Sloth-rop (was Re: Holocaust as metaphor?

[jbor]

Just reread some of the Bianca/Slothrop bits again and can't get to *any*
real conclusions at all. It's that parenthetic reference to Sundial just
before these quotes which gets me every time because 'we', the text implies
(i.e. text and reader), are suddenly "[l]eaving Slothrop in his ... red-ring
manacles, comicbook irons", which are the Harvard crew sox (his, no doubt
liberal, education), "city reflexes" (the mores of U.S. urbanised society, +
his sublimated lust for subdeb cuties like Shirley T. one could also infer),
along with the hero-legends he has grown up on (i.e. D.C. &c comic
superheroes) -- in other words his cultural conditioning. Things suddenly
start to get mysterious then, and the rest of it seems like a self-conscious
and extra-diegetic address from the "author" to a/the reader along the lines
of "the years of grease and passage, 1966 and 1971 ... Do you want to put
this part in?" parenthesis at 739. In other words, Slothrop's *out* of the
equation from the beginning of the third paragraph up. (472)

The description of Sundial's powers for me works as an analogy for Pynchon's
literary method, his narrative agency ("The frames never enclosed him ... "
etc), whether deliberately meant as one or no.

But along my trail I happened to catch the working out of Bianca's probable
age at Tim Ware's site:

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/gravity-f.html
1. JK and BD's sums are legitimate, but I could do the same sums and make
her out to be just turned (or even turning) 15.

2. Slothrop *believes* her to be only "11 or 12".

(Not that you're arguing this aspect of it of course, but it's a question
which intrigues me.)

Still haven't come across Slothrop's "Pilate" self-reference again though.

best


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>From: <jp4321 at IDT.NET>


> "...though how much easier just to leave her there, in fetid carbibe and
> dead-canary soups of breath and come out and have comfort enough to try only
> for a reasonable facsimile-
>     'Why bring her back? Why try? It's only the difference between the real
> boxtop and the one you draw for Them.' No. How can he believe that? It's
> what They want him to believe, but how can he? No difference betwen a boxtop
> and its image, all right, their whole economy's based on *that*... but she
> must be more than an image, a product, a promise to pay..."
>
>>
>> Pilate? ... methinks perhaps all those delusions of grandeur (Rocketman,
>> Plechauzunga, Ian Scuffing) have finally gotten to the poor sod ...
>>
>> a tanker and a feeb ... harsh, but apt. But then, what is the alternative?
>
> "...slouched alone in your own seat, never threatened along any rookwise row
> or diagonal all night, you whose interdiction from her mother's water-white
> love is absolute, you, alone, saying *sure I know them,* omitted, chuckling,
> *count me in,* unable, thinking *probably some hooker*... She favors you,
> most of all. You will never get to see her. So somebody has to tell you."