VLVL Rex and the BLGVN

[jbor]

>> Rex's "Southeast Asian studies", the proximity and interconnections
> between
>> Vietnamese and Cambodian history in the period, and Rex's documented
> "hopes"
>> (207-8), legitimately bring the Khmer Rouge into the picture as part of
> "the
>> historical depth the novel offers" (Thoreen). In my book, anyway.
> Whichever,
>> it's certainly clear that Pynchon is no apologist for Ho Chi Minh. And nor
>> for Pol Pot either, I'd wager.

otto
> The narrator calls Rex's "Southeast Asian studies" an indoctrination "in the
> governments' version of the war in Vietnam,"

This is incorrect. Rex's studies are one thing, and his being indoctrinated
is another. I do agree that Rex has come to see that the government's
version of the war is a false one, but it's because of his studies that he
recognises this.

> but nevertheless Rex has been
> able to tell the propaganda from the truth. But unluckily only on one side
> of the equation. His obsession "with the fate of the Bolshevik Leninist
> Group of Vietnam" (note: of Vietnam, not Cambodia, at least in my book)
> "left" of Uncle Ho seems to me a comment on the many different ML-sects in
> the seventies, 

I haven't questioned the fact that the BLGVN were sent to Vietnam. The
passage at 208.3-7 doesn't specify Vietnam, however. And you might also care
to note that the text does specify that the BLGVN were active "up till 1953"
only. Pynchon here is referring back to the sad history of the Fourth
International, whose leaders tried to instigate a process of
"self-liquidationism" leading to its breakdown in 1951-3. Back in January I
did some research on the collapse of the Fourth International, which is in
the archives. (And NB how, according to Pynchon's narrator, the Fourth
International, like Ho Chi Minh, "sold out" the BLGVN -- 207.33.) This
specific historical reference stands alongside similar references to the
failures of those other "left" movements in the C. 20th -- the IWW, the
Hollywood unions and the 60s counterculture -- which are a continuing
pattern within and prominent historical sub-text of Pynchon's novel.

> pointing to the fact that the communist world hardly wasn't a
> united empire threatening the free world at that time.

***

> Pynchon is certainly no apologist for any human rights violations that
> certainly have happened under Ho Chi Minh too. But he surely doesn't think
> of him as the "enemy."

I have no idea what the "enemy" nonsense you've been carrying on about is. I
suspect it has something to do with the reference to Vato and Blood helping
the Vietcong during the war, the Vietcong being the nominal enemy of Vato &
Blood and the rest of the American troops at that time, and the insinuation
in the text that the information V & B provided resulted in a VC attack on
their base, which V & B managed to avoid (45). If I recall correctly one of
your arguments during the discussion of that section of the text was that
Vietnamese refugees are liars.

best