Thomas Pynchon Songbook

Written by Thomas Pynchon, sung by Lucas Blalock

Skyful of Hearts (from Inherent Vice)

There’s a skyful of hearts,
Broken in two,
Some flyin full fare,
Some non-revenue,
All us bit actors
Me him and you,
Playin our parts,
In a skyful of hearts…

Up there in first class,
Ten-dollar wine,
Playing canasta,
Doin so fine,
Suddenly, uh-oh,
Here’s ‘at No Smokin sign
That’s how it starts,
In a skyful of hearts…

[Bridge] To the roar of the fanjet…
You went on your way…
I’ll sure miss you, and yet…
There ain’t much to say…

Now I’m flyin alone
In economy class,
Drinkin the cheap stuff,
Till I’m flat on my ass,
Watchin my torch song
Fall off the charts,
But that’s how it goes
In a skyful of hearts…

The Eyes of a New York Woman (from V.)

The eyes of a New York woman
Are the twilit side of the moon,
Nobody knows what goes on back there
Where it’s always late afternoon.

Dead as the leaves in Union Square,
Dead as the graveyard sea,
The eyes of a New York woman
Are never going to cry for me.

Under the lights of Broadway,
Far from the lights of home,
With a smile as sweet as a candy cane
And a heart all plated with chrome.

Dead as the leaves in Union Square,
Dead as the graveyard sea,
The eyes of a New York woman
Are never going to cry for me.

Do they ever see the wandering bums
And the boys with no place to go,
And the drifter who cried for an ugly girl
That he left in Buffalo?

Dead as the leaves in Union Square,
Dead as the graveyard sea,
The eyes of a New York woman
Are never going to cry for me. x 2

The Ballad of Tantivy Mucker-Maffick (from Gravity’s Rainbow)

Oh Italian gin is a mother’s curse,
And the beer of France is septic,
Drinking Bourbon in Spain is the lonely domain
Of the saint and the epileptic.

White lightning has fueled up many a hearse
In the mountains where ridge-runners dwell–
It’s a brew begot in a poison pot,
And mulled with the hammers of Hell!

Oh–Tantivy’s been drunk in many a place,
From here to the Uttermost Isle,
And if he should refuse any chance at the booze,
May I die with an hoary-eyed smile!

He’s been ossified in oceans of grog,
In the haunts of the wobbly whale–
He’s been half-seas over from Durban to Dover,
Wiv four shaky sheets to the gale.

For in London fog or Sahara’s sun,
Or the icebound steeps of Zermatt,
Loaded up for a lark to ‘is Plimsoll mark
He’s been game to go off on a bat!