VLVL PR3 and "the Movement"

[jbor]

Innocent festivity ruled far into the night, not much by Berkeley or
Columbia standards, maybe, though Rex did manage to place Weed in what
looked like the emerging junta. (208)

on 9/2/04 12:26 AM, Terrance wrote:

> If there is no irony in the comparison why not some other schools, say
> San Francisco State and Chicago University? Or NYU or Georgetown? Why,
> from dozens of schools where uprising are taking place at this time, are
> these two schools compared with the College of the Surf?

We've covered this. The protests at Berkeley in '64 and Columbia in '68 were
milestones in the history of "the Movement", and this is the comparison Rex
is making when he reflects that PR3 was "not much by Berkeley or Columbia
standards". And he's right: PR3 isn't much by those "standards",
particularly in terms of what Rex is specifically interested and immersed in
(S-E Asian history, "the truth" about America's war in Vietnam, Trotskyism,
the Fourth International (207), "American realities" (208), "the Revolution"
(229), allegiance with black civil rights activists etc etc) The one
consolation for Rex, however, is that he has managed "to place Weed in what
looked like the emerging junta", therefore earning his chance to snag a
share of the limelight vicariously through his "protégé" (229).

> Were any of those bottles of wine in the hotel rooms Frenesi slept in,
> the one in the fantasy about Weed and Rex, California wines, made with
> grapes picked by workers in the valley.

The "promotional magnum" of champagne she and Brock drink in Oklahoma is
made from "a Concord grape variety imported from Arkansas" (214); the
dream-future wine is "some chilly gold-green California Chenin Blan" (232),
but there's no connection to Frenesi; and at Rex's they drink "Pancho
Bandido", which is "a fortified demographic wine, analogous to Night Train
or Annie Green Springs" (243). Nothing here links to Chavez or 1966. Note
also that Frenesi's film of the striking farm workers takes place "at the
edge of a pure green feathery field of artichokes" (198).

> we shouldn't fail to see the obvious connection to
> the role of Communists and anti-Communists in the labor struggles that
> Pynchon outlines

Wha?? Passage? Page?

best