VLVL Frenesi

[jbor]

Toby:
> I don't think Vond cares what Frenesi does, as long as he is able to
> control her.  Power means everything to him, love nothing.  He feels no
> affection for Frenesi, he only wants to move her around on the
> chessboard.

Brock gets pretty pissed off and cut when she leaves him (see, eg. 69), and
I think there's evidence enough of his jealousy, as well as his opportunism
in using her to get at Weed, in the conversation between Frenesi and he on
pp. 213-6.

> , Frenesi wants to "redeem"  Vond,  but what does this mean?  Turn him
> into husband material? Change his politics?  It's very vague in Frenesi's
> mind and for good reason: she doesn't have a clue what she's doing other
> than attempting to justify henious actions with the justification that
> maybe she can turn Vond from a vampire into a human being.

Frenesi herself realises that it's a vague and perhaps hopeless cause, but
it's both personal and political, as I said, and there it is. No-one else in
the novel so far seems to have much of a clue about what they're doing --
apart, that is, from gratuitous self-justification -- so Frenesi's not alone
in that. In fact, she's much more clear-sighted than most of the others.

Note that Weed, DL and Rex all suspect or realise that Frenesi's up to
something, that she's an "infiltrator" of some description, and yet they
don't do anything about it. Note that a gun suddenly appears out of nowhere
in Rex's bag and he doesn't for a moment question how it got there. Note
that Brock tells Frenesi that he and Weed "communicate" (214.2-3, 214.8),
and about Weed's "therapy sessions" in San Diego (240).

> Yes Frenesi is pathetic in this scene, but to me it is sickeningly
> pathetic.

I disagree, and I think that the text is concerned with explaining what
Frenesi was thinking and doing rather than condemning her outright. It's not
just some venal and bloodless betrayal on her part. Pynchon could have
written it like that, but he didn't.

best


>> But note also how Brock says to her, "I didn't think you'd ever get into it
>> with Atman, either." (216.13)
>> 
>> It seems that Frenesi's affair with Weed wasn't ever a part of Brock's
>> agenda, 
>> and that a lot of his animosity and taunting of her might be down to a
>> different sort of green-eyed monster: jealousy.
>> 
>> On Frenesi's side, she has a deep desire to "redeem even Brock", and this is
>> described "as about the only way she knew how to use the word *love* any
>> more". (216-7)
>> 
>> It's not so much that Frenesi wants to be on "the winning side", she wants to
>> try and use her influence over Brock to make him see "the light", to change
>> him (she believes he will "allow her to lead him stumbling out into light
>> that 
>> she imagined as sun plus sky, with an 85 filter in, returning him to the man
>> he should have grown into" (216-7). All the stuff about the "rapids" and
>> "Brock's stretch of the river" up ahead is her recognition that Brock is
>> going 
>> to succeed, and that Weed and PR3 are going to fail. She's naive enough to
>> think that she can "redeem even Brock" and perhaps influence the inevitable
>> outcomes, both personal and political.
>> 
>>> At last Frenesi acknowledges to herself that she "could allow herself to
>>> do what Brock wanted to do."  What this is, specifically, is not
>>> explained until the next chapter, but it is nothing less than arranging
>>> for the death of Weed Atman, a man she has been intimate with, a man she
>>> admires in some respect.
>> 
>> This isn't quite right: "She understood as clearly as she could allow herself
>> to what Brock wanted her to do, understood at last, dismally, that she might
>> even do it .... " (216.16) The text depicts Frenesi battling with her own
>> conscience -- as well as battling it out verbally with Brock -- and holding
>> onto a vain hope that she can "redeem" this man she loves.
>> 
>> I actually find Frenesi at her most pathetic, if not also sympathetic, in
>> this 
>> scene.