The Frumious Bandersnatch Read Online Free PDF

love you till the day I die, I’ll love you till the day I die, I’ll love you till the day I die-ai-ai,’ like that. Nothing at all to do with growing up poor, the growing-up-poor is only the sub-plot. What the video does is tell all those kids out there who bought the album that here in this America—or for that matter any of your countries, too, my friends—anywhere in the entire free world, for that matter, you can grow up to be a diva who will love someone till the day she die-ai-ai-s.”
    Higgins smiled. They all smiled with him.
    The black girl wasn’t too sure Higgins wasn’t dissing the sort of hood she grew up in, but she smiled, too, what the hell, and grabbed a glass of white wine from a waiter passing a tray.
    â€œYour next cheapest video is what I call ‘Smoke and Mirrors,’ it’s all bullshit flashing lights and blinking neon. Looks like a million bucks, but doesn’t cost a nickel. Well, it costs a lot more than the other three, but that’s only in the construction. The shooting is cheap. Just your set and your artists on the set. This is the kind of set you use when your song is about absolutely nothing. In fact, not anybody out there can understand the words to the song. Nobody. Not a single living soul. I’m not talking rap. You can usually understand the words in a rap song. I’m talking about a song that has lyrics nobody on earth can understand, no matter how often you listen to the song. This is a song that kids keep listening to over and over again, trying to dope out what the hell the lyrics mean. This is a song that’s usually a big hit overseas, because you don’t have to understand it in Germany or Italy, it’s the same as if you’re hearing it in America, where nobody can understand it, either, because it’s designed to be unintelligible. Are you beginning to get my drift?”
    The guy from London was beginning to get Higgins’s drift. Higgins was leading up to talking about “Bandersnatch.” The man from London nodded sagely, like a member of Parliament who’d just been advised that his Prime Minister had the goods on Osama bin Laden.
    â€œYour next to the most expensive video is your ‘Story’ video. This can be a video that actually follows the story of the lyrics in any given song, illustrating the song, so to speak, putting it into pictures for the twelve-year-olds out there, or it can be a video that tells a story entirely different from the one the lyrics are telling. Usually, the Story video is directed by some guy who has dreams of doing a feature film for Miramax. He is more interested in the video itself than he is in the song the video is supposed to be selling. In many respects, it’s like your ‘Back to the Hood’ video. Your artist can be singing, ‘I’ll love you till the day I die-ai-ai,’ and the picture on the screen will be showing a car crashing through the guard rail on the Calm’s Point Bridge and hurtling to the dark swirling mysterious waters below. The ‘Story’ video is full of artsy-fartsy shots and dissolves and fades you learn in Directing 101 in film school. There are women with horns and pointy red breasts…”
    Higgins glanced at the black girl again.
    â€œâ€¦or guys who suddenly sprout huge wings and fly off into a sky torn apart by thunder clouds. You’re sometimes watching two or three stories at the same time, either having to do with the song, or having nothing at all to do with it. The idea is to make the video look like a hi-tech movie so that the kids will run out to buy the album, thinking maybe it, too, gee whiz, is like a high-tech movie. Razzle-dazzle. It’s all razzle-dazzle, thank you, Kander and Ebb. Which brings me to the most expensive video of all, and that is the ‘Production Number’ video, and that is what the ‘Bandersnatch’ video is.”
    Finalmente, the guy from