VLVL Rex and Weed

[Terrance]

> 
> > Frenesi had nothing to do with Weed's decision to collaborate
> > with Brock via Dr. Elasmo. It was appropriate that he be outted.
> 
> Hang on. Frenesi is sleeping with Brock. She lies about Weed being a snitch
> at Brock's request: in fact, she's the snitch (and it seems that Weed, Rex
> and DL suspect this even before the final showdown).

Sure they do. They've all been sleeping with Frenesi. She's a very
powerful lover, the kind that can drive men or women mad. Brock, of
course, doesn't quite fit into the man or women category. 

Rex is pissed off at Weed because Weed hasn't turned out to be the
protégé he had hoped to produce, but there is a sexual anger as well
(it's homophobic, homoerotic, hetero-envious and the narrator invites us
to consider all of these possible contexts at page 233, the object in
Rex's purse, pants ... ). We will need to wait and see about Brock's
sexual idiosyncrasies, but we are getting a few clues to them in these
two chapters (Motel and Murder Chapters). We should also consider the
Light that excites Frenesi in the Motel scene and her rejection of the
TV evangelist weatherman. 

"What are you looking at?" Rex clearly agitated and getting more so. 
"Nothing." 
"you were looking at my bag. You think my bag is nothing?" 
"you seem upset tonight, Rex, what is it?" 

They both new it was Frenesi ... After a series of consultations with
the others in the unit, DL had suggested to Howie, who admitted he could
use a break from the Pisk's Trasero-heightened surphobia, that he find a
way to keep and eye on Frenesi. 

VL.233.28-234.1

Also, Jinx is spying on everyone too. 

Lot of Katje and Blicero oven games here. Moving for the camera alone. 
Notice that when Frenesi is filming the farm workers, she is herself
being filmed, and she digs it, she senses the camera sucking up her
image. It's her first step into the LIGHT. 



And, as with the worms, children's games. 
Pynchon's source has been identified and I've mentioned it a few times, 

_The Lore And Language Of School Children_
Iona & Peter Opie, Introduction by Marina Warner, 1959

Feminist readings simply miss the mark because Frenesi is no Nora (even
though Ibsen never intended to make a feminist statement). Frenesi's
Doll House, where she pretends to speak with DL and Sasha, is a sacred
space, recall that V plays colonial games with her dolls while in Church
and that her inverted Catholicism includes a Black Mass. 


A medium of exchange (in GR Katje terms), Frenesi doesn't quite
understand her power or why she can't use it on Brock, but she knows
what he wants. She wants it more than him. She wants to put her Light on
it. 



She understood as clearly as she could allow herself to what Brock
wanted her to do, understood at last, dismally, that she might even do
it-not for him, unhappy fucker, but because she had lost just too much
control, time was rushing all around her, these were rapids, and as far
ahead as she could see it looked like Brock's stretch of the river,
another stage, like sex, children, surgery, further into adulthood
perilous and real, into the secret that life is soldiering, that
soldiering includes death, that those soldiered for, not yet and often
never in on the secret, are always, at every age, children. 
(VL.216.16-25).