Bianca's age?

[jbor at bigpond.com]

Thanks for the lead. Duyfhuizen's PMC article is on-line at:

http://www.infomotions.com/serials/pmc/pmc-v2n1-duyfhuizen-a.txt

But the Hyperarts summary sets out the evidence more concisely:

http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/gravity/extra/bianca.html

The Alpdrücken chronology seems pretty sound, and Thanatz does remark 
of Bianca's performance that "[s]he's never going to be a woman if this 
goes on" (466). But it wouldn't surprise me if with his interpretations 
Duyfhuizen isn't falling into some "reader-traps" of his own. (In fact, 
I think the conceit of a "reader-trap" might be a "reader-trap" in 
itself, in a reflexive, mise en abyme sort of way!)

Bianca's eventual fate is certainly ambiguous, but her star turn on the 
Anubis is real enough I think. On pp. 460-2, Stefania explains how 
Margherita wants Bianca to have "a legitimate career", and how the 
mother "had her corrupted long before" the end of the war. And, from 
the way that she and Greta work so professionally together at "playing 
stage mother and reluctant child" (465), it's reasonable to assume that 
Bianca has been putting on this Shirley Temple act, and the s&m 
meta-act with her mum, for a number of years. My take on the scene is 
that Greta and Bianca are preying on the male Lolita fetish in order to 
seduce erstwhile film directors and producers like "Karel"; Bianca is 
dressed and made up to look like she's an 11-12 year old girl (the age 
Slothrop perceives her to be) who has been forced to put on this erotic 
apparel and act by her mum. Bianca's playing the part of a child 
prostitute, in other words.

I'm not sure what the significance of Greta's Oneirine habit is (e.g. 
"Greta was meant to find Oneirine" on p. 464), but perhaps something 
might be made of "the property of time-modulation" previously 
attributed to the drug in the narrative (389).

Btw, in my googling I also came across this essay, which others might 
not realise is available on-line:

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/gr/finnished.html

best

On 22/09/2005 Heikki Raudaskoski wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> Duffy Duyfhuizen argues - quite convincingly -
> as much in his '91 PMC essay:
>
> "However, if we dislocate our reading and
> consider Bianca through cross-mapping with Ilse,
> her shadow sister, we discover that she was most
> likely born in 1929 and is much closer to 16 or
> 17 than she is to '11 or 12'."
>
> In a footnote to this sentence he continues:
> "Newman is the only reader I have come across
> that comes close to dating _Alpdrucken_ (during
> the filming of which Bianca was conceived) as
> 16 years before the text's present time (107),
> and Weisenburger dates Pokler's recollection
> of Ilse's conception as 'ranging back over
> sixteen years, its analepsis beginning in the
> late twenties, in Berlin, where the German
> rocket program began as an apparently innocent
> club, the Society for Space Travel' (194)."
>
>
> Bernard Duyfhuizen, "'A Suspension Forever at
> the Hinge of Doubt': The Reader-Trap of Bianca
> in _Gravity's Rainbow_" Postmoden Culture,
> Volume 2, Number 1 (September, 1991)
>
>
> Best,
> Heikki
>
>
> On Thu, 22 Sep 2005 jbor at bigpond.com wrote:
>
>> Huh?
>>
>> best
>>
>>> SEPTEMBER 21, 2005
>>>
>>> JIM KNIPFEL
>>> NEWS & COLUMNS
>>
>>> [...]
>>
>>> Without going into all the details, let's just say
>>> Bianca is first described as "a knockout, alright, 11
>>> or 12, dark and lovely?" She is, in fact, roughly 16,
>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> http://www.nypress.com/18/38/news&columns/knipfel.cfm
>>
>>
>>
>