VLVL Rex and Weed

[Terrance]

> >
> > 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.

I agree. But she's not lying when she says that the 24fps film
collective and the PR3 
each started out with a belief in "100% no-foolin'-around solidarity"
and "we can't shut anybody out" and so on.  

> 
> > 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. 


My point is that the novel's work theme isn't confined to the  satirical
and parodic depiction of the limited success, the failure of the college
kids and the working class to work together,  of the "New Left" in the
1960s. The Work & Repression theme may not be the only problem the novel
plumbs,  but it's certainly  one of the problem themes that holds the
novel together; connects the characters, in particular the Prairie's
families, it links up various settings, ties into the historical events
that are either alluded to or fictionalized (May Events in France, Cuba,
Czechoslovakia, Berkeley, San Joaquin Valley Farm Labor Organization,) 
and so on.  


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. 

Yes, while the novel extensive portrayal of the climax in the United
States does serve as the core of the rotten apple, the worms of
Repression crawling out and crawling in, high up and low down, the
Repression goes on and on ... the names of the people in power, the
political parties shift and change, but the repression of the worker
goes and on. In fact, I think we agree,  the novel satirizes both the
acrimonious partisans on the Left and the Right and partisans of every
stripe and shade by exposing their self-serving hypocrisies, Turns,
Betrayals, Impurities, Foibles, Follies, Greed, Weaknesses Human and
Dehumanizing . We can see how this works by looking closely at any of
theses characters,  Rex, Weed, Flash, Sasha, Hub, Hector (just a random
selection off the top of my head). 


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.

Not at all. I agree with what you say here about Frenesi and her part
and about there being a  big difference in terms of objectives and
tactics and so on. My point (clarified above) was that both started out
with a belief in "100% no-foolin'-around solidarity" and "we can't shut
anybody out." Of course this idea was not a cornerstone in PR3 for the
same reasons that it was at 24fps. 


> 
> 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*.

I thinks you're right, but it's a possibility. Frenesi is a busy lady,
flying back and fourth from Weed to Brock. Rex's sexuality is curious, a
purse, a car named Bruno. Like DL, I forger what she named her car, his
sexual relations with Frenesi are subjunctive. Frenesi has Flash and
Zoyd and more Brock along with  a string of clients on deck.