A very different but plausible take on Slothrop and Bianca

Sun Jan 10 14:36:32 CST 2016

IIRC, I didn't twig until Bernard Duyfhuizen's  "Starry-Eyed Semiotics:
Learning to Read Slothrop's Map and *Gravity's Rainbow" *in Pynchon Notes:

Much of the critical writing devoted to *Gravity's Rainbow* portrays the
relationship between Tyrone Slothrop and his star-studded map of London as
follows: "Tyrone's London map, recording in varicolored stars the sites of
his affairs, starts one of the major threads of the novel"; "On a map of
London Slothrop has placed stars to designate the inordinate number of his
sexual conquests [...]; they correspond exactly with the impact points of
the V-2's"... etc. etc.

...Recently, Brian McHale revealed  ["Modernist Reading, Post-Modern
Text:  The Case of Gravity's Rainbow," *Poetics Today*, 1, No. 1-2 (1979),
94] the probable unreliability of Slothrop's map:

Slothrop's sexual conquests in London are crucial to the plot of *Gravity's
Rainbow, *since they provide the first evidence of that affinity for the
V-2 blitz which will determine Slothrop's subsequent career in the novel.
So it is with some dismay that we later learn from Slothrop himself that at
least some of these conquests were simply erotic fantasies, not real girls.
[i]
<file:///D:/Documents/Pynchon/Duyfhuizen%20-%20Starry-Eyed%20Semiotics.doc#_edn1>

The passage McHale refers to is on page 302 of *Gravity’s Rainbow*[ii]
<file:///D:/Documents/Pynchon/Duyfhuizen%20-%20Starry-Eyed%20Semiotics.doc#_edn2>,
where Slothrop recalls the "gentlemanly reflex that made him edit, switch
names, insert fantasies into the yarns he spun for Tantivy back in the
ACHTUNG office." We will have more to say about this passage presently, but
for now, McHale's statement, and Pynchon's via Slothrop, necessitate that
we rethink our readings of Slothrop's map, and re-approach the novel with
an understanding that one of the "major [yarns] of the novel" is more
tangled and knotted than we had previously thought.

On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 3:07 PM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:

> So it's possibly a map of sexual fantasies?
>
> Www.innergroovemusic.com <http://www.innergroovemusic.com>
>
> On Jan 10, 2016, at 3:00 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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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