VLVL Rex and the BLGVN

[jbor]

> Isn't the timing rather awkward too,  for Rex to be giving an argument
> relating to Pol Pot who doesn't appear as a significant leader until 1974 or
> 75? 

There's been no suggestion made that Rex has any knowledge of Pol Pot.
Pynchon's narratives typically invoke events beyond their immediate temporal
setting, self-consciously looking forward to a future which both reader and
author are aware of, but which the characters are not (cf. the way that
direct references to the Holocaust are conspicuously absent from _GR_). The
passage at 208.3-7 is an example of this. I think it's within the realms of
reason that the (ironic, tragic) future this passage looks forward to is the
rise of the Khmer Rouge, the "authentic" communist revolution Rex "hopes"
will one day (i.e. in the future) come into being.

> The action here appears to be happening several years earlier in the 1st
> Nixon term. 

The action at College of the Surf occurs in late '67 or early '68, probably
the latter, as I noted, but when Rex is introduced into the narrative the
verb tenses ("had ... been", "had become" etc) indicate that his studies and
his indoctrination have been underway prior to this time, during the last
years of LBJ's term at least I think it'd be fair enough to say, probably
even as far back as the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.

> At any rate Jbor's attempt to liken Ho Chi Minh  to Pol Pot  fails
> historically.

There's been no "attempt to liken Ho Chi Minh to Pol Pot". Pynchon's text
draws the reader's attention to the brutality of Ho Chi Minh's regime
(207.28-9), and as well as this it insinuates that it wasn't "authentic"
enough (i.e. communist enough) for Rex.

It's interesting that the passage on 207-8 has generated such a fuss and so
many attempts at obfuscation.

best