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🦋 More music in the story
As Jack stood there the sounds began to separate in his mind; he felt that he could pick out and listen to each individual mote of sound -- the voices calling out a cadence, the whining violin, the creaking floorboards -- he was able to listen to each thing individually and it seemed to him that this was the second time he had heard such a thing, the first coming at the Dunkard Love Feast. Jack felt that what he was experiencing was somehow part of something hidden, the spare realm of musicians; is this what Bertha heard when she played her mandolin? Rather than a catalog of sounds it sounded to him like the very construction of music, a powerful and beautiful feeling, like manipulating the basic elements of the world.
(Chapter 20, at Little Bean Deshazo's wake)
It is becoming clear in the second half of The Wettest County in the World, that the music in the story is not just there for mood and setting; that it influences the course of events and Jack's perception of the events in some mystical, hard-to-understand way. I wonder if this is going to be clarified at all -- especially Jack's auditory hallucinations at the Dunkard Love Feast seem too important and too specific to go unexplained.
posted afternoon of Saturday, June 5th, 2010
➳ More posts about The Wettest County in the World
➳ More posts about Readings
I found an interesting article about the Dunkards in the New York Times of April 26, 1891 -- "Peculiar Ceremonies of a Peculiar Sect of Christians" in West Hanover, PA.
posted evening of January 26th, 2011 by Jeremy
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