GRGR(22) Greta/Bianca

[Paul Mackin]

Bianca's 'really in that Europe now' quip might have been a sufficiently
appropriate jibe at an unsophisticated naive and very American Slothrop
so adrift in complex devious old Europe (Henry James-like maybe). But
doesn't the Shirley Temple linkage add ever so much more.  Doesn't Bianca
in some murky way represent to Slothrop something like what Hollywood's
curly-headed adorable Shirley did to depression weary preterite America of
Slothrop's youth. Some kind of an  escape and fulfillment at the movies.
This seems clear from S's meditation following his departure from B.
Moreover, can't a fair case be made that   this kind of breathless
wide-eyed way of speaking which occurs here and there throughout  GR--with
things getting referred to as "that Europe", or "that Truman", for
example--derive in no small part from that particular plucky little tot's
speech habits displayed in her 30s films? One would need to carefully
attend a retrospective of a good sampling of them to be sure. But I surely
to goo-ness get that impression from this remote point in time.

Judy Garland move over for Shirley Temple.


				P.