(Fwd) Re: Deaths in GR

[Alec W Mchoul]

Eric:
I figure Tim Ware is right about Bianca.
There doen't seem to be anything definite on her dying.
In _Writing Pynchon_, David Wills and I use this question (is she/isn't 
she) as a way of highlighting the overall undecidability of GR.
The crucial sentence is:
 ...Slothrop will think he sees her, think he has found Bianca again ... 
 he will see her lose her footing on the slimy deck ... he will lunge 
 after her without thinking much, slip himself as she vanishes under the 
 chalky lifelines and gone. (491)

Apart from the weird tense and the fact that this is marked as something 
Slothrop only "thinks", there's another obvious ambiguity.  That is you 
can read the final bit of syntax as "slip himself ... under the chalky 
lifelines" or else as "she vanishes under the chalky lifelines".

The full discussion is on p31 of _WP_.

Is this much use?

Alec McHoul