VLVL Rex Snuvvle

[jbor]

on 12/2/04 7:07 AM, Terrance wrote:

> Rex is a fanatical fool and he's stupid to give BAAD his car. He has sex
> with his car, names it Bruno. He  gives it up because he's a a
> masochistic radical. Pynchon puts a rod through Rex and roasts him on a
> pit of satire. Frenesi approves of his giving up the car. She tells him
> he did the right thing. It easy enough to conclude from this alone that
> Rex did the wrong thing. But he also kills Weed. He wants to kill
> Frenesi. He's easily manipulated out of his car not because he has
> beliefs or because he holds true, but because he a fanatic. And he's off
> to join what, exactly? Rex would be better off if he got out of the
> college world, maybe put down all that political stuff and read On The
> Road, Zen & the Art of Porsche Maintenance, get comfortable in his own
> skin again, but he's a guilty white boy. Pynchon is satirizing all the
> white intellectuals who went to North Vietnam, Cuba, so on.

I couldn't disagree more. Rex is easily manipulated, I agree, but it's not
his ideological convictions which are satirised. I think you're overlooking
the "before" and "after" sequence of events which the chapter presents.
Early on, before Frenesi takes the gun, she thinks she still has some
control over what will happen, that she might be able to influence Brock
(even if she's only kidding herself). After she takes the gun it's game
over. Conversations and events which occur before that pivotal moment have a
different texture and tenor to those which occur after.

best