A very different but plausible take on Slothrop and Bianca

[ish mailian]

Mapping the "Unmappable": Inhabiting the Fantastic Interface of 'Gravity's
Rainbow.'
By Noya, Jose Liste

On Sun, 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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