On Wings of Song/Part Two
UNDER CONSTRUCTION!
Summary
Boadicea Whiting, returning from a "finishing school" in Europe, meets Daniel after his release from prison. They become lovers, under the approving but manipulative eye of her ultra-wealthy father Grandison who runs a feudal compound near Amesville. After a hasty forced marriage, they plan an overseas honeymoon—stopping first in New York, where they finally get to try a flight apparatus. Daniel can't get into the necessary mental state to fly, but Boa does. Her mind does not return. Watching over her body, Daniel learns that there's been a plane crash and the world now thinks they're both dead.
Chapter 5
Ste. Ursule
According to legend St. Ursula was the daughter of a king, making this school's name especially appropriate for Boadicea. In the Catholic Church she is the patron saint of schoolgirls, so there are many schools named after her, but this one is fictional.
Consolidated Food Systems
The termite-farming company that Daniel worked for during his prison term.
Serjeant ... Alethea
Boadicea and her brother are named after an ancient queen and a racehorse. Alethea's name could refer to any of several British historical figures, but given her father's extremely cynical philosophy, an especially ironic choice would be Alethea Lewis.
Worry
The name of Grandison Whiting's neo-feudal estate is never explained, and could be assumed to refer generally to the anxieties that accompany money and power.
However... if it's a more specific joke or reference that Disch just didn't feel like unpacking (and I have no reason to think so, except that it would've been in character), then one possible candidate would be the saying "Worry is interest paid on trouble before it falls due," commonly misattributed to William Ralph Inge. Even though Inge wasn't the original author[1], Disch wouldn't necessarily have known that... and Inge would fit very well not just with Whiting's Anglophilia, but also with his praise of inequality and disdain for democracy. This is admittedly a stretch.
What Eisenstein had done for Stalin, what Riefenstahl had done for Hitler
There's a double irony here: not only Boadicea is comparing her beloved father to Stalin and Hitler, but her metaphor doesn't exactly work even for someone who thinks that's OK. Eisenstein had a complicated relationship with the Soviet government, and when he was commissioned to direct the propaganda film October: Ten Days that Shook the World, he had to drastically re-edit the film to meet Stalin's demands—after which the government called his film a failure anyway.[2] Riefenstahl had much better luck in terms of Hitler's approval of her worshipful film, but Triumph of the Will was not widely seen in Germany after its original theatrical run, and clips from it were often used outside Germany in anti-Nazi propaganda.
Iowa Council of Churches
There is an ecumenical National Council of Churches, and a fundamentalist American Council of Churches, but there have never been state-level organizations by that name as far as I know; this is a satirical hint that the undergoders' nationalist pride really only applies to their own state.
Toora-Loora Turandot, a weary old Irish musical
A cross between Puccini's Orientalist opera Turandot (1926) and the faux-Irish song "Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral (That's an Irish Lullaby)" (1913).
The Elmore Roller-Rink Roadhouse
Elmore, Minnesota is a small town that is right up against the state border to Iowa.
Chapter 6
vendetta against the A.C.L.U.
The American Civil Liberties Union has a long record of supporting the separation of church and state, most famously by defending the teacher John Scopes for teaching about evolution, but they especially became a target of conservative anger due to their civil rights work and their defense of Vietnam War protesters in the '60s and '70s.
the F.D.A., the bete noir of the Farm Belt
The Food and Drug Administration would presumably be resented by Iowa's agribusiness elite due to its regulatory authority over food products and animal feed.
Chapter 7
Most of the village's former residents lived in Worry now
Worry seems to be a cross between several kinds of historical communities: a feudal estate, where Grandison Whiting is in effect the local government for the 500 tenants whose land he owns; a walled city; and the company towns that were common in early 20th century industry.
His nose and forehead ... straight out of the most arrogantly lovely Ghirlandaio
This could be any of the four Ghirlandaio brothers who were Renaissance painters, but probably the most successful one, Domenico Ghirlandaio. His figures were often portraits of aristocratic patrons placed in roles of religious legend. This is a somewhat odd choice—handsome young men were not a very frequent subject in Ghirlandaio's work—but Boadicea is seventeen and may have had a limited view of art history.
degrees of bon ton
Bon ton, literally "good tone": high society style.
we began, some twenty years ago, to make the prisons ... less congenial places
Probably not even Grandison Whiting really believes that they were ever congenial, but the history of prisons in Iowa did include a series of incremental reforms over the course of the 20th century. Two that might have particularly irritated Whiting: in 1918 Iowa outlawed the practice of leasing prisoners as labor to private industry, and in the 1940s counseling programs were introduced.[3]
Since the novel is deliberately vague about when it's set, here's no indication as to whether "twenty years ago" is in our present, past, or future. In 1979, the incarceration rate had already begun to rise due to the War on Drugs but was nowhere near today's level, and privatized prisons did not yet exist.
Chapter 8
interpretations of a Duparc song
Probably Henri Duparc (1848-1933), who set texts by several Romantic poets to music. One of those was Baudelaire's "L'invitation au voyage" from Les fleurs du mal, a text that is especially appropriate to On Wings of Song (and also the source of the phrase "luxe, calme et volupté", which Disch referenced in The Businessman). William Aggeler's translation renders part of it as: "Think of the rapture of living together there .... The misty sunlight of those cloudy skies .... There all is order and beauty, luxury, peace and pleasure.""
Raynor Taylor's music was dust from the tomb
A 19th century composer who is mainly known for his theatrical work.
Chapter 9
Moussorgsky, who was a civil servant
The 19th century Romantic Modest Mussorgsky, known especially for Boris Gudonov and Night on Bald Mountain. Whiting (who may or may not know much about music) is oversimplifying the story quite a bit: Mussorgsky worked off and on in government jobs in parallel with his work as a composer, but this arguably did not work out very well for him, as he lost his last job at age 41 due to alcoholism and died a year later.
the good life cannot be led for less than ten thousand a year
If Whiting means dollars, then the value of US currency has been revised drastically in the future, since even in 1979 $10,000 was a low salary and inflation has only made it lower. But this is probably less meaningful as a number than as a gesture to remind us of the social stratum we're dealing with here. Readers of 19th century English literature will be familiar with statements that some character "has X thousand a year", which refers not to a salary, but to income generated by capital and land—that is, investments and rents from tenants. Grandison is speaking as a member of the landed gentry.
Chapter 10
in the airline's own magazine, an article about trout fishing written by one of the country's top novelists
This is probably a joke referencing Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America (1967), a highly digressive novel that is not especially about trout fishing. Brautigan wouldn't by any means be considered a "top novelist" in Iowa, and his work is singularly unsuited to an airline magazine.
He had chosen Mahler's Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen
A 1901 Gustav Mahler composition using the text of a Friedrich Rückert poem, known in English as "I am lost to the world." In Emily Ezust's translation, the last lines are "I live alone in my heaven, in my love and my song." (Recording of a performance by Elīna Garanča, 2021)
his two favorite songs from Die Winterreise ... a sincere, droopy Weltschmerz
An 1808 song cycle by Franz Schubert based on poems by Wilhelm Müller. There's no clue as to which of the 24 songs are Daniel's favorites, but the texts of all of them describe a slow grueling journey shadowed by grief; Weltschmerz, literally "world pain", is a flavor of existential despair popularized by German Romantics. (Recording of a performance by Ian Bostridge, 2009)
the oldest cowboy movie ever made ... the massacre on Superstition Mountain
This sounds like it has something to do with the Lost Dutchman's Mine legend, but the only movie I can think of is Lust for Gold (1947), whose plot doesn't match this description.
Haydn's The Seasons
An 1801 oratorio. (Recording of a performance by the London Classical Players, 1982)
Footnotes
- ↑ Popik, Barry. The Big Apple, July 4, 2012. Retrieved January 4, 2025. Garson O'Toole at Quote Investigator adds more details; the misattribution was spread by Reader's Digest.
- ↑ Landler, Edward. "'October' Surprise: The Revolution Will be Edited". CineMontage, December 8, 2017. Retrieved January 4, 2025.
- ↑ McKay, Joyce. "Reforming Prisoners and Prisons: Iowa's State Prisons—The First Hundred Years". Annals of Iowa, spring 2001. Retrieved January 4, 2025.