VLVL What's it all "about"?

[jbor]

> Like the Turning of the movement itself, Rex becomes frustrated (with
> the failures of his protégé, Weed,

    Though Rex wouldn't have called it purity, he'd still expected
    from Weed more thought, less wallowing in the everyday. (229)

It's a fair enough call I think.

> with Frenesi, 

    He had no more illusions about infiltrators than he did about
    sunshine revolutionaries [...] (232)

Again, he's spot on.

> with Eliot X, with the
> People)

He's not frustrated with Elliot X or "the People".

>, becomes desperate, picks up a gun, kills his brother.

Rex shoots Weed because Frenesi has convinced him that Weed is working for
the FBI.

> There is
> bitter irony in the fact that Weed tells the People that now is not the
> time to take up arms against the Man. The Man, Weed argues,  will only
> blow you away with a Rocket. Some readers, too quick to blame the Man
> for every human weakness, fail to see the parallels in Ortho Bob's
> desire for revenge and how Vato and Blood betray their brothers in arms
> and are directly  responsible for the deaths of the fellow soldiers.

But what if their government hadn't sent them to wage an unjust war in the
first place, which is part of "the truth" which Rex has come to see (207),
and which is also certainly a big part of the karma that needs to be
"adjusted".

> You see, Rex is a fanatic. Rex is a very dangerous and very
> sick man. Rex is an extremist. He's in love with his car. Exposing his
> latent homosexuality, he names his car Bruno and begins carrying a
> purse. 

I think the car and fringe bag precede his involvement with PR3. He's not
dangerous until Frenesi provokes him to a frenzy.

> OK, nothing wrong with that, I suppose, although this is a
> Pynchon novel and homosexuality, like abortion, and sex with machines,
> is symbolic of gnostic anti-life decadence and the worship of Death &
> Pornography in Pynchon's novels.

This is a bit of a muddle. DL and Frenesi's homosexuality isn't symbolic of
"gnostic anti-life decadence" at all, and nor are Frenesi's or Zoyd's
similar masturbation episodes.

> Rex puts his penis in the car's
> carburetor and has sex with it. What's more, Rex's fanaticism is
> religious in  nature and is Atheistic. Not a good combination in a
> Pynchon novel.

There's no basis in the texts to ascribe these biases to Pynchon.

best