A very different but plausible take on Slothrop and Bianca

[Monte Davis]

Also, or course, intrepid detectives Perdoo and Speed discover that some
(most? all?) of the stars on Slothrop's map -- ostensibly recording his
sexual encounters, and therefore the crucial link in the precognitive-penis
connection to A4 impacts -- do not correspond to real women, e.g. the
ever-so-sweet Darlene Quoad.

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 2:49 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> Tore Rye Andersen sent me his interpretation of the sequence off-list and
> gave the OK to post it. I find his arguments very persuasive:
>
> Have you considered that the whole scene with Bianca may be simply a
> dream/fantasy by Slothrop? I believe there is some textual evidence to
> support this theory: 1) Slothrop is prone to vivid fantasies about girls,
> and these fantasies are often presented as 'real' - that is, the narrator
> doesn't explicitly point out their status as fantasy (see e.g. the orgy
> under Nordhausen on the top of p. 304). Might the scene with Bianca be yet
> another fantasy, just more elaborate than the others? The latter part of
> the scene certainly slides into fantasy, when Slothrop is inside his own
> cock - which is also somehow the rocket. 2) Or might it all be a dream? The
> chapter starts with Slothrop waking from a dream about Llandudno. Then he
> wakes, more or less, and in the corner of his vision "he catches a flutter
> of red" - note the uncertainty here. And then, crucially, after exchanging
> a few comments with her (if it is really her), we get this: "Hmm. Maybe
> he'll go back to sleep, here" (468) - and then the sex scene unfolds. I
> think an argument can be made that he does indeed go back to sleep. At
> least, the possibility remains open, which does give the remaining scene a
> somewhat ambiguous status. Maybe it happened, maybe Slothrop
> dreamt/fantasized it (which doesn't let him off the moral hook, of course).
> On p. 492-493 Bianca once again 'visits' Slothrop as he sleeps, and once
> again it is not specifically pointed out as a dream.
>
> A few additional observations: Shirley Temple is mentioned during the
> imaginary orgy on p. 304. The next time she's mentioned is when Bianca
> imitates Shirley Temple on p. 466, and then she's mentioned again on p.
> 493, when Bianca 'visits' Slothrop in a dream (and his own voice suddenly
> sounds just like Shirley Temple's). So there seems to be a pattern
> involving Shirley Temple/fantasy/imaginary orgy/Bianca.
>
> Just to play the Devil's advocate with regard to my own theory, there's a
> small detail on p. 481 that would seem to indicate that Slothrop did have
> sex with Bianca: he apparently finds her frock "with a damp trace of his
> own semen still at the hem" - but then again: is it really her dress, and
> can Slothrop really recognize his own semen? And what's more, the other
> semen stain Slothrop encounters in the novel (on p. 297, under Nordhausen)
> is fake, planted there for the tourists.
>
> At any rate, I believe that the sex scene with Bianca confirms Tony
> Tanner's point that readers of GR are never entirely sure whether they are
> in a bombed-out building or a bombed-out mind. Is the baby smiling, or is
> it just gas? Which do you want it to be?
>
>
> [ and another bit of evidence for Tore's theory - the sequence (Penguin,
> p. 427-8) where Pokler has a sudden fantasy about having sex with his young
> daughter. This goes on for a long paragraph, but concludes with: "No. What
> Pokler did was choose to believe … " etc.]
>
> Laura
> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
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