VLVL Rex Snuvvle

[jbor]

Toby,

> I'm doing my best, man.  If I skip over things, please continue to fill
> in the gaps!

No offence meant, obviously. You have always been a very polite person,
which is unusual enough around here for a start. You seem to me to be
chopping and changing in regard to which characters you deem to be "good"
and "bad" -- Rex at first was a "dope" who Pynchon makes "unmerciful fun
of", now he's "sympathetic" -- and some of the details in your "plot
summaries" were incorrect, such as the contention that the students at
College of the Surf were the offspring of the wealthy locals. You've also
made some fairly controversial statements about the Youth Movement, Vietnam,
MLK and so on. I tend not to agree with many of your interpretations, such
as that Frenesi is represented by Pynchon as "completely reprehensible", or
that Hector is meant to be "insane", but I sort of feel OK about engaging
you in conversation and discussion. Let me know if that isn't OK.

I actually think ("woolgathering and innocent") Weed is portrayed as a
scatter-brained and selfish academic with little to no political commitment
or social conscience, and who lords it over something which approaches a
harem. His elevation to authority amongst the students is comical and
largely arbitrary (206.25-207.12): it occurs because of his height, even
before they arrive at Rex's. I don't find much evidence of "positive energy"
in respect of PR3 at all.

best

> Snuvvle was a grad student who in the course of his Southeast Asian
> Studies discovered that the government had lied and was lying about the
> war in Vietnam. But since he is an academic, his research carries into
> more and more obscure details of the history of revolution in Vietnam
> until he focuses upon a Pynchonian creation named The Bolshevik Leninist
> Group of Vietnam, a group of Trotskyites trained in France and sent to
> Vietnam in 1953 and promptly disappeared.  Snuvvle adores this group with
> religious fervor, expressing hope for their resurrection like Christians
> awaiting the Second Coming.
> 
> You refer my statement that  Pynchon's work contained "a moral focus that
> is clearly left leaning if we may broadly interpret "left" as being
> sympathetic to the poor and powerless."
> 
> Snuvvle is, although a very minor character, clearly sympathetic, in that
> he is obsessed with the fate of 500 people who in all likelihood were
> brutally murdered by the Viet Cong.  Snuvvle's only act in the novel is
> to promote Weed amongst the members of ADHOC so that Weed becomes the
> leader of the group.  There is no evidence that this was done for any
> personal gain on Snuvvle's part.