VLVL Ditzah and Rex

[jbor]

>> It's just as
>> likely that, like the Pisks, he has come from a privileged background which
>> allowed him to save up and buy the Porsche and live at the apartment at Las
>> Nalgas Beach.
> 
> Somehow frozen danishes, second hand battle fatigues and the
> mention of a common department store seem a little less "privi-
> ledged" than Rex's porsche, the seaside digs and the carefree grad
> student existence... nice cover, if you can swing it.

I think the text is slightly more sympathetic to Rex on this score than to
Ditzah, but the comparison isn't made in the text anyway so it's a moot
point. But there does seem to be a deliberate emphasis on the fact that so
many of the '60s student "Left" came from privileged middle class
backgrounds -- as an element of Pynchon's critique of the counterculture
it's a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, of course, but it's certainly
present, and a valid observation to make.

Compare:

      "That night Sledge drove us right into the middle of a drug
    bust?" Ditzah cackled, "Me and Zipi smoking shit somebody
    marinated in DMT, couldn't keep a thought in our heads, we
    kept wanderin' off and you'd have to go find us-- "
      "Thought that was the hash in the hot fudge sundaes."
      "No, that was Gallup, the hot fudge. . . . " (196)

    [...] Rex had once owned this Porsche 911, as red as a cherry
    in a cocktail, his favorite toy creature, his best disguise, his
    personal confidant, and more, in fact all that a car could be
    for a man, and it's fair to say Rex had made a tidy emotional
    as well as cash investment -- indeed, he would not have flinched
    from the word "relationship". (230)

I get the sense that Pynchon wants to drive home the fact that Ditzah's main
priority was stuffing herself full of food and drugs, and the way it's
presented it's as if she and Zipi are accustomed to living in the lap of
luxury and just took for granted all the material excesses that the text
enumerates, as if they've never wanted for anything. With Rex, there's the
implication that he has had to save up to buy the Porsche (the credit and
repayments angle Paul notes); in terms of Rex's ideological stance his
ownership of it -- and the cherry in a cocktail simile -- are enormously
ironic, however.

best