Tuesday, August 10, 2004

R.I.P. Fay Wray

She died yesterday, at age 96.

Gravity's Rainbow, p. 688-689:
Slothrop, who is wearing a blonde wig and the same flowing white cross-banded number Fay Wray wears in her screentest scene with Robert Armstrong on the boat (considering his history in the Roseland toilet, Slothrop may have chosen this gown not only out of some repressed desire to be sodomized, unimaginably, by a gigantic black ape, but also because of an athletic innocence to Fay that he's never spoken of except to point and whisper, "Oh, look. . ." -- some honesty, pluck, a cleanness to the garment itself, its enormous sleeves so that wherever you pass is visibly where you've been. . .)
The "flowing white cross-banded number" may be this one. (Thanks to Otto Sell and Dave Monroe for the pynchon-l heads-up.)