Is Judith Linhares’ “Polly” the “Polly Madison” in Vonnegut’s novel?

 

As soon as we saw the image of the Polly painted by Judith Linhares currently on show at Lisa Cooely, we went back to Circe Berman, the female main character of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel “Bluebeard”, one of our favorite sources. Circe is a successful novelist who writes under the pen name of “Polly Madison” and her books, according to some people, “are destroying the fabric of American society, telling teenage girls that they can get pregnant if they’re not careful and so on”. Or, according to a certain television evangelist mentioned in the book, “Satan was making a four-pronged attack on the American family with communism, drugs, rock and roll, and books by Satan’s sister, who was Polly Madison”. On the other side, it would be enough to say that Linhares came to prominence during, as she puts it, “the socially turbulent “take-it-to-the-streets” days of feminism, underground comics, and poetic reverie in Northern California”. Is it just a coincidence?

September 7, 2014