"Jeremy C. Reed" says:
...
> See `config.log' for more details.

Our mails on this crossed.  Sorry.

...
> Look if you have a work/libxml*/config.log.
> 
> And start from bottom and work your way up to find the error with why your
> C compiler cannot create executables. (And reply with those details
> if needed.)

So the configure program (or whatever writes config.log) seems to be
noting the following stuff.  I don't know if the missing whitespace
means anything.  Obviously no file by the name indicated exists.  

I can tell you that gcc works just fine on my own programs right now.

So that's sort of where I'm stuck.  If so advised I would poke around 
more with it, but I'm also curious about what would have likely brought 
me to this situation.

gcc: couldn't run `/usr/bin/i386--netbsdelf-gcc--I/usr/pkgsrc/textproc/libxml2/work/.buildlink/include': No such file or directory
configure:2390: $? = 1
configure:2413: checking for C compiler default output file name
configure:2416: cc -O2 -DXML_SGML_DEFAULT_CATALOG=\"\\\"/usr/pkg/etc/sgml/catalog\\\"\" -DXML_XML_DEFAULT_CATALOG=\"\\\"/usr/pkg/etc/xml/catalog\\\"\" -I/usr/include -I/usr/pkg/include   -I/usr/include -I/usr/pkg/include  -L/usr/lib -Wl,-R/usr/lib -L/usr/pkg/lib -Wl,-R/usr/pkg/lib conftest.c  >&5
<command line>:4:27: missing terminating " character
<command line>:5:26: missing terminating " character
configure:2419: $? = 1