Bianca

[Monte Davis]

> My question remains why does paedophilia seem to be 
> such a recurring 
> theme in Pynchon? I am not suggesting it's because he has 
> such leanings 
> himself, but I just think there is too much of it in his work 
> for it to be 
> explained away as a metaphor or whatever.

Consider the possibility that the abiding concern is with *all* the
intersections, blendings and confusions of power and sexuality, and that
"young partners" -- (which of course includes flashback-Enzian and Gottfried
and Ludwig who sees "a lot of foreign cock," just as much as Bianca or Ilse)
is one way that plays out for the two-body case.

S&M is another. The elaborate pressing of all Slothrop's sex/romance buttons
at the Casino, from "you get to rescue babe from octopus" to "you get to be
Cary Grant" to "you get to play childlike under the tablecloth" is another.
Geli's sexualized magic is another. Sasha & Frenesi's response to uniforms.
The ever-more-inner sanctums at the House of All Nations. Oedipa's repeated
fearful-yet-anticipatory moments of "flowering" understanding -- you know
the name of that rose, right? Esther's SHROUD-like passivity to
Schoenmaker's surgery *and* sex.

It seems to me that you're taking one part of the elephant for the whole.
What is pervasive in Pynchon, and *meant* to provoke the unease you're
feeling, is the insistence that the erotic and sexual moments  -- the
moments when you would be most unguarded, most yourself, most open to
another, most free of "public" social roles and expectations -- are
precisely the moments when Powers you'd rather not think about -- within and
without -- may be most busily at work. (cf. Plato, Choderlos de Laclos,
Freud, Plath, Norman O. Brown, Foucault, Sappho, Mailer, any random
bodice-ripper or Mike Hammer novel, _passim_).

O-or just wait and notice when that *owl* hits you, Jackson!

I don't believe there's a Pynchon reader alive -- certainly not this one --
who'd give a 100% honest answer to: "List the passages in Pynchon that give
you a hardon / get you wet." I'm down with the most candid discussions of
orifices, flushes, fluiids, and spasms -- buit *please* don't ask about the
kinky stuff that goes on between me and little black marks on a white page.