A very different but plausible take on Slothrop and Bianca

[Michel]

Yes Nice Laura and Tory.

  Don't know if the PMC still keeps the articles in text format, but I 
remember enjoying this one:
Duyfhuizen, Bernard. "'A suspension forever at the hinge of doubt': The 
Reader-Trap of Bianca in Gravity's Rainbow." Postmodern Culture 2.1 
(September 1991): 37 par.

Michel.

Op 10-1-2016 21:52, Mark Kohut schreef:
> Like.
>
> On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 3:36 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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]
>>
>>
>>
>> The passage McHale refers to is on page 302 of Gravi­ty’s Rainbow[ii], 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
>>>
>>> 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
>>>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l
>

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l