GR - How old is Bianca? Or: Did Sachsa really die in 1930?

[Paul Mackin]

The whole of GR is on the one hand quite meticulously organized and
analyzable as P scholars have shown and on the other hand a complete
phantasmagoria in which nothing is fixed. That includes Bianca's age,
Ilse's continuing existence, carbon and silicon bonding, the conditioned
reflex, rocket science, and the sensibilities of moral right thinking
readers.  Even the classic laws of logic are not inviolate.

On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 9:23 AM, Perry Noid <coolwithdoc at gmail.com> wrote:

> Maybe only tangentially related so let's call it an aside: still engrossed
> by Bolaño here and the infamous fourth chapter. Nearing the end, the part
> where the congresswoman hires the detective to find her missing friend. The
> detective tells her that he doesn't want her to waste her time, that her
> friend is "more or less dead." But either you are dead or you are alive sez
> the congresswoman, there is no "more or less dead." But in Mexico, sez the
> detective, you can be "more or less dead."
>
> The book is continuing to get better and better, and this chapter I was
> turned off slightly by at the beginning is actually incredible. Is not
> just a "clinical catalogue" of death as I originally thought. There is an
> enormous beating heart in the middle of it.
>
> On Thursday, January 7, 2016, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I know Slothrop doesn't actually die, just disappears.  Is scattered
>> (in the text)....which
>> is, ambiguously, like death and yet not death, right?
>>
>> it is what I meant by 'transcends' his mortal coil anyway, so just to
>> make myself clearer.
>>
>> And, by the way, My writing "like death and yet not death" reminds
>> of the excluded middle notion. Or Schrodinger's cat. That Pynchon.......
>>
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> >>
>> >> That great Ambiguity of Pynchon...both in some senses?
>> >> a Hounded Victim who 'transcends' his mortal coil of damaged
>> >> relationships? So, a release?
>> >> (but NOT quite like Cyprian imho, since
>> >> Cyprian lives on)
>> >>
>> >>> On Thu, Jan 7, 2016 at 7:20 AM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>> Loses his humanity, or transcends it? Like Cyprian?
>> >>>
>> >>> Www.innergroovemusic.com
>> >>>
>> >>>> On Jan 7, 2016, at 7:06 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>>
>> >>>> I think we---I---must rethink Slothrop. I knew, ( or figured I knew)
>> >>>> first read, no one got laid that much by willing adult British girls,
>> >>>> so I rendered him
>> >>>> symbolic as much as related to reality. Even first read, we all knew
>> >>>> this novel wasn't 'realistic' in any normal meaning of that term.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> We know he is damaged, poignantly so and sympathetically in the novel
>> >>>> (in some ways). Now, maybe more totally than I have admitted.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Being one with one's own cock is NOT a positive thing in a novel
>> >>>> in which Norman O. Brown's Life against Death and a 'polymorphous
>> >>>> perversity' are deep influences, but I might not have thought that
>> >>>> until later readings and awareness of the influence. (see below on
>> >>>> alternate title, though)
>> >>>>
>> >>>> For what it is worth, as I've mentioned, I had read Lolita and Life
>> >>>> Against Death before I read GR (not that I connected Brown much)
>> >>>> but I did believe, want to believe, that Pynchon had a deeper
>> perspective
>> >>>> on 'free love'---if that is what we can call Slothrop's luck with
>> willing women.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> When I first heard of the alternate title, Mindless Pleasures I WAS
>> SURE
>> >>>> it satirized Slothrop as much as anything in the novel.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> So, I still think Pynchon is being more Swiftian than I have thought,
>> >>>> with Bianca.
>> >>>> I still think P was ABSOLUTELY aware this fictional creation was
>> another
>> >>>> symbol of sick sex such as the novel is full of, as much, because, he
>> >>>> was a victim.
>> >>>> Another turn of the base fantasy
>> >>>> sex life in the West screw, so to pun. (Sometimes acted upon IRL).
>> >>>>
>> >>>> Maybe another reason he disappears? that is, loses his humanity, so
>> to speak?
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>
>> >>>>> On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 9:26 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> >>>>> I do think that the reader's mind rebels against thinking that our
>> good-guy would have sex with a 12-year-old. We can handle it only by
>> equivocating "she's really older, she just looks 11 or 12 to Slothrop" (not
>> much of a mitigation, as many have pointed out); or by putting a
>> metaphorical or magical realism spin on it (I think that's what I did the
>> first time I read it); or by proving that she's older and that Slothrop
>> must secretly realize that she's older, and be playing along.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> My first reaction when I read it was that this was a damaged child
>> (Slothrop, via Imipolex) inflicting damage on another damaged child - a
>> kind of cascading fallout. And that the scene was somehow pre-invisioning,
>> just as his Imipolex-sensitized penis anticipated where the V2s would fall,
>> the later event of Gottfried with his Imipolex shroud, trapped in the
>> rocket (which foreshadows the Cold War terror of nuclear weapons falling on
>> us, damaging our genetic and planetary future).
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> But I can also imagine that to Pynchon, in his early 20s, back in
>> the early 1970s, before fatherhood was anywhere close to being a gleam in
>> his eye, the horrors of child abuse were much more theoretical and somewhat
>> less horrific than they would appear to him in the present day, at his
>> current age. And I can go a step further and ponder the unspeakable and
>> unknowable - whether Pynchon has a secret kink or predilection for
>> underaged girls (along with Lewis Carroll, Salinger, Woody Allen, and
>> Polanski, to name just a few). I'm able to separate the artist from the
>> creep or ghoul, though many are not.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Laura
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> -----Original Message-----
>> >>>>>> From: Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> >>>>>> Sent: Jan 6, 2016 5:13 PM
>> >>>>>> To: kelber <kelber at mindspring.com>
>> >>>>>> Cc: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> >>>>>> Subject: Re: GR - How old is Bianca? Or: Did Sachsa really die in
>> 1930?
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> wow...an analysis to go deep into....I will
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> BUT, I will just say that even the first time I read it, I did
>> think
>> >>>>>> Slothrop was "only" saying she 'looked' that age.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> But I had read Lolita first....and I did not want to believe the
>> 'good guy'
>> >>>>>> Slothrop was a pedophile.....I did think P wanted to present this
>> sickness
>> >>>>>> in this way-----males wanted often much younger women.....I could
>> not
>> >>>>>> buy it as realistic therefore, of course, long before I had heard
>> of
>> >>>>>> hysterical or magical realism..
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> but I must reread and think more...
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> Just sayin'
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> On Wed, Jan 6, 2016 at 4:40 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>> >>>>>>> I've been trying to parse this since that Nabokov discussion
>> couple-three
>> >>>>>>> weeks ago. I'm using my Penguin 2006 version page numbers, but the
>> >>>>>>> PynchonWiki uses a different version (Vintage, I think):
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> During my readings of GR, I've always taken it at face value that
>> Bianca is
>> >>>>>>> 11 or 12 when Slothrop has sex with her: "He gets a glimpse of
>> Margherita
>> >>>>>>> and her daughter, but there is a density of orgy-goers around
>> them that
>> >>>>>>> keeps him at a distance. He knows he's vulnerable, more than he
>> should be,
>> >>>>>>> to pretty little girls, so he reckons it's just as well, because
>> that
>> >>>>>>> Bianca's a knockout, all right: 11 or 12, dark and lovely …"
>> [Penguin, p.
>> >>>>>>> 470-471].
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> But John Krafft makes this argument (see PynchonWiki):
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> http://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Bianca
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> How old IS Bianca?
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> Slothrop thinks, "Bianca's a knockout, alright: 11 or 12, dark
>> and lovely
>> >>>>>>> [...]" (p.463), but how old is Bianca, really? Well ...
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> Bianca is conceived during the filming of Alpdrücken ("I think
>> Bianca is
>> >>>>>>> [Schlepzig's] child. She was conceived while we were filming
>> this." - p.395)
>> >>>>>>> Ilse was conceived after Franz Pökler saw Alpdrücken ("he knew
>> that had to
>> >>>>>>> be the night, Alpdrücken night, that Ilse was conceived." - p.397)
>> >>>>>>> Leni had already given birth to Ilse when she was seeing Peter
>> Sachsa, e.g.
>> >>>>>>> "Ilse is awake, and crying. [...] They ought to try Peter after
>> all. He'll
>> >>>>>>> have milk." (p.163); and Sachsa is killed during a street action
>> in 1930
>> >>>>>>> ("Taken forcibly over in 1930 by a blow from a police truncheon
>> [...]" -
>> >>>>>>> p.152)
>> >>>>>>> Placing Bianca's conception, say, 6 months to a year before Ilse's
>> >>>>>>> (depending on how long it took for Alpdrücken to reach the
>> theatres and how
>> >>>>>>> long it took Franz Pökler to go see it), Bianca's birth would
>> have been in
>> >>>>>>> 1928 or 1929.
>> >>>>>>> Slothrop meets Bianca aboard the Anubis in 1945.
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> Thus Bianca must be 16 or 17, yes? (Thanks to John M. Krafft and
>> to Bernard
>> >>>>>>> Duyfhuizen, of Pynchon Notes, for the above sleuthing.)
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> There's a clear sequence of events: Bianca conceived, then Ilse is
>> >>>>>>> conceived, then, when Ilse is at least a year or so old, Peter
>> Sachsa dies.
>> >>>>>>> And, in a book that doesn't have too many direct references to
>> the date (in
>> >>>>>>> favor of indirect references via historical events like
>> Hirohsima, etc.),
>> >>>>>>> we're given the date of his death: 1930. Case closed?
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> Here are some of my objections to Krafft's time-line:
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> 1. Pynchon's intentions with the Slothrop-Bianca sequence: To me,
>> this
>> >>>>>>> sequence seems very much about Slothrop, pushing 30 [Penguin, p.
>> 471] having
>> >>>>>>> sex with a very underage girl. She looks to him as if she's 11 or
>> 12. Does
>> >>>>>>> Pynchon expect the reader to parse through the book, come up with
>> the
>> >>>>>>> above-mentioned time line and think, "Ah, silly Slothrop, you're
>> not the
>> >>>>>>> creep you think you are for lusting after such a little girl.
>> She's actually
>> >>>>>>> 16 or 17."?  If Bianca is 16 or 17, the ( or "a" ) subtext of the
>> scene
>> >>>>>>> would be Slothrop thinking he's having sex with a much-younger
>> girl, or
>> >>>>>>> Slothrop and Bianca role-playing that she's a much-younger girl.
>> This isn't
>> >>>>>>> impossible. Earlier, at the beginning of the orgy sequence,
>> Margherita and
>> >>>>>>> Bianca are role-playing that she's a Shirley Temple-aged tot who
>> deserves a
>> >>>>>>> good spanking.
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> But it just seems unlikely to me that Pynchon would expect the
>> reader to
>> >>>>>>> read the text this way - certainly not at first reading, anyway.
>> So he must
>> >>>>>>> have, at minimum, been aware that readers would take the 11 or 12
>> age as a
>> >>>>>>> given. Other evidence: Stefania, described as "maybe 18" says:
>> "While they
>> >>>>>>> were away, they left Bianca with us, at Bydgoszcz. She has her
>> bitchy
>> >>>>>>> moments, but she's really a charming child." [Penguin, p. 469].
>> Doesn't
>> >>>>>>> sound like she's discussing a girl near her own age.
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> In the next section, when the sex scene occurs, Slothrop is
>> dreaming of the
>> >>>>>>> White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. A possible reference to
>> Lewis
>> >>>>>>> Carroll's alleged infatuation with Alice Liddell? Carroll broke
>> abruptly
>> >>>>>>> with the Liddell family when Alice was 11. And, of course,
>> there's that
>> >>>>>>> possible connection to 12-year-old Lolita.
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> On p. 477, Bianca's breasts are described as "pre-subdeb." The
>> Sub-debs were
>> >>>>>>> some sort of sorority for high-school girls back in the day.
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> Also: OK, a whole stream of thought: Margherita the
>> child-murderer whom
>> >>>>>>> Bianca must be protected from; Imipolex and Margherita, Imipolex
>> and
>> >>>>>>> Weissmann, Imipolex and Slothrop, Imipolex and Gottfried; Pokler,
>> never sure
>> >>>>>>> of his daughter Ilse, but fantasizing about sex with her; Bianca
>> and Ilse,
>> >>>>>>> their conceptions linked; Gottfried in the rocket, Slothrop
>> inside his own
>> >>>>>>> cock while having sex with Bianca ...
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> So many chemical-rocket-abused kids connections. There are I
>> simply can't
>> >>>>>>> believe that Pynchon expects us to think that Bianca is really 16
>> or 17.
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> 2. But damned, there is that 1930 date! Another time discrepancy:
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> Franz Pokler meets Mondaugen (Penguin, p. 164) right after
>> observing a
>> >>>>>>> failed rocket test. This sequence starts two pages earlier. Leni
>> is pregnant
>> >>>>>>> with Ilse. Franz is earning a living doing odd jobs, and on this
>> day he's
>> >>>>>>> been pasting movie posters on walls (for a Max Schlepzig film).
>> On the next
>> >>>>>>> page, he's wandered into the Reinickendorf neighborhood, where he
>> then
>> >>>>>>> observes a failed rocket test, after which he looks up and sees
>> Mondaugen
>> >>>>>>> (whom he went to technical college - Technische Hochschule - with
>> 7 or 8
>> >>>>>>> years earlier).
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> Here's the description of the static rocket test: "But the light
>> grew
>> >>>>>>> brighter, and the watching figures suddenly started dropping for
>> cover as
>> >>>>>>> the rocket now gave a sputtering roar, a long burst, voices
>> screaming get
>> >>>>>>> down and he hit the dirt just as the silver thing blew apart …"
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> This had to be based on this incident, the static test of a Mirak
>> rocket at
>> >>>>>>> the Reinickendorf facility in May, 1931:
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> "In May 1931 Riedel improvised a rocket, using the thrust chamber
>> developed
>> >>>>>>> for the Mirak, fed by two long tanks containing liquid oxygen and
>> gasoline,
>> >>>>>>> which would form guiding sticks for the forward-mounted engine.
>> The
>> >>>>>>> lashed-together rocket rises to 20 m on its first 'static' test.
>> On 14 May a
>> >>>>>>> flight-weight version of Riedel's 'flying test stand' takes off
>> into a
>> >>>>>>> looping trajectory, sending the VfR experimenters running for
>> cover, but
>> >>>>>>> reaching 60 m altitude in the process."
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/mirak.htm
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> By this reckoning, Ilse is born in 1931, after Sachsa's death.
>> This birth
>> >>>>>>> date, assuming she was conceived months (at minimum) after
>> Bianca, still
>> >>>>>>> makes Bianca about 14 years old at the time Slothrop has sex with
>> her. So is
>> >>>>>>> Sachsa alive or dead when Ilse is born? Is Pynchon positing a
>> fictional
>> >>>>>>> rocket test that took place in 1929 or so? Possibly. But Pynchon
>> really did
>> >>>>>>> his homework on the history of the German rocket program (before
>> and after
>> >>>>>>> the Nazis took over). Would he really torture his
>> carefully-researched facts
>> >>>>>>> just to fit them to Sachsa's 1930 death? There's absolutely no
>> significant
>> >>>>>>> reason that I can find that Sachsa needs to have died in 1930.
>> Could Pynchon
>> >>>>>>> have made a careless mistake? Or maybe Sachsa didn't actually die
>> in 1930?
>> >>>>>>> He's introduced as a ghost-medium during the 1945 seance
>> [Penguin, p. 154],
>> >>>>>>> and is described as having been "forcibly taken over in 1930 by a
>> blow from
>> >>>>>>> a police truncheon." Could "taken over" mean that he gained his
>> insights
>> >>>>>>> into the "other side."? He was leading seances when Leni and baby
>> Ilse
>> >>>>>>> visited him. It's pretty hard to read anything other than death
>> in the words
>> >>>>>>> "taken over," given the context. Again, could Pynchon have been
>> careless
>> >>>>>>> with the choice of 1930? Hard to know what to think here.
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> 3. Other stray points: Pokler never sure if the girl he's with is
>> Ilse.
>> >>>>>>> Could Margherita be abducting, procuring various incarnations of
>> Bianca?
>> >>>>>>> We're told that Bianca was conceived during the filming of
>> Alpdrucken. Was
>> >>>>>>> this some sort of mental conception in Margherita's head - the
>> "idea" of
>> >>>>>>> Bianca was born, and she went on to procure Biancas? Grasping at
>> straws
>> >>>>>>> here. Stefania doesn't believe Bianca even has a father. "I doubt
>> she had a
>> >>>>>>> father. It was parthenogenesis, she's pure Margherita, if pure is
>> the word I
>> >>>>>>> want." [ Penguin, p. 469]
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> Is Pynchon just playing around with Time? I'd believe it if this
>> were ATD.
>> >>>>>>> But the space-time continuum isn't in play in GR, which is very
>> much about
>> >>>>>>> Newtonian physics, or, at least, standard engineering formulae.
>> Correct me
>> >>>>>>> if there's evidence to the contrary.
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> Laura
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> (pardon my laziness in adding the required umlauts)
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>> >>>> -
>> >>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
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