Rex and the BLGVN

[Joseph Tracy]

 jbor   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.

  JT   I am referring to your earlier post which puts them in the same category of murderous dictatorships.

 jbor  The exact same criticisms Rex is making about Western capitalist states
could be levelled equally (if not more so) at Socialist states and ideology.
The murderous dictatorships in South-East Asia (Ho Chi Minh's, the Khmer
Rouge) referred to or alluded to in connection with Rex's quest are a part
of the novel's context which cannot be ignored.

I believe jbor is right that Pynchon is using the historic destruction of the Vietnamese Troskyites to expand his critique of the dark side of ideological purity and its progression towards hypocrisy, violence and repression. Revolutions have usually  included infighting and bloodshed. How quickly the upper class american revolutionaries turned on their fellow soldiers in Shay's rebellion; how quickly did the once united states devolve into civil war. The French revolution was also a bloody mess, but Napolean is rarely described as a murderous dictator, Lincoln never. The number of Trotskyites killed does not qualify for the term mass murder and Ho  avoided creating a mass murderous dictatorship like that of Stalin or Mao, and Vietnam has a far more humane post colonial history than Pinochet or Sukarno to pick proteges of capitalist dogma.  I don't know exactly where Ho falls in Pynchon's moral universe, but  it is truly a stretch of the text and of history to say he is putting him in the same category as Pol Pot. 

As I see it Rex, like Frenesi shows the hairs breadth that can separate the extreme left from the extreme right. In his violent outrage for revolutionary purity he acts as an instrument of state repression and undermines the potential  power of  the PR3 movement as  an experiment in freedom  and nonviolent civil disobedience. Weed Atman shows the hairs breadth that can separate the pursuit of freedom from the pursuit of personal indulgence, a math professor from a cultic guru. I wonder if some of the arguments  among p-listers about the characters in this story are a demonstration of the teetering balance of the american experiment, the furious differences we see, looking at the same facts and people. 

 



Joseph Tracy
brook7 at earthlink.net
Why Wait? Move to EarthLink.
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