VLVL Rex and Weed

[jbor]

> 
>> I tend to think that in _Vineland_ Pynchon perceives and depicts the problem
>> with the '60s Youth Movement and the way they tried to set up an opposition
>> to the "fascist" government is that it took in all-comers -- infiltrators,
>> zealots, extremists, hypocrites, monomaniacs, loonies, druggies -- which
>> both sped up its collapse as a coherent political entity and which also made
>> the Conservative government seem like -- or just made it -- the lesser of
>> two evils. 
> 
> I disagree. It's certainly true that one of Frenesi's ideas about
> Revolutionary Organizations is "100% no-foolin'-around solidarity ... we
> can't shut anybody out ..." and it's certainly the case that this idea
> is also a cornerstone in PR3. VL.235.25-37

Surely there's enormous irony in this speech of Frenesi's. She's lying
through her teeth in order to "pick a lock as straightforward as Howie's"
(236.1) and cover the fact that she's the snitch. Her duplicity here
highlights the fact that there isn't any "solidarity", and that this is a
major part of the problem.

> And we know where Frenesi got this idea, her mother and grandmother ...
> IWW, Joe Hill. And that's not all she got from Joe Hill & Co.
> 
> And Frenesi is one of the keys to the problem Pynchon perceives and
> fictionalizes. 
> 
> 
> 
> However,  Pynchon neither perceives nor depicts the problem of the '60's
> youth movement as Frenesi's political problem or Frenesi's sexual
> problem or Frenesi's ideas about political revolution or Light or
> anything else.  
> 
> The problem is work.

I don't agree that the only issue or problem Pynchon depicts in the novel is
the inability of the students to get together with the workers, though that
might indeed be a small part of it (the loss of the civil rights and
anti-War focus is as prominent in the text, if not more so), but I agree
that Frenesi isn't the problem with PR3, and I haven't said she was. I think
that Pynchon briefly addresses the fact that the Wobblies early in the
century, and the anti-war movement in the late '30s, and the Hollywood
unions of the '50s, were ineffectual -- that they were repressed,
infiltrated, subverted, co-opted, but also that they lost direction and
bickered themselves into fragments, just like the Youth Movement of the
'60s, which is portrayed far more extensively. And keep in mind that
Frenesi, as well as being Brock's whore, is a member of 24fps, which
represents the alternative media -- she's not a member of PR3. There's a big
difference between the two organisations -- they don't share the same goals
at all -- and, added to this, within *both* 24fps and PR3 there are various
internal factions that are working at cross purposes to one another as well.
You seem to want to lump everything in together to make one part of your
argument and then to separate it all out again to suit another part.

On another point, I don't agree that Rex is sleeping with Frenesi, or that
he's vying with Weed for her. I think that he's more like Jinx -- jealous of
the fact that Frenesi has snared *Weed*.

best