ST Squeezita Thickly

[Robin Landseadel]

On 05/03/2026 6:44 PM PDT Joseph Tracy <coypoet at mailfence.com> wrote:
 
“Good stuff. The novel revolves intensely around the mythologies of
Hollywood, mostly film noir, all at a time when the darker side of movie
world , including the Pedophilia implied with Bruno "dating" his
daughter, is being regularly exposed .
 
Shirley Temple was always fixing things between people with one song and
dance after another, filling some kind of psychological need in the
depression.  One is not sure such a reconciliation is the best thing for
the Airmonts.”


Pynchon might have some other thoughts concerning Shirley Temple:

. . . About here they are interrupted by Margherita and Bianca, playing stage mother and
reluctant child. Whispers to the bandleader, fun seekers crowding eagerly around a cleared
space where Bianca now stands pouting, her little red frock halfway up her slender thighs, with
black lace petticoats peeping from beneath the hem, surely it's going to be something
sophisticated, bigcity, and wicked, but what's she doing with her finger posed aside of one
dimpled cheek like this—at which point comes the band's intro, and pre-vomit saliva begins to
gush into Slothrop's mouth, along with a horrible doubt into his brain about how he is going to
make it through the next few minutes. Not only is her song "On the Good Ship Lollipop," but she
is also now commencing, without a trace of shame, to grunt her way through it, in perfect
mimickry of young Shirley Temple—each straining baby-pig inflection, each curl-toss,
unmotivated smile, and stumbling toe-tap . . . her delicate bare arms have begun to grow fatter,
her frock shorter—is somebody fooling with the lights? But the billowings of asexual child-fat
have not changed her eyes: they remain as they were, mocking, dark, her own . . .
GR 473 P
 
Note how this scene (which devolves into a seriously debauched and incestuous orgy) presents Shirley Temple as a pig.
 
In Shadow Ticket we get an obvious parody of Shirley Temple as an eating machine, the “Eating” song echoing “On The Good Ship Lollipop”:

Ooohh,
Eat-ing, eat-ing!
My, what a thing, to do!
When it’s pea-nut but-ter and
Jel-ly time!
Who’d ev-ver wanna stop, eea-ting?
Pass that ba-na-na cream pi-i-ie—
 
                                                                                    Ooh my!
 
You don’t want conversation? Well
Nei(heehee)ther do I, when we’re
Ee-ea-ting!
ST 219
 
Here’s “The Good Ship Lollipop:

I've thrown away my toys,
Even my drums and trains,
I want to make some noise,
with real live airplanes.
Some day I'm going to fly,
I'll be a pilot to,
and when I do,
how would you,
like to be my crew?
 
On the good ship
lollipop
its a sweet trip
to the candy shop
where bon-bon's play,
on the sunny beach
of peppermint bay
Lemonade stands,
everywhere
 
crackerjack bands,
fill the air,
and there you are,
happy landings on a chocolate bar.
See the sugar bowl
do a tootsie roll
in a big bad devils food cake,
if you eat too much,
oh, oh,
you'll awake,
with a tummy ache.
 
On the good ship
lollipop
its a nice trip,
in to bed you hop,
and dream away,
on the good ship
lollipop

 
Two scenes in Shadow Ticket are set in movie theaters. In the first, the movie is the 1931
"Dracula" starring Bela Lugosi. Note that the usual date within parentheses found in a lot of
Pynchon’s books is absent here, though:

“The Hollywood talkie Dracula opened last year in Chicago on Valentine’s Day . . .”

. . . which manages to provide that information.
 
‘Dracula’ casts a very long shadow across the novel, with obvious implications when we
reach Hungary. 

However, the fictional ‘Bigger Than Yer Stummick’ is dated (1931).
 
The second scene set inside a cinema is of Daphne and Bruno having a “date” (Daphne says
jokingly “Sure, April 23rd, that good?” which just happens to be Shirley Temple’s birthday while also echoing the famous joke from "Miss Congeniality" (2000)) at the MOZIK in Budapest’s
Nagymező utca, watching ‘Bigger Than Yer Stummick’ while stuffing themselves with popcorn
sprinkled in goose fat and paprika. Both 'cinema' scenes involve excess quantities of popcorn,
make of that what you will. In the case of “Shadow Ticket” there is the implication of incest
between Bruno and Daphne, though unlike GR there’s nothing explicit here, just some suggestive photos in the scandal rags and a stray thought or two.
 
“. . . The feature they’re here tonight to see is Bigger Than Yer Stummick (1931), the latest hit
starring child sensation Squeezita Thickly, which is about, well, eating, actually. Back in the
States, every showing of this movie, no matter where, has collapsed well before the second reel
into civic disorder—screens across the nation presently inscribed with knife scars, fork tracks,
spoon indentations as audiences, many of whom haven’t seen a square meal since the start of
the Depression . . .”
ST 219

“So what’d you think of the picture?”
 
“Didn’t care for the firefight at the end. The rifle grenades and so forth.”

“Did seem to go on a little too long.”
 
“Well . . . not long enough, actually.”
ST 221

“If Daphne has been hoping for something incestuous but romantic, she’s once again reminded
how very little anybody can put past Bruno.”
ST 222


"I'll be back . . ."