VLVL the collapse of the Youth Movement

[jbor]

>> If the facts as we know them were presented to an impartial judge and jury
>> then Rex, Frenesi and Brock would be charged and sentenced.
> 
> Impartiality, like Newtonian Spacetime, is probably an antiquated and
> unwarranted idealization. The facts as "we" know them, are in dispute.

Actually, the facts as we know them are in the text. Though there are some
things which we don't know, such as what goes on when Weed visits Elasmo, or
whether Rex, or Jinx, are actually spying and informing for someone (there
are hints, but nothing is conclusive -- it's deliberately left indeterminate
by Pynchon), as readers we know quite a bit more than most of the
characters. For example, we know for certain the extent of Frenesi's role in
infiltrating PR3 for Brock, setting up Weed, and delivering the gun to Rex:
these are facts which she conceals from the grand jury. Should an impartial
judge and jury -- and whether or not the U.S. legal system is up to that
task is irrelevant to the text -- had an impartial judge and jury been
presented with the facts that we as readers have access to then Rex, Frenesi
and Brock would all go down.

Of course, Frenesi bears the burden of moral guilt for Weed's murder and the
collapse of PR3. In terms of plot chronology, the next stop for Frenesi
after DL drops her off at Las Suegras (p. 261 -- Las Suegras = "the
mothers-in-law" and is not a real place, and so is likely to be significant
as a name) is the wedding, where Pynchon satirises the final year of the
"Mellow Sixties", in the memories of the hippies present, as the equivalent
of a Hallmark greeting card (38-9).

It's Frenesi, and traitors like her, who, in the greater scheme of things,
have been responsible for the collapse of the Youth Movement, and for the
setting aside of the *real* issues of the day:

        War in Vietnam, murder as an instrument of American
        politics, black neighborhoods torched to ashes and
        death, all must have been off on some other planet. (38)

best