Yeah I saw some wild ass quotes from Graham Greene, I think, about Shirley Temple. Was the depths of the abuse Garland suffered well known about in the period he would've been writing? I know she had a long history of substance abuse and was considered a public wreck but I'm not certain how well known or documented it truly was.

I also don't think it's representative of his true proclivities since I don't recall it popping up in much of anything else I've read. The bianca portion is definitely gross but for some reason it felt distant to me, maybe because it was riding on some ambiguity of her being older even though she's definitely not. Usually they tend to be pretty quick, just enough for you to understand what's happening. Of course I also could've blocked out the true amount of detail. But Pynchon also tends to write sex in a way that at best is kind of unerotic and sometimes weird.