VLVL the collapse of the Youth Movement

[Bandwraith at aol.com]

In a message dated 2/21/04 6:11:47 PM, jbor at bigpond.com writes:

<< She's working for Brock >>


She's following her instincts. Brock would like to think he
controls her, but clearly that's wishful thinking. She's a 
soldier. Sometimes soldiers have to retreat and wait for 
another day. Weed's a loser. Brock will be one.

<< Without Frenesi's active intervention Weed would not have been killed. Even
she recognises and accepts the fact that she bears the burden of
responsibility for what happened ("What she would then have to bear with her
all her life ... " 245-6). >>

Weed dies because Brock is jealous and enraged. He can't
control Frenesi's pussy and that makes him angry. That's 
not Frenesi's problem or fault. 

<< And, in the larger scheme of things, it's Frenesi's work which directly
causes the collapse of PR3, and she realises this when she congratulates
Brock that his plan has been so successful:

      "It's all coming apart. Suddenly everybody's got a pay-off story
    to tell, total paranoia." (239) >>

PR3 was doomed before it got started. Rex was in place and
operative. Brock's jealousy of Weed's penis in Frenesi's pussy 
caused Weed's death. 

<<The other point I've made several times now is that Brock is also guilty >>

"also guilty"? If Brock had been able to control his jealousy
and anger, Weed would be alive, and PR3 would have collapsed
at the end of the semester, or soon thereafter. This "movement"
had no legs. The school itself was living on borrowed time.

I'm afraid you've managed to confuse the plot of Vineland with
what actually happened in the sixties, as if College of the
Surf and PR3 are in any way representative of some putative
"hippies" and  the "Youth Movement." Perhaps there are some
resemblances to some people, but you have not made the case
that College of the Surf and PR3 are to be considered anything
more than fiction. In fact, the author makes it clear that they
are not representative of the more noteworthy activism of the
60's, or its cause.

respectfully


<< After DL drops her off at "Las Suegras" Frenesi has no friends and no place
left to go. So she latches on to the first dupe she finds: Zoyd. And Zoyd,
looking back now, realises that he "must've been an easy mark" and beats
himself up because she was able to fool him into believing "how innocent she
was" (41-2). Their marriage is one big con job from start to finish, just
like their wedding. And, the *real* issues of the day (the government's war
in Vietnam, the murder of political activists like MLK, Malcolm X and
others, and the slaughter of African-Americans and incineration of their
communities), have been totally forgotten. These issues never figured much
on the hippies' agenda in the first place, but Frenesi is the link here back
to the Youth Movement, and in what she has done and wrought at College of
the Surf in bringing about the destruction of PR3 and the Movement she has
also betrayed these causes. The issues haven't been set aside just for the
day of the wedding -- this completely misses Pynchon's point here -- these
events are now "off on some other planet". It's as though they never
happened, and so the causes have been irrevocably lost as a result.

    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)
 >>