Bianca

[Tore Rye Andersen]

>From: "Carvill John"

>[...] I still have no idea why Pynchon would choose to have his protagonist 
>(such as Slothrop is) do such a thing, and why there seems to be a theme of 
>sex with underage girls running through not just GR but Pynchon in general. 
>It's disturbing and very unattractive and - to me anyway - inexplicable and 
>hard to take.

David Rando makes an interesting point in his article "Reading Gravity's 
Rainbow After September Eleventh: An Anecdotal Approach" (from the journal 
Postmodern Culture, 13.1, 2002). Rando takes this quote about Zwölfkinder 
from the Pökler-chapter as his starting point:

"In a corporate State, a place must be made for innocence, and its many 
uses. In developing an official version of innocence, the culture of 
childhood has proven invaluable. Games, fairy-tales, legends from history, 
all the paraphernalia of make-believe can be adapted and even embodied in a 
physical place, such as at Zwölfkinder." (etc., etc., GR, p. 419)

Rando also touches upon Ludwig, Ilse, and the disturbing scene with Bianca, 
and he then goes on to argue that "the manipulation of children in Gravity's 
Rainbow should be read as a means of resisting the state's long history of 
appropriating the innocence of its children for its prosecution of war." In 
other words, the sex-scene with Bianca (which I'd still argue could be read 
as a dream) is Pynchon's attempt to deprive the State of its cooptation of 
childhood. The soothing image of innocence to be found in places like 
Zwölfkinder or Disneyworld is merely, the argument goes, a sophisticated 
form of social control, meant to lull us into complacence in times of war, 
and the scenes with the seductress Bianca or Ludwig who peddles his ass for 
a few pieces of chewing-gum are meant to undermine this sneaky form of 
social control.

Rando's argument is an interesting attempt at a rational explanation for 
some of the most disturbing elements in GR (more convincing, at least, than 
Duyfhuizen's adjustment of Bianca's age) but I haven't really made up my 
mind about whether I'm convinced by the argument or not. If Rando's correct, 
I still think that the price Pynchon pays for resisting the state's 
cooptation of the culture of childhood is somewhat too high.

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