Beethoven's midnight sonata

Perhaps they're related.

Fats Waller, the happy clown that hides a deep inner sadness 

The conformist who cannot express his frustration 

Chopin played by Jay as John was talking about Fats  

Hoagie Carmichael came from a Jazz Background also.  His melodies are very different from Fats.  

[Idea to explore]  Can the song timeline be stretched beyond the physical timeline of the story.  Does a song already exist before it is played or composed?  The sounds exist, the words aren't new.  The melody is what is created, but it is also derived from preexisting ones.  In some ways, songs [of the future] are always within and around us.  Like matter and antimatter, particle physics.  How is this portrayed in the context of the story?  The future can be like writing on the wall.  It's important to find pop and cultural symbols the captivate the reader.  From an ad in a magazine, to the sounds of a factory or tractor.  Word meanings change over time.  Technology changes our traditional social interaction.  In the context of the story, the TV is first, then airplanes, then telephone technology before Florence ultimately transcends from the world around her.

The Sad Cafe, the New York Cafe, meeting places, places of activity, the forum is important to the story even if the majority of communication is epistolary.

Advertising.  What is it's role with symbolism, signs, music and lyrics.  Past, present and future.  

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Foreshadowing devices.  Florence reads an article in the newspaper about Charles Petrach (typo in the paper and his name ends up as Petrarch), a man who murdered his fiancé after learning that she wants to break up with him.  She was a librarian and was shot in a classroom at a school in Lawrenceville, Illinois. [what song does this represent]

Florence thought the name sounded funny, so she went to her own library and tried to research it.  

Florence is reading the article at the kitchen table.  Her mother is unpacking a can of peaches for cobbler.  Florence is trying to talk to her mother.  She's trying to talk to her about why she no longer sings.  Why she stopped singing to them at night.  

Her brother is sitting in the background with his friends playing with matchbox cars (need a good toy name for the fifties).  They were racing with each other.  One car was named Gun and the other was named Rose (perhaps when Florence was playing with him).  He doesn't like the name, but then he starts to sing and then scream the game over and over again.  "All you other kids with the pumped up kicks you better run better run.  Outrun my gun!"

Perhaps this is the scene inside the house as her father is sitting with his friends and listening to the OU game.   When the game is over, her father and Eddie begin to quarrel over his singing.  Cynthia knows that Eddie has a mean temper and wants to start a fight.  She watches them closely.  Eddie starts to tease him, starts to wrestle with him and sing a song of his own [need a song for this].  Everyone is yelling at Eddie to stop, but he's not listening.  The other men are too afraid to intervene between two brothers.  Finally, Cynthia runs to the bedroom and get a revolver.  The firing of the gun is the only sound that shuts everyone up.  It was intended to scare Rodger.  A signal to let him know that she was not going to put up with his cheating ways anymore.  It had to stop.  "It's over.  Do you understand me."  She says as she screams at the top of her lungs.  Florence of course is traumatized by the entire event.  Nora seems to know what's going on and tries to console Cynthia.  James and Rodger stop their fighting.  James is confused and doesn't seem to know that his brother has been cheating on his wife.

[When James tries to steal a catfish fillet, he replies to his wife.  "I ain't misbehavin dear.  (reference to Fats Waller). The opposite of what Eddie will have sung for him on the radio - Hank Williams, Your Cheatin Heart ]

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Is this before of after Nora's sister (with Huntington's Disease) and mother die.  

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Why this book is different from High Fidelity? Hooked on Classics is perhaps a better title than Defoliation because it captures the essence of F's desire to be swept away (in a plane), caught like a fish (hooked) by a world that has seen history.  A classical world.  State clearly that she could not make mix tapes (e.g. because she's writing letters to Shareef).  

She is captivated by boundaries.  The geographical boundaries of Texas and farming.  The cultural boundaries of a segregated  southern community.  The religious boundaries of Southern Baptism.  Music (and sending it through writing) was her roundabout way of escaping or overcoming her boundaries. 

Songs are there to remind us that we are all kindred spirits, we are all mortal, we may all meet up again one day.

Or other books about love, adolescence, coming of age, adulthood, culture clashes, pen pals.  

Catfish Blues

Boom Boom!

Baby Please Don't Go