Shine On Harvest Moon

Shine On Harvest Moon is a popular song from 1907, with words by Nora Bayes and music by Jack Norworth, that recurs throughout E. L. Doctorow's novel City of God as part of the book's deep engagement with the American songbook of standards. The song belongs to the repertoire of The Midrash Jazz Quartet, the novel's recurring musical frame that treats popular songs as texts worthy of commentary and interpretation. Its most striking appearance comes in a hospital room, where a young nun in an attractive contemporary habit sits beside the bed of the dying McIlvaine, strumming a guitar and singing in a thin, lovely soprano: "Oh, shine on, shine on harvest moon, up in the sky. I ain't had no lovin' since January, February, June or July." The moment transforms a vaudeville-era love song into something approaching a hymn, sung as a bedside farewell to a dying man who calls it part of "our hymns."