VLVL Rex Snuvvle

[jbor]

> We agree that Rex is easily manipulated.

Yes, no question about it. And he's an idealist. But like all the characters
he has redeeming qualities, and he is allowed authentic moments of insight,
such as his recognition that the version of the war in Vietnam which he'd
been "indoctrinated in" -- like everyone else -- by the American government,
was not "the truth" (207.20-3), and when he rebuffs Weed for his "racist
bullshit" (229.27), and when he realises that Frenesi is an "infiltrator"
(232.2), and when he warns Weed about the "closed ideological minds passing
on the Christian Capitalist Faith" and advises him to "bail out" because of
the fanaticism of these zealots and the danger they pose (232.5-14). And,
there *is* nobility (amidst the burlesque) when Rex sacrifices his beloved
Porsche to BAAD.

I don't see Pynchon's characters or his work as a black and white neo-con
job at all. I agree that _Vineland_ recognises and lampoons the failures of
the Left, but the upshot or residue of the satire and pessimism is not an
endorsement of American Conservatism and American capitalism in the
slightest. I think that through his fiction Pynchon is constantly seeking
after or yearning for a better way to put the principles of tolerance and
community into practice.

best

> His ideology (his revolutionary ideology, 229.31-230.2) and his
> fanaticism are the targets of the harshest satire in the novel. He
> doesn't know shit about what's going on outside of his small world where
> typewriters are clacking deep into the night. Rex turns from one extreme
> to another extreme. Bad mother fucker. Novel after novel Pynchon says,
> Never trust a man like Rex no matter his ideology, he's a zealot and
> sooner or later he's gonna get himself or someone dead. Rex will kill,
> Rex wants to suffer, to be locked up, to be tortured, he's a fanatic, a
> zealot, a madman. Pynchon has been satirizing extremists for his entire
> career. He began doing so in the novel V. That's one reason why I
> contend that the Playboy crap contradicts everything he's ever written.
> Pynchon never says American needs an enemy. That's Radical Left BS.