity of the world keep one trapped in a bubble of time they can’t leave.
Question 2
Dellilo’s portrayal of a rockstar seems to be inaccurate because the life of a rock star is seen as something washed up and completely ballistic with demands, however does not seem to go further than that. The life of the rock star post fame is a struggle as he tries to commit to a normal life which he considers to be “a dead idea” (Delillo, 3) However, his whole take on the world and how he views his own circumstances is very one sided and their is not much more dimension than that. Fame is just a force that seems to suck the life and happiness out of the burned out singer just as he says, “perhaps the only natural law attaching to true fame is that the famous man is compelled, eventually, to commit suicide.”(Dellilo, 1) What Delillo does to highlight this is by creating an unrealistic, almost fantastical stereotypical character from a movie screen than the actual life of an artist who uses more than drugs to cope with his life. According to Delillo, it seems as though a rock star must be a representation of a depressed man fueling his day to day life with drugs just to deal with his reality. This can be seen through his lyrics as he says, “we said a prayer, and took a hit…she took a gun, a thirty one put her tongue to the blue steel tip” (Delillo, 108 -110) all giving off messages of abandonment, loneliness as he needs to be pumped up on drugs just to be in a church. That’s how much he disrespects the religion and has no faith that there can be a higher being watching over him because his life has reached its peak of misery, and has found no comfort except for the hit itself. Since there is nothing left to live for, he promotes the idea of suicide and describes the death of a lover he once had falling under that same misery. Not all rock stars end up like this and Delillo is wrong in broadening his ideas to portray an image of what he considers to be a typical rock star.
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1. Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of the “literary artistic chronotrope” can be seen in Don Delillo’s Great Jones Street in the narrative descriptions and in the cyclical nature of the novel itself. The “chronotrope” in this work is most obvious in the descriptions in which time seems to become tangible. For example, when Opel dies, a clock is described as “on its back in the bottom of the closet, helpless as an insect, legs in the air, winding key partly dislodged” (91). These descriptions add a materiality to time in the novel, giving the reader the feeling that time isn’t an ethereal, mystical force, but is just as physical as the rest of our world. Opel also seems to also play an important role as a chronotrope. Early in the novel, Bucky says that he “was never sure of time while [Opel] was there” (55). Opel acts as a chronotrope in that she allows Bucky to escape time. These chronotropes contribute to the sense of “ontological uncertainty” of the novel. All throughout the work, there are subtle indicators that the story is repeating. For example, Hanes’ comment that “I’m nonverbal just like you” (17) seems to refer to Bucky’s wordlessness at the end of the novel. Furthermore, when Bucky meets his upstairs neighbor for the first time, he comments that “[He’s] been waiting for [Bucky]” (18). Bucky himself seems to have experienced the story before, often offering omniscient insights, like when he “knew [he’d] never be able to reproduce the complex emotional content of those tapes” (164). Delillo’s chronotropes offer a cyclical view of time, challenging the reader to consider time in its malleable, physical forms. In this way, the standard representations of time as linear, continuous, and static are dismissed; instead, the reader is left stuck in the same cycle as Bucky.
2. I don’t believe that this portrayal of a rockstar was particularly accurate, but I’m not sure that it’s meant to be. Bucky’s stardom is staggering. His fans seem to be willing to do anything for him, like when they offer him free hash (16). “It doesn’t matter what [he] does” (198); as long as Bucky is willing to perform, then his fans will support him All of these things don’t seem to be a “realistic” rockstar, but rather a caricature of one. It seems like Delillo is going for a stereotypical rockstar, or what people would imagine being a rockstar is like rather than trying to accurately portray the life of one.
I found the “Mountain Tapes” lyrics to be quite interesting, particularly number 16 and 18. I love the sound and rhyme of number 16, especially the “Eat the car for Eat-A-Car / Send the bones to Kent” (203) ending. Number 18 has really interesting reflections on language, such as “undreamed grammars float in my spittle” (205). These lyrics sound like they are trying a lot less harder to do something, and instead just have fun in their own language-ness.
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The “Chronotope” in DeLillo’s novel “Great Jones Street” effectively reorders the traditional storytelling narrative to make a statement on fame. According to Bucky, fame cannot exist without excess. The novel even opens with a dialogue on how extravagance and extremism is the musician’s destined path, and by opening this way DeLillo already deconstructs the timeline of a rockstar. From there, we see Bucky engage in excess, including drugs, which eventually leads to destruction. The excerpt “the package contains a raw sampling of what was described to me as the ultimate drug…really massive. A colossal downer,” (57) is relevant because many rock icons of the time had bouts with drugs seen as exciting or exotic, and this often lead to their downfall or serious career injury. In the novel, this drug is exaggerated as a severe toxin that destroys language centers of the brain, stripping singers of their most valued ability: their voice. The referencing of downfall earlier in the book serves to not only foreshadow, but deconstruct the idea of the traditional storytelling tenets, such as the sequence of events.
The character of Bucky’s girlfriend Opel similarly examines chronological order in storytelling. “All she desired was the brute electricity of that sound. To forget everything. To be that sound… She wanted to exist as music does, nowhere, beyond the maps of language,” (37). Opel’s presence is constantly called into question, as Bucky is never sure when she is truly around. This creates a sense of near-paranoia in readers, which is a direct result of the byproducts of warping a traditional narrative.
DeLillo reorders space and time most evidently during Bucky’s time in the mountains, and this chronotope plays into the novel’s theme of altered reality and stretched time. “I just sat there…trying to avoid the feeling that time is stretchable. If you could stretch a given minute, what would you find between its unstuck components?” (121). Through this chronotope, the mountain house becomes a purgatory of sorts, where time ceases to exist and Bucky waits out his final days to some kind of epiphany, or self-actualization.
I believe the portrayal of rock star Bucky Wunderlick in “Great Jones Street” to be accurate. DeLillo’s lyrics have range, from the straightforward “Protestant Work Ethic Blues” to the weird “Pee-Pee-Maw-Maw.” Most notable to me was “Cold War Lover,” which is a classical story of young, carefree love, but with an unexpected ending. The song concludes with implied suicide, “She took a gun, a thirty-one, Put her tongue to the bluesteel tip…cry for my love all the night,” (110). This is not unlike the suicide that Bucky expresses earlier in the novel.
The idea of suicide as the final excess of a rock star is morbid yet rings true in some true cases of deceased musicians. It reminds me of the David Bowie song “Rock and Roll Suicide” which appears on an album chronicling ficticious superstar Ziggy Stardust’s rise and fall, and it echoes similar ideas in the book “Great Jones Street.” The song agrees with the common doom of rock stars, that the ultimate is death, yet the song offers hope in shared experience. DeLillo’s novel ends with an element of hope, too, as Bucky relearns the English language after his bout with drug use: “Mouth was the first word to reach me…more words followed and when I spoke them aloud…I was able to comprehend what had passed between my tongue and inner ear. Soon all was normal,” (264). Choosing to end on this image invokes a brighter future for rock stars and their craft.
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Question 1- I believe that Great Jones Street uses this “chronotope” to adequately express how time progressed in the eyes of Bucky, the rock star. It is an appeal to human consciousness and its complexities, as it surveys Bucky’s life. It is commonly held that in our adolescent years we are under the guise of “invincibility;” as if it youth lasts forever. This is the exact effect DeLillo replicates in his novel. He does this to better describe the disposition caused by a longing for the past. It is a subtle recurring theme throughout the work, as they also struggle with social pressures caused by the rock star lifestyle. In the novel, a crucial question is posed by the narrator: “If you could stretch a given minute, what would you find between its unstuck components? Probably some kind of astral madness. A bleak comprehension of the final size of things” (121). Here is a question that seems to appeal to the nature of time itself, referring to the philosophical components of the text that seem to also question mortality. The character is aware of their desire to prolong the freedom of early adulthood, yet acknowledges that it is all in vain– considering that human consciousness is limited and will die with the individual. The questioning of existence plays into the reckless and stereotypical portrayal of rock stars because they are known for neglecting consequences. Instead of being passive in fear that they will be heavily criticized or that all of their efforts are wasted, they live life without regard for mortality.
Question 2- It is more than likely that DeLillo’s portrayal of the rock star lifestyle is accurate. Looking at his biographical information, it is clear that he was involved and closely associated with entertainment of the time. Growing up in the Bronx, the author learned a lot about underground culture and developed an interest in the arts. He was respected and acknowledged by many, meaning that he lived a life of a literary “rock star” in the city, and knew a fair amount about the musical movements/performers. Of course at times it is overly-exaggerated and seems to be a parody, but for the most part it is accurate. As for lyrics, I admired “VC Sweetheart” because of its edgy properties and comedic lines. Its sound or scheme is left up to interpretation, so I looked at it as if it was poetry. The first few lines are: “Born in hearse. Left foot first. Nursed on a hand-me-down nipple” (97). The irony behind being born in a hearse, and placing one’s left foot first rather than their right (considered a sign of bad luck), is amusing and assumes a harsh character.
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1. This is the fort time I’ve heard the term “chronotope” and how it relates to time. Whilst I did note that time in Great Jones Street seems vague, I did not take into consideration that, “incidents from the future tangibly intersect the resent,” as taking an almost scientific approach to DeLillo’s writing did not occur to me. If I were to include this “chronotope” to the novel, a phrase that would allow fro time and space to collapse would be: “If you could stretch a given minute, what would you find between its unstuck components? Probably some kind of astral madness. A bleak comprehension of the final size of things.” It almost makes the reader feel as if ducky is a man that has already lived in the past, too wise to be from the present and not have experienced things. His deep thought about the time and all that may happen in-between seems to be as important, if not more, than the “components” themselves. It is evident that he views every second of the day as valuable, and thus, his time and the way he carries himself is that of great importance and value. His deep understanding of time further proves that his relationship with Opel as worthy and of greater intimacy as he is willing to spend it with her. The quote describing his time with her, “We lived in be as old couples . . . without the need to hurry,” is very contradicting to the importance that he usually gives to his time and availability with others.
2. I believe DeLillo’s portrayal of a rock star to be accurate because it portrays Bucky as a character that holds the power over his own artistic agency. His need to disappear from the lifestyle because he is not able to achieve his goals nor succeed in having an audience that truly understood his music — something that is still present in today’s time. Bucky’s priority was not on how much money the band earned, his freedom and artistic integrity always seems to be above it all — which is what it means to be a true rock star that is passionate about their work. The lyric, “waiting for the strength to take that existential leap,” can perhaps be relevant to his need to escape from the capitalism that his music has become. When the friend stated that the critique is, “exactly what a writer would think a rock star thinks like,” they further proved that there is no way a non-rockstar would have the ability to determine what makes a true rock star, which Bucky indeed was.
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1. In “Great Jones Street” this concept of the “chronotype” contributes to our understanding of Bucky’s lifestyle. From the opening chapter we learn that he has decided to leave the band and move into isolation. Time is vague in this novel because it doesn’t seem to really affect Bucky in the same way as it affects the other characters. We get hints of how much time has passed based on what other characters tell him, and what is interesting is that the more time he spends in isolation, the greater his power becomes. We see this as an ABC News reporter begs him to come on the air saying, “People want words and pictures…your power grows. The less you say, the more you are” (127). Bucky can never escape the outside pressures of his past rockstar lifestyle, but it is on Great Jones Street, where he has more space and freedom with his time. When Opel talks about why she travels, she mentions “timeless lands”, and explains that she spends so much time in these lands “because there’s no time…because you stop evolving” (89). While she ventures to countries far away, she acknowledges that “Great Jones, Bond Street…are deserts too, just as beautiful and scary”(89). This idea of a “timeless land” might be the key to understanding how time functions in this novel. We aren’t really supposed to approach this story by interpreting things in chronological order, but rather challenge the order in which the information is received by questioning when certain events actually happened such as Opel’s death, or the recordings of “The Mountain Tapes”.
2. I think the way Bucky is portrayed mirrors this idea of “the egocentric rock star” who follows his instincts more than orders. When we read excerpts from interviews Bucky does, it seems like DeLillo parodies the way in which rock stars typically act in interviews. When Bucky says things like “Screaming’s essential to our sound…we process nature” and “What I’d really like to do is injure people with my sound. Maybe actually kill some of them” it almost feels like a joke, and that DeLillo is exaggerating this character far beyond reality (104). I don’t really know whether or not to take the lyrics seriously. There have been musicians like Dylan who have created abstract lyrics that are vague or difficult to interpret, and I feel like this same idea is being applied to Bucky’s lyrics. When finally looking at the lyrics of “Pee-Pee-Maw-Maw” with the prior knowledge that these words are on t-shirts, coke cans, and bumper stickers, it’s difficult to take the song seriously. It’s almost as if DeLillo is commenting on the fans of rock stars who will worship anything they create because of who the rock star is, without focusing so much on the actual content of the art.
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Considering Bakhtin’s discourse on chronotopes and DeLillo’s novel, one can see that fluctuation and flexibility in temporality is reflective of the genre. Typical narratives—the hero’s journey, comedy, tragedy, etc—follow linear, progressive plot lines whereas DeLillo’s parody defects. Had DeLillo sought to write a tragic tale about life after stardom, instances of chronotopes within the narrative would not succeed because consistent linearity is essential to that genre. Bucky’s narration follows unclear timelines which is shown through his use of vague connecting phrasing like “later,” “then,” and “again” to delineate time as well as environmental indicators like “it was dark” and “snowing again” (5). Notions of temporality demand an exploration of space as much as time considering the two forces work in tandem. Bucky initially lived his rockstar life in constant motion—going on tour, moving from place to place, studio to studio. At this point in his life, on Great Jones Street, he reaches a spacial stagnancy that is polar to his past. Even with a consistent space, time is obstructed and messy. When I reflect on my time spent living in New York City, thinking of it as a consistent space seems foolish. Between the infinite transient spaces on the subways, taxis, boats, and elevators, to the levels upon levels of buildings—stacking people on top of one another—consistent space in New York is an enigma in itself. In this sense, a folding of not only time but space seems to occur. People folding over each other in traffic, squeezing past each other on the sidewalk after 5pm, and jumping on the floors above downstairs neighbors.
When it comes to portraying a rock star, there isn’t necessarily a single-model and many of the qualities attributed to or associated with the stereotypical role are performative and exaggerated. The novel’s style lends itself well to depicting the rock star paradigm because it is a role so easily parodied. The tricky aspect at play is that the stereotype doesn’t quite match the reality. While I understand Kavadlo’s criticism of DeLillo’s rock n roll portrayal, readers must take the novel as it is—a parody—and not expect significantly accurate depictions of a rockstar. Bucky’s narration closing the first page of the novel scoffs at this archetype with, “Perhaps the only natural law attaching to true fame is that the famous man is compelled, eventually, to commit suicide. (Is it clear I was a hero of rock ‘n’ roll?)” (1). The mention of suicide is particularly striking and alludes to figures like Kurt Cobain, Nick Drake, and Brad Delp. Its casual mention in passing is also categorical of a careless rockstar. Ultimately, I don’t think it matters if the portrayal is considered accurate or not; DeLillo sought to parody and play with a malleable archetype and for that, he succeeded.
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1.
To me, Bakhtin’s definition of “chronotope” seems quite different from the literary features of “Great Jones Street” Kohn details in this particular excerpt. The specific type of achronology Kohn describes doesn’t quite seem to fall in line with the sort of synesthetic melding of space and time Bakhtin posits is a key feature of “chronotope.” I’d also argue that when Opel and Bucky use “timeless” to describe a geographical location (as they do in all three examples Kohn points), it comes more with connotations of exoticization and othering than it does depict the inseparability of time and space. That said, I saw many specific sentences that feel more chronotopic in the Bakhtinian sense. Some examples: “If you could stretch a given minute, what would you find between its unstuck components?” (121) and “The unwound clock was on its back at the bottom of the closet, helpless as an insect, legs in the air, winding key partly dislodged” (91). While the first imparts tangibility to temporality, the latter gives visual form to the feeling that the novel Great Jones Street “has no duration.”
The novel’s title “Great Jones Street” is in itself a chronotope; it assigns the name of a spatial entity to a narrative – and narratives arguably usually unfold in the temporal dimension. Reading DeLillo’s words – “Great Jones Street bends back on itself” – makes clear how trippy this seemingly innocuous title can be. Another way “Great Jones Street bends back on itself” is that it ends with Bucky regaining control of his language center, which feels a bit like a child learning to speak – this incident from his present thus, in a way, tangibly intersects events from his past.
2.
I really didn’t love the pseudo-paratextual “Superslick Mind Contracting Media Kit,” especially the lyrics within. We spend the story being narrated to by Bucky – DeLillo’s poetic, expressive prose therefore feels to us like Bucky’s words, which make the simplistic lyrics DeLillo presents as Bucky’s rather incongruous. Perhaps that’s the desired effect, to bring out how inauthentic Bucky is/needs to be in the world of rock music. Nonetheless, these felt too much like a caricature, a condescending mockery – kind of reminded me of the most recent “A Star is Born’s” representation of pop music. I found all the lyrics not great, but “Oh funky city / Funky city oh” takes the cake for me. I did like the nonsensicality of “Pee-Pee-Maw-Maw” however – it seemed to come from a person who, despite having a way with words, finds himself grappling with the poststructuralist idea of the emptiness that resides where the transcendental signified should, frustrated at words’ inability to lead to anything besides more words. It’s also possibly a humorous (but still condescending) take on the stickiness of fame and acclaim – coming from a not-famous person, it’s unlikely “Pee-Pee-Maw-Maw” would be seen as a “landmark work.”
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1. The concept of time is distorted, as the past and present are combined to contextualize Bucky’s post-fame life. There is no linear progression or even measurement of time in this story, instead personal spaces becomes a measurement to Bucky’s life. I believe Bucky’s rockstar narrative symbolize the end of a millennium, and DeLillo uses time and space to scrutinize the death of the 60’s counter culture. Therefore, this “ontological uncertainty in temporal progression” reflects upon the liminal abyss of fame (Kohn 84). In turn, he uses concepts that take up space on Great Jones Street, such as culture, environment, and public identity, to measure Bucky’s degrading life. Even though Great Jones Street is empty, and yet filled with insanity, Bucky finds stability with Opel, whose existence is inevitably questioned. During a simplistic moment, the two lovers are engulfed in the tub and their apartment’s ambiance. Opel starts to daydream about escaping, both their environment and mind, by saying, “people who travel a great deal lose their souls at some point. All these lost souls are up there in the ozone. They get emoted from jet craft along with the all-known noxious chemicals. There’s a soul belt up there. People who travel talk about nothing but travel. Before, during and after” (DeLillo 54). I believe that Opel is talking about the people, such as Bucky, whose ‘souls’ are now ephemeral, after the counter culture is over. Her thoughts have a linear narrative, but lack a consistent understanding of reality; this chronotope within her mind allows for the reader to understand the symbolic nature of a public identity being disintegrated, through a person losing the grasp of their space, which she compares to the security of the atmosphere. I believe that DeLillo uses a metaphysical space as a symbolic transportation mechanism to understand Bucky’s, and a culture’s, transition into extinction. Therefore, I believe that the manipulation of time and space within this story, aids to the overall message of a culture’s death and personal self destruction.
2. I felt that DeLillo made Bucky a character, and therefore he embodied dramatized aspects within his behavior. As a rockstar, he is faced with the hardships of post-fame, such as money and image, therefore giving a realistic framework to this lifestyle. Furthermore, his lyrics are interpretative, and I believe allowed me to humanize Bucky, since the lyrics are vulnerable. For the song ‘VC Sweetheart,’ the lyrics compare the space of highlands to that of his expansive love for a girl. He writes that there was a “twelve year old/ tiger soul/ she know how to give what was least,” and he states she made him “dreamed of the love of my life” (DeLillo 97). I can see how madly in love his is. And, I believe that when empathizing with him, the audience feels for his personal struggle with his identity and love, more than his struggles with a post-fame lifestyle. Therefore, I would say that DeLillo doesn’t portray a persona of Bucky, but choses to humanize the rockstar, therefore making it more accurate.
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1.Indeed I think temporality stands at the heart of this book. I will make two points concerning the sense of a-temporality in this novel: thematically speaking, I think the sense of timelessness poses a great anxiety to the narrator. In terms of the structure of the novel, I think that the narrator breaks the domination of the lineal narration in a more traditional sense, which creates a type of language unique to rock and roll in my eyes and thus contradicts with the negative review of Jesse Kavadlo in the prompt of the second question.
I regard temporality, or, in its negative form, atemporality, poses a great anxiety to Bucky, and thus becomes not only an obsessive concern of the protagonist, but also a force that pushing the narrative—though not exactly “forward.” One textual evidence to be added to Robert E. Kohn’s analysis is that the figure of Opel is literally connected with the idea of time, or to be more specific, Bucky’s sensation of loss of the time (55). On the one hand, the girl herself emerges from nowhere in the novel and disappears in the same way. This abrupt rupture of the narration leads me to question whether Bucky really meets with Opel, or he is simply seeing an epiphany from her coat, or the narration just lapses into a vaguely relevant memory of the two in spite of the fact that the two are talking about something follows the logic flow of the precedent chapters. On the other hand, the connection between the girl and the time appears repeatedly throughout the novel, and this locomotive invites us to see the time, or the timelessness as an object of pursuit of Bucky. Yet how can an individual pursue, with of course an action taking place in a 3d dimension, a timelessness, without appearing to be like a desperate snake devouring its own tail? This is a sense of fear at the same time claustrophobic and agoraphobic created by the chronotope.
Moreover, I think that the chronotope element can somehow expand Kohn’s association of it with Einstein’s theory with the artistic form of novel in the same period. This is to say, the chronotope in this novel specifically develops itself over than a simple practice of scientific idea and contributes to shape a new narrative form, a rock and roll narrative, perhaps. We can see the pastiches in the novel, and we can see other hybrid elements such as western novel, drug novel, sci-fi in the same text. It can be said as postmodernist, yet I think the noises created by the written text in an absolute silent, this genre can be said somehow as a rock and roll writing.
2. to be honest I know literally nothing about this music, zero zero zero. It is just not in my culture and in our culture life, and to know something about it is one of my goals of taking this class as well as read this book. As a result, perhaps I cannot assess the songs included in this novel or the narrative as a whole of being authentic or not. However, setting out from nothing, I have noticed something that is really different from my vague perception of this music genre (yes I still have some basic impressions!), or even subtler than Bucky himself describes it at the beginning of the story, which is about hysteria, violence and drugs. The first thing I have notice that the lyrics are often composed of very short lines, yet it is full of colors, images, and a violent invitation and at the same time rejection of the audience’s understanding and sympathy. “Diamond Stylus,” for example, makes me think of the most famous poem of John Donne (111-13), with its images (the night), sounds, touches (knives, pressions on the skin, etc.), synesthetic deceits and a strong narrator, the I. Yet what is more fascinating to me is the fact that rock music is so leftist (e.g. “protestant work ethic blues” and all the discourse of Bucky against capitalism and modern hegemony)!The music is of a strong social and political concern as well as mobility. It is not at all some whining of dissatisfied drunken people in bar or on stage as it appears today.
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1) “If you could stretch a given minute, what would you find between its unstuck components? Probably some kind of astral madness. A bleak comprehension of the final size of things.” Looking at this quote from Great Jones Street, it is evident that DeLillo personifies time to be a “character” by itself. Describing the “components” of time to be “madness” parallels the psychological madness that Bucky experiences. This parallelism implies that time is as much a significant factor in the novel as Bucky. By having ambiguous moments relating time with both Bucky and Opel in the novel, DeLillo both connects the characters with the abstract concept of time but also distances them from each other for the readers to obtain varying frames of references. In addition to personification of time, which emphasizes its significance in Bucky’s life, the utilization of “chronotype” in the novel mimics the behavior of those on drugs and how their sense of reality is altered because of it. Kohn’s comments on the intersection of the future with the present in the novel, a concept he identifies as bending space, heightens the vagueness of the setting and therefore the characters. As a reader, it also sometimes tests the reliability of the protagonist, which adds to the theme of chaos that is evident in both literary aspects of the book (how it is written) and also in the lives of the characters.
2) I don’t think I entirely agree with the statement about text not being able to encapsulate “the world of rock.” I think that words are a powerful tool that are able to generate a world that can be visualized to the most minute details. I think that words carry more power than visuals because they are more open to interpretation and therefore, more possibilities. This, in turn, adds to the fact that Bucky is nothing but a parody of a rock star. To me, the characters felt like caricatures and comedic elements instead of them meant to be taken seriously. “Any curly-haired boy can write windswept ballads. You have to crush people’s heads. That’s the only way to make those fuckers listen.” Although the diction of this quote comes off intense, I thought it carried characteristics of a parody as it stereotypes rockstars or “the world of rock” as nothing but violent and aggressive.
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I think time in Great Jones Street, rather than Bucky or the apartment, wraps itself around Opel. She resides in ‘timeless lands’ and is Bucky’s refuge. Before she returns, “Opel’s belongings were everywhere, objects of an earlier life spent in real places, her past on lonely soil. . . possessions resonant with time, a sense of years collected” (38). She herself resisting the cliché and emotional baggage of a roadie that comes with time. Bucky sees her more than physical companionship: he’s in love with her. Her death does not surprise him, because he predicts that his return would hinge upon it. He calls his return “a passage from suicide to murder,” where he must ‘kill his darlings’ so to speak and forsake attachment. In that sense, he must escape the vortex that he was spiraling in and reinvent himself without her. She was his primary comfort and his reason with not moving forward, because she could not come with him, she belonged to the past, so at a certain point, she stopped moving with the present and died quietly and instantly. When the tapes are destroyed and he loses the ability of speech, he must go through a second adolescence and relearn how to talk. The suggestion then is that he can find his artistic voice and grow without Opel. In a similar vein, the destruction of the tapes gives him the need to make something new, which did not exist before, freeing him from the trappings of contentment.
The hook of the song ‘VC Sweetheart’ comes off a bit on the nose on the feedback loop between public dissatisfaction and musical parody. The hook, variations of “Tiger Soul/ twelve years old/she knew what to do with a man” is gross, and while mocking U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, also satirizes popular culture’s infantilization and mythologization that defined the 60’s and 70’s (98). While this is a funny lyric in that sense, Bucky is too self-aware to write something that blasé, and it comes off false, more likely to be a Ted Nugent lyric. The satirization itself seems directed at the constant reiteration of the commercialization of rock, so the figure of Bucky carries the satirization by being a laconic has-been and it does not come off realistic. It almost sounds like the narrator has no appreciation of rock-and-roll and sees it as some commercial cancer rather than honoring its artistic value or its inherent poetry.
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1. DeLillo seems to use the physicality of Bucky’s surroundings and the people he interacts with combined with notions of time, or lack thereof, to explore the triviality of the world and especially the protagonist’s fame. In chapter 10, someone questions history asking, “What of latent history? We all think we know what happened. But did it really happen?” (74). I think this really speaks to Delillo’s take on fame in the novel. Although one story is told and is widely accepted, who is to say that something else happened; much like how the world perceives Bucky as opposed to his real self. Furthermore, Delillo repeatedly explains the world in terms of the human body and the human body as a culmination of organs, almost intimate. He finishes the chapter with a thought, claiming that “the room was a cell in a mystical painting, full of divine kidneys, lungs aloft in smoke, entrails gleaming, bladders simmering in painless fire.” (82) In this, the living being becomes the room while the people in it are reduced to inner organs of themselves. Delillo uses altered concepts of time to illustrate a sense that while everything in the world is transitory, there is still an aspect of perpetuity even in the people who are living at the current moment. Additionally, I believe he uses the fame of the main character to explore altered conceptions that people have of the world around them. Similar to how people dwell on a history that has been somewhat constructed, people in the story focus on perceptions and trivialities without acknowledging that time and perception is almost irrelevant because the world will live on no matter what.
2. Although I am not personally familiar with the personal lives of any rockstars, I believe that DeLillo really captured the idea of the difference between the “persona” and the real person behind the fame. DeLillo illustrates the dissatisfaction and isolation that we know many stars to feel. The most apparent example of this is when Bucky tells Watney in an interview, “Tell me what to say and I will say it.” (156) Not only does he seem indifferent to the conversation, but he is also acknowledging that the interview is not for his benefit, but for the public’s continued admiration of him. As for the lyrics, I took particular interest to the song about toes and touching. At the end of chapter 15, Bucky foreshadows his upcoming fame and proceeds to “[sit] on the bed and count[] [his] toes” (150). The lyrics read “i know my toes… no one no” (206). His toes seem to be a symbol for his connection to himself. While the world seems to know everything about him, only he knows the anatomy of his toes.
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1. By collapsing time on itself, I think DeLillo creates a sense of meaninglessness. If time doesn’t exist, nothing can happen. If time doesn’t exist, everything simultaneously is, was, and will be, so there is no action, just existence.
This can read as a critique of the emptiness and fruitlessness of stardom/celebrity as reflected in Bucky’s story. From the very first page of the novel, DeLillo calls fame “long journeys across gray space” and “the edge of every void” (1). Journeys across gray space denotes an aimless wandering with no scenery — toward the void, death, or emptiness. So the emptiness of fame is clearly implied through his prose from the outset, and only compounds as the novel goes on. Bucky’s attempts to escape stardom are all for naught, because he only ignites more interest in himself by withdrawing from the spotlight. Then, his Mountain Tapes are destroyed, rendering his music, (acts of artistic creation) useless as well, as if they were never there. It’s interesting to note that art is often considered a method for living past one’s own lifetime– here, DeLillo completely denies that to Bucky with the loss of the tapes. This is only compounded if we look at time as collapsed, because if there is no future, one cannot live on in the future through their art.
There are multiple examples of meaninglessness in DeLillo’s prose, to the point where it becomes almost a backdrop to everything else. For example, he describes on page 137 how “The motel was never quite the same but motel time was identical everywhere we stayed… it was one blank plane of unsegmented time… waiting for the ever-rumored limousine… a comically elegant hearse.” Here, not only is time unmoored, but it is associated with meaningless meandering through life, and with the “void” (previously mentioned) of death. Bucky is alive and dead simultaneously. He’s in a “hearse,” but at the same time, not quite dead, just waiting for it, almost as if in purgatory. Further, the prose itself is somewhat contradictory in that it pairs motels that are “never quite the same” with an endless sameness, contributing to this lack of meaning. Bucky is characterized as trying to escape this meaningless existence through drugs — he says “[the hotel rooms’] plainness had a center to it, a remote secret, something one might seek to reach only through the unbent energies of certain drugs.” So timelessness, endless waiting for something to happen, creates meaninglessness, and Bucky’s struggle is one to escape that. But the “chronotype” created means he can never really accomplish it. This is a struggle very familiar to humankind, closing the expected gap between reader and an unimaginable, unreachable rockstar existence.
2. I want to quote from the Mountain Tapes, but it says “DO NOT QUOTE WITHOUT PERMISSION.” I think I will anyway.
Bucky seems to me a parody of a rock star, yes, but I think through that DeLillo accomplishes what I hinted at above — even in someone so outside the normal reader’s experience, he calls out a fear of the emptiness of life, the search for more, that dominates all of us at some point. So I see his stardom as an even more humorous contrast to the serious nature of the grand search for the meaning of life. And what better way to say “there is none” than by pointing out the absurdity of a people being captivated by lyrics like “Touching Touching / Hand touch hand / I touch my hand / My hand touch me” (206) and its repetitiveness? This is absolutely what a lot of lyrics sound like, and has been a critique of pop/rock music for decades. It still holds true (in such classic hits, for example, as “Gucci gang Gucci gang Gucci gang Gucci gang Gucci gang…”).
But hidden among the deteriorating lyrics of the Mountain Tapes are a few lines that sound like genuine poetry: “Being young restores the god / that eats itself”; “I was born with all languages in my mouth”; even “Treetop wind / Mad dog bark” sounds like it could belong to a poem that actually holds some meaning (205-6). I’m not sure if this means DeLillo would also find most poetry pretentious B.S., or whether he might be hinting that even in the worst songs, you can find something enjoyable.
I really have no context for what a rock star life is like. On a societal level, we (us plebians of the lower masses) only have context for what a rockstar life is *supposed* to be like. I think that’s what DeLillo is perhaps actually parodying here, the sociocultural notion of the aimless, drug-hazed celebrity whose voice is equivocated by starry-eyed fans with “the twang of baby murders in parochial hamlets” (147), rather than trying to critique an actual picture of what a celebrity life might be like.
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1. Throughout the novel, Bucky’s sense of time seems to fit the description of a chronotype. He describes time as malleable and stretchable, saying “If you could stretch a given minute, what would you find between its unstuck components? Probably some kind of astral madness. A bleak comprehension of the final size of things” (121). He also describes time more explicitly as taking up space and volume, saying “Time did not seem to pass as much as build, slowly gathering weight” (126). By describing time as something not abstract, intangible, and incapable of changing but rather as something taking up space and malleable, DeLillo seems to incorporate something like spiral time in his novel, as opposed to linear time. As time moves in a spiral, this causes reality to seem vaguely familiar, constantly interacting with itself and moving while simultaneously feeling like “Nothing changed, altered, or varied.” (126). This allows reality, dictated by time and space, to become distorted in a similar way within the novel. This distortion of reality caused by spiral time can be seen when Bucky says “Everything you report will be true… That wasn’t Globke you talked to. That was the facsimile of Globke” (24), which plays on absurdity and the blur between reality and non-reality.
2. Throughout the novel, Bucky’s sense of time seems to fit the description of a chronotype. He describes time as malleable and stretchable, saying “If you could stretch a given minute, what would you find between its unstuck components? Probably some kind of astral madness. A bleak comprehension of the final size of things” (121). He also describes time more explicitly as taking up space and volume, saying “Time did not seem to pass as much as build, slowly gathering weight” (126). By describing time as something not abstract, intangible, and incapable of changing but rather as something taking up space and malleable, DeLillo seems to incorporate something like spiral time in his novel, as opposed to linear time. As time moves in a spiral, this causes reality to seem vaguely familiar, constantly interacting with itself and moving while simultaneously feeling like “Nothing changed, altered, or varied.” (126). This allows reality, dictated by time and space, to become distorted in a similar way within the novel. This distortion of reality caused by spiral time can be seen when Bucky says “Everything you report will be true… That wasn’t Globke you talked to. That was the facsimile of Globke” (24), which plays on absurdity and the blur between reality and non-reality.
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Delilos chronotope can be characterized by dissociation and proxy. The current, as a present moment, but also the current as an underlying energy, is always in facsimile on Great Jones Street. Delillo inverts Bakhtins logic, as time, plot, and history themselves become the sinew which spatial and temporal indicators degrade, rather than coalesce. Time is denoted through the rhythm of the comings and goings of things. Circulations are followed by stillness, followed by circulation. Delillo writes “The motel was never quite the same but motel time was identical everywhere we stayed. There were no edges to the tension of our waiting” Bucky then says “I was being subsumed into an even more immobile category that of chair, bed, room, or motel itself.” In the context of techno-capitalism places are homogenized as they are fashioned for universal consumption. As spatial difference erodes so do the frames of reference that denote the temporal passing from one moment to the next.
Hanes serves a perfect postmodern subject submerged in techno-capital time. In his reproducibility and marketable versatility he is at the will of the market. Like the encroachments of capital Hanes pops up in the most unexpected places, like dandelions or a spam message. He is valuable insofar as he is a liquid and readily deployed but also has this junk like quality that “sticks” long after he’s gone. You can see Bucky channeling this same energy, with pee-pee-maw-maw, a meme that sweeps the country on buttons, stitching, and speech, without having any definition. It takes on the energy of exchange which is an end in itself. In this dynamic Dilillo shows the way in which humans and language share materiality and circulatory possibility but also the ways they can be flattened through exchange in techno-capital mediascapes.
I do not usually think of rock stars having so much intent, or thoughtfulness, a care for “counter-archeology.” But I Don’t know why this one can’t. It doesn’t seem unrealistic or even uncharacteristic of some radical punkers like the Japanese, Les Rallizes Denudes, to take on this mythological and totalizing view of music. But going back to the idea of currents, pee-pee-maw-maw’s energy–rock is said to be about “electricity”, violence and “motion.” Delillos representation seems to hold an energetic violence in it. If anything his lyrics are too poetic and do not capture this element of noise which bucky continually pursues. Noise and synesthesia at a sustained clip is hard to do for 263 pages.
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2. The main complaint rock-fan readers have seems to be that DeLillo attempts to satirize rock stars while not being informed about how a rock star actually thinks (“That’s exactly what a writer would think a rock star thinks like.”). Objectively, this argument makes a lot of sense. If DeLillo truly is appropriating a group of people he thinks he knows well but absolutely doesn’t, it certainly makes all his attempts at satire dull. Personally, from what I know about rock (which isn’t much, being a 2000 born Californian), it seems to be a genre of music centered around violence, aggression, and rejection of common societal infrastructures. Rebellion, strength, power. Bucky’s lyrics, however, seem to take these rock-ish adjectives to a whole new extreme. For example, in VC Sweetheart, the lyrics, “Twelve years old/ Tiger soul/ She knew what to do with a man” (98) seem almost outlandishly trying-to-be-rebellious. Overall, I’d say the lyrics DeLillo provide blow the musical and lyrical qualities of rock music out of proportion, supporting a satirizing portrayal of a rock star as a normal musician simply trying too hard to be rebellious. However, in terms of DeLillo’s portrayal of Bucky, I’m not sure how “accurate” it is. Bucky is reclusive, odd, occasionally socially awkward, and has a very poetic understanding of time. Does this fit the stereotypical description of a rock star? Frankly, I’m not sure anyone can answer that definitively. While the music of rock stars can be categorized with different terms, it’s impossible to generalize this group of people in terms of personalities. If there is one thing they perhaps all connect on, it’s a common rejection of society and its norms, which Bucky seems to embrace. Thus, Bucky as a rock star seems to be more accurate in representation than the actual “rock” music he creates.
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1st Question: The concept of chronotope within the DeLillo’s Great Jones Street could serve to make the story a lot less coherent, and even unreliable, to grasp any sense of reality; whether the idea is implemented to emphasize the haziness of drug usage that was popular during the rock n roll craze of the late 60s/70s or the nihilistic boredom of hedonistic pleasures. The idea of timelessness invokes a sense of static movement of the environment that create the illusion of sameness in amidst dynamic changes in scenery and characters. Hence, feelings of a decadent moral system become fatalistic to Bucky, as that sentiment were the last message given to him from Opel before her death (DeLillo 90-91). The idea also serves as another aspect of the novel’s latent theme of reality: what is real and what is not. Paired with another example of bent reality, as exemplified by the Morehouse Professor of Latent History’s idea of a canonical history being heavily edited/not recorded and must be studied to avoid folding into repeating history again (DeLillo 75-76), a chronotope creates an idea of a fluid timeline that brings further paranoia of what is the definitive present in Bucky’s mind.
2nd Question: In regard to the idea of rock stars always succumbing to drugs for the next high/escape or any pretenses of any rock n roll pretentiousness may be exaggerated and describes mostly of a archetypal mythos of the rock n roll lifestyle (of the 60s/70s) that many other frontmen/artists continually go against. The idea is made even more archaic with (more or less) the death of the rock n roll lifestyle. However, the idea of a cult of personality that an artist may garner, as well as the artistic nihilism of the creative mind, is adequately addressed in Bucky’s journey in finding his comeback moment. As for the lyrical descriptions in the novel, they slightly resemble other rising/experimental artists that arose in the 60s, such as Jimi Hendrix and the Doors, that tried to make their lyrics full frontal about their themes while creating obscure concepts and references. Such examples include lyrics found in Bucky’s “VC Sweetheart” (“VC honey/with her curl and tap shoes/VC sweetheart twirling her baton”). However, what remains true in its relevance to even music of today is of the attention-grabbing song title/song lyrics that have original, sometimes nonsensical, words or phrases, such as Bucky’s “Pee-Pee-Maw-Maw”. Even if such lacks any coherence of a meaning or concept, the obscurity of such entices others to find any (deep) meaning to the song and increases curiosity and hype for such a song.
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1. The literary device of the “chronotope” as Bakhtin describes it provides the author with a setting that combines time and space, allowing for a multitude of events or smaller stories to occur within the larger frame of the space over a certain amount of time. DeLillo titled his novel with the name of the primary space in which it takes place, Great Jones Street. Throughout the novel, different characters come to visit Bucky at his apartment, and the space of time that these events occur in relation to one another is never specified. As one chapter ends and another begins, DeLillo never indicates what period of time has passed between one scene and another. Even the narrator himself is not always aware of how much time has passed since he has been living on Great Jones Street. At one point, Opal asks him how long it had been since he got high, to which Bucky responded, “‘the last something I consumed was an animal tranquilizer. That was maybe eleven weeks ago, give or take five or six weeks.’” (62) Bucky also seems to have the same conversations with his upstairs neighbor Fenig time and time again. They talk about their downstairs neighbor, the Micklewhite boy, the writing market, and fame- which, which Fenig remarks multiple times, “‘won’t happen. But if it does happen. But it won’t happen’” (49). This sense that events repeat themselves adds to the nonlinear sense of time in the novel. Because time works in mysterious ways in the novel, we get the same sense of aimlessness that Bucky feels at this point in his life.
2. I completely agree with DeCurtis’ friend in that I believe that Great Jones Street depicts a portrayal of what the general public conceives a rock star to be and act like.
When a reporter comes to Bucky’s apartment to interview him, Bucky acts both aloof and sarcastic towards him. He acts like the stereotypical modes of the snobby, rude rock star. When the reporter asks, “‘Can we discuss your personal life?’”, Bucky responds the way a surly teenager might respond to a nosy parent. “‘Sure we can. I won’t be here while we’re discussing it because I’m going out now. But you go right ahead.’” (24) That’s not to say that all rock stars are completely polite and never rude to reporters, but this snobby response reads more like the caricature of a rock star than of something a genuine rock star would say. Bucky’s lyrics also seem quite strained, even cliché at times. Lines like “born in a hearse… nursed on a hand-me-down nipple” have an over-dramatic and over-stylized tone that makes them seem much more like a satirist’s idea of rock lyrics than actual rock lyrics.
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