VLVL Rex Snuvvle

[jbor]

> 
>>> Maybe someone that lived back in those late days of 68-69 can tell us
>>> why P alludes to Talleyrand. Why did the SDSers invoke Talleyrand?
> 
> 
> I thought it was just that one specific Talleyrand quote as it
> ironically applied to Weed's unwillingness or inability to react to the
> ideas issuing from the young militants.

Of course, but there's also the irony of Rex citing Talleyrand, one of the
great political opportunists of all time. He jumped ship from Louis XVI to
the revolutionaries, then to England, to America, back to Barras, to
Napoleon, to the Allies in the middle of the Napoleonic Wars, to the
Bourbons, to Louis Phillippe, and then back to the church on his deathbed.

The allusion to Talleyrand invokes the French Revolutionary period and its
aftermath, another "left" uprising that went horribly, horribly wrong, just
like Indochinese communism did in the second half of last century. And,
perhaps Pynchon's point, just like the '60s student rebellion (and beyond)
in the U.S.

That Talleyrand is also referred to in Sale's book (is he?) makes Pynchon's
reference a pointed one rather than just a random quote, imo.

best


It reminds me of George Bush's
> failure to emit any vocal reaction in his early meetings with Paul
> O'Neill. (as described on sixty minutes and in the press yesterday)
> 
>