Pynchon takes his readers on a wild ride. We attend a party on an abandoned cruise ship. We witness an assassination in Cairo. We hunt alligators in the sewers beneath New York City. We time-and-space travel to 1904 Namibia to witness the Herero Revolt and ensuing genocide. Florence, Italy to watch an ill-conceived attempt at stealing Botticelli's Birth of Venus. We study atmospheric radio disturbances with a crossdressing German lieutenant. The list goes on...The characters are as diverse as the book's settings. I counted more than 160 of them, all with truly bizarre names. There are our protagonists (as far as this book has any protagonists; it's really an ensemble performance), Benny Profane and Herbert Stencil. Then there's Pig Bodine, Pappy Hod, Fergus Mixolydian, Fausto Maijstral, Father Avalanche, etc.And thematically, V. is puzzle. It's hard to pin down what this book is really about. There's a lot about yo-yoing, which is a drifter's kind of lifestyle. (Dude, I just spent the year after I graduated college just yo-yoing up and down the coast, bra.) There's a lot about fathers and sons. If there's one major plotline in the book, it's Stencil's search for the mysterious woman V., who is somehow connected to his father, and it's kind of unclear if she's even a woman; perhaps she's a place or just an idea. There's the idea that all the major world events are connected in a heinous plot born out of some deviant mind. And there's that creeping dread of the inanimate that shows up from time to time.So it seems like my point with this review would be to say that this is a big, complex, difficult book. But what I'd actually like to say is that this is a fun, lovable book that will grab you and won't let you go until you've read every word. Sure, you have to be the type of person who doesn't mind a challenge to fully enjoy it, but if you are that type, if you like David Foster Wallace or William Gaddis (there is a straight line drawn from Gaddis to Pynchon and from Pynchon to Wallace), then this could very easily be your next obsession.Note: When you read this, it's imperative to keep a written character list. Minor characters often reappear later to assert themselves as major characters and it would behoove you not to forget them. Enclosed in this spoiler is my dramatis personae if you'd like to take a look.(view spoiler)[Benny Profane: discharged from the Navy, been working as road laborer for a year and a half and traveling, Catholic father, Jewish mother, born in 1932Beatrice: barmaid, sweetheart of Benny's Navy ship, USS ScaffoldBeatrice Buffo: owner of the Sailor's Grave, calls all her barmaids BeatricePloy: engine man on the minesweeper Impulsive, always picking fights, tried to kill himself after the Navy took all his teeth out, sharpened his new dentures and and bit Beatrice's buttDewey Gland: Ploy's friend, sings Benny a song for being a PFC (Poor Forlorn Civilian)Pig Bodine: a "miasma of evil", AWOL from the Scaffold, saves Winsome from jumping out the window to kill himself, was saved from radar radiation by ProfaneMorris Teflon: switchman at the coal piers, takes pornographic photos and sells them to sailors, let's Benny and Pig and Paola and Dewey stay at his apartment Rachel Owlglass: her Daddy gave her an MG and she drove it recklessly, Profane met her when she hit him with it; works as an interviewer/personnel girl at a downtown employment agency, somehow also interviewed Profane for a job without recognizing each otherDa Conho: Benny's chief at Schlozhauer's Trocadero, a crazy Zionist, had a machine gun he kept at the restaurant Duke Wedge: Benny's bunk mate, tried to sleep with Rachel but she wouldn't do itPatsy Pagano: got hit in his stomach by an SP's nightstick at the New Year's Eve partyTolito, Jose, and Kook: Puerto Rican kids who woke Benny up on the subway to dance for moneyAngel: Kook's brother, hunts alligatorsJosefina/Fina Mendoza: Kook's sister, invites Benny to come home with her, works for Winsome, loved by the Playboys gang, tried to give her virginity to BennyMr. & Mrs. Mendoza: Angel's and Fina's parentsGeronimo: Angel's friendMr. Zeitsuss: Geronimo's Angels' boss at the alligator huShale Schoenmaker: plastic surgeon, knows something about V but denies it, was an airplane mechanic during WW1, inspired to become a plastic surgeon when his hero fighter pilot Evan Godolphin becomes disfigured, impregnates EstherIrving: Schoenmaker's assistant and mistress, he gave her a new nose and frecklesTrench: his other assistant, a juvenile delinquentEsther Harvitz: is in debt to Schoenmaker for plastic surgery, Rachel's roommate, gets pregnant with Schoenmaker's baby, Winsome says she "pays to get the body she was born with altered and then falls deeply in love with the man who mutilated her" and she sees nothing wrong with itSlab: of the Raoul-Slab-Melvin triumvirate, Rachel's lover, obsessively paints cheese danishes, tries to convince Esther to get an abortion, Winsome calls him a "painter, whose eyes are open, has technical skill and if you will 'soul', but is committed to cheese danishes"Paola Maijstral: Rachel's roommate, was a barmaid, Benny got her and Rachel connected, separated from her husband, grew up in a sewer in MaltaPappy Hod: her husband, in Valletta with Fat Clyde Herbert Stencil: born in 1901, raised motherless, seeking a woman named V he found mentioned in his father's journals, possibly his mother, worked as a spy during WW2Sidney Stencil: his father, never talked about his wife, died in 1919 during the June Disturbances in Malta, questioned the Gaucho in Florence, was searching for Hugh Godolphin when he met Victoria, who came to the consulate to tell them about Hugh and VheissuMargravine di Chiave Lowenstein: left by Stencil in 1946 so that he could seek VHugh Bongo-Shaftsbury: former resident of Stencil's apartment, son of an Egyptologist Sidney Stencil knew (initials are BS: intentional?), shows up in a Horus costume to Victoria after the Austrian consul partyChiclitz the munitions king and Eigenvalue the physician: Stencil wants to talk to them about VFergus Mixolydian: an Irish Armenian Jew, the "laziest living being in Nueva York", Winsome says he "takes money from a Foundation named after a man who spent millions trying to prove thirteen rabbis rule the world" and he sees nothing wrong with itRaoul: writes for television, Winsome says he "can produce drama devious enough to slip by any sponsor's roadblock and still tell the staring fans what's wrong with them and what they're watching, but he's happy with westerns and detective stories"Melvin: plays liberal folk songs on guitar, Winsome says "Melvin the folk-singer has no talent. Ironically he does more social commenting than the rest of the Crew put together. He accomplishes nothing."Debby Sensay: groupie of the Whole Sick CrewBrad: a fraternity boy, meets Esther at the WSC partyMcClintic Sphere: saxophonist at the V-NoteP. Aïeul: cafe waiter and amateur libertine in AlexandriaEric Bongo-Shaftsbury: father of the apartment owner, killed PorpentinePorpentine: one of Sidney Stencil's colleagues, killed by Eric Bongo-Shaftsbury, had a bad sunburn that looked like leprosyMr. Goodfellow: Porpentine's partner, in love with Victoria, gets in a fight with the Arab on the trainVictoria Wren: on a trip with her father in Alexandria, Goodfellow is trying to seduce her away from Bongo-Shaftsbury, became estranged from her father when he discovered her affair with GoodfellowSir Alastair Wren: Victoria's widowed fatherMildred Wren: Victoria's younger sisterEvelyn: Victoria's Australian uncleYusef: an anarchist, working at the Austrian consulateTewfik: a young assassin Yusef knew, the only person he could think of who had faster reflexes than Meknes: leader of the kitchen force at the Austrian consulateCount Khevenhüller-Metsch: the Austrian consul, Porpentine's alter egoM. de Villiers: the Russian consul, Goodfellow's alter egoMaxwell Rowley-Bugge: aka Ralph MacBurgess, likes young girls, moved to Alexandria after he was busted with a ten year oldAlice: the ten year old girl who got Max/Ralph bustedLepsius: German with blue glasses, meets Porpentine, Goodfellow, and Victoria in the Fink restaurant in Alexandria, has recently come from Brindisi, says he will see them again in CairoWaldetar: a Portugese train conductor on the Alexandria-Cairo expressNita: his pregnant wifeManoel, Antonia, Maria: his childrenGebrail: a poor man in Cairo, his farm was overtaken by desert, now a carriage driver, drove Porpentine and Goodfellow around (or maybe Portpentine and Bongo-Shaftsbury?)Girgis: carnival clown in Cairo by day, burglar by night, witnesses Porpentine fall out of a window while trying to spy on Goodfellow and VictoriaHanne Echerze: waitress at the German bierhalle in Cairo, Lepsius's lover, although she doesn't love him anymoreBoeblich: owner of the German bierhalleVarkumian: pimp, had a conversation with Porpentine at the bierhalleEvan Godolphin: a pilot during WW2, Schoenmaker's hero, was disfigured when he was shot in the face while in the air (the inspiration for Schoenmaker's profession)Captain Hugh Godolphin: his father, a professional adventurer, meets Victoria in Florence and tells her about his travels to Vheissu, was also in Africa and got stuck at the Siege Party when he was trying to gather a crew for a South Pole expeditionPike-Leeming: went with Hugh to Vheissu, now "incurable and insensate in a home in Wales"Halidom: a surgeon, gave Evan Godolphin an ivory nose, silver cheekbone, and a parafin and celluloid chin (allografts)Zeitsuss: the alligator sewer bossVA "Brushhook" Spugo: 85 years old, keeps track of alligator sightings on a mapDolores, Pilar: friends of Angel and GeronimoDelgado: vibes player in the band Angel, Benny and Fina see, is getting married tomorrowBung: the alligator hunter foremanFather Fairing: believed humans would die and rats would take over, so he converted all the rats in the sewer to Catholocism, his favorite rat was named Victoria (second incarnation of V)Manfred Katz: Zeitsuss's predecessor Roony Winsome: executive for Outlandish Records, smokes "string" (a kind of tobacco), tries to commit suicide but Pig delays him until the cops are able to catch him in a net when he jumps out the window and then is taken to BellevueMafia: his wife, a novelist with a cult following, Winsome says she "is smart enough to create a world but too stupid not to live in it. Finding the real world never jibing with her fancy she spends all kinds of energy - sexual, emotional - trying to make it conform, never succeeding."Charisma: his friendFu: other friendLucille: 14 year old girl Benny met out partying with Angel and wants to screwDudley Eigenvalue: dentist, does work for the Whole Sick Crew for free, anticipating that they will be powerful in the futureClayton "Bloody" Chiclitz: of Yoyodyne, a defense contractorSignor Mantissa: depressed Italian, trying to steal Botticelli's Birth of Venus from a museum by hiding it in a tree, friend of Hugh GodolphinCesare: his friend, pretends to be a steamboatThe Gaucho: helping Mantissa, wears a wideawake hat, Venezuelan revolutionary who formed the Figli di MachiavelliCuernacabrón: the Gaucho's lieutenantGadrulfi: a florist, Mantissa's Judas tree provider, the English Foreign Office thinks it's an alias for Evan GodolphinSalazar: Venezuelan Vise-Consul in FlorenceRatón: Salazar's chiefAngelo: one of the Gaucho's captors Major Percy Chapman: from the English Foreign Office, captured the Gaucho in Florence to interrogate him about VheissuDemivolt: Sidney Stencil's coworker at the foreign office, offered him the chance to talk to Victoria but he said noCovess: Sidney's chum in diplomatic school who went rogue and tried to recruit locals to invade FranceMoffit: takes orders from Sidney at the Foreign Office in FlorenceFerrante: Italian neo-Machievellian secret policeman, assigned to the "Venezuelan problem"Vogt: Austrian who runs the secret police headquarters Gascoigne: black man who works for VogtBorracho: night watchman at the Figli di Machiavelli's garrisonTito: makes a living selling dirty photos to soldiersOley Bergomask: works at Anthroresearch Associates, Rachel tells Benny he might hire him as night watchman, studying radiation absorption in humans Knoop: comm officer on the Scaffold, Pig's partner in crime in transmitting dirty stories over the teletype machine, also busted Pig for stealing radio partsPotamós: Scaffold cookKurt Mondaugen: engineer at Peenemunde, told Stencil the story of chapter 9, in 1922 was in Africa studying atmospheric radio disturbances, got stuck at a "Siege Party" for 2.5 months during a rebellion, where he meets Vera Meroving (V), thinks that the sferics are a code that he tries to break H. Barkhausen: first heard the radio disturbances in WWIFoppl: farmer who throws parties that Mondaugen attends, volunteers to let all the Germans stay at his house while the rebellion goes on, calls it the "Siege Party", everyone stays for 2.5 monthsWillemstad van Wijk: leader in the African communityAbraham Morris: leading a rebellion, destroyed Mondaugen's antennaeJacobus Christian, Tim Beukes: Morris's followersSergeant van Niekerk: insulted Abraham Morris, incidentally starting the rebellionVera Meroving: another instance of V, from Munich, met Mondaugen at the Siege Party, has an artificial eye with a watch in it, talked about Vheissu with Godolphin, poses as the Bad Priest in Malta, see belowLieutenant Weissmann: Vera's "companion", accuses Mondaugen of being a traitor because he thinks the sferics are a code from the enemy, crossdressesHedwig Vogelsang: a sixteen year old singer/dancer at the Siege Party, Mondaugen's crushAndreas: a rebel that Foppl was keeping in his basement and torturingSchwach, Fleische: Mondaugen's comrades in his dreams of 1904Sarah: African woman that Mondaugen rapes and keeps prisoner in his house in his 1904 dream, she drowned after trying to escapeMatilda Winthrop: runs a whorehouse in Harlem where Sphere goes to meet RubyRuby: Sphere's whore, wants to visit her ailing father far away Sylvia: another whore thereMurray Sable: race car driverFausto Maijstral: Paola's father, wrote the chapter with his confessions, studied to be a priest but had to give it up when Elena had Paola, revealed to be Stencil Sr.'s sonElena Xemxi: Fausto's wife, Paola's mother, died in a bombingMaratt: Fausto's school chum, studied politicsDnubietna: Fausto's school chum, studied engineeringFather Avalanche: persuaded Elena to return to Fausto after she went to Dnubietna The Bad Priest: Avalanche's opposite, preaches to the children, Vera in disguise, is trapped by a beam during a bombing and all the children steal her false eye, false feet, a gemstone belly button ring, Fausto let her die thereCarla Maijstral: Fausto's motherSaturno Aghtina: lived in the sewers in Malta with his wife, Elena and PaolaTifkira: Maltese merchant who hoards wine, Fausto and Dnubietna drank some of it together while bombs fellPatrolman Joneš, Officer Ten Eyck: arrest Mafia, Charisma, and Fu while they're playing Musical Blankets for disturbing the peace (but also maybe because of something Winsome said while talking to a doctor in Bellevue)Hiroshima: a radioman on board the Scaffold, helped Pig steal radio parts to sellC. Osric Lych: commander on the Scaffold, gave Pig a break when he got caught stealing the radio partsGroomsman: "crab-ridden", another of Lych's sailors saved from dishonorable dischargeHanky, Panky: the girls that Groomsman and Pig visited on days offGino Profane: Benny's fatherNeil: Profane and Stencil witness him beating up a plainclothes cop who was trying to catch him soliciting homosexual sexMelanie l'Heuremaudit: in 1913 France, fifteen years old, ran away from boarding school in Belgium, was molested as a child by her father, her mother is off touring Austria-Hungary, works in M. Itague's theatre company, Mlle. Jarretiere is her stage name, is the submissive in an affair with "V. in love", died during a performance when she was impaled by a pole; she was supposed to wear a chastity belt that would have protected herM. Itague: owns a theatre companySatin: Russian choreographerPorcepic: Russian composer, a fictionalized StravinskyGerfaut: playwrightKholsky: "a huge and homicidal tailor", leader of a group of Russian expatriate socialists"V. in love": 33 years old, a "sculptress acolyte from Vaugirard", another instance V., her name is unknown, has an affair with Melanie, she is the dominant oneSgherraccio: a "mad Irredentist", ran off with V. after Melanie diedFlip, Flop: girls Profane and Pig party with in DCIago Saperstein: found Flip and Profane sleeping on the steps of a Masonic temple, invite them to a partyHowie Surd: drunken yeoman, American sailorpFat Clyde/Harvey: super skinny, American sailor, goes out on liberty with Pappy Hod in VallettaTiger Youngblood: "spud coxswain"Lazar: "the deck ape"Teledu: tries to pee out the bus windowLeman: "red-headed water king", bad drunkTourneur: ship's barber, kept Leman from throwing a rock through a window Elisa: barmaid, Paola's friendJohnny Cantango: Scaffold's damage control assistant, feels responsible for messing up the propellerPinguez: steward's mate striker, got sick at a barFalange: snipe, Pinguez's buddyBaby Face: another sailorAntoine Zippo, Nasty Chobb: took over the bandstand at the Union Jack barSam Mannaro: corpsman strikerDahoud: SP along with LeroyLeroy Tongue: midget storekeeper, gets on Dahoud's shoulders and hits people with a nightstick Cassar: pawnbroker in Malta, pointed Stencil to a girl with the glass eye with the clock inside, who claimed she threw it into the seaAquilina: tells Stencil about Mme. ViolaMme. Viola: hypnotist who bought the glass eye in 1944, Stencil leaves Valletta to find herBrenda Wigglesworth: American traveler Profane meets after Paola and Stencil leave himVeronica Manganese: Hiding V. in Malta (hide spoiler)]
Nutshell: orthographic mystery spins out of control as narrative ponderously stencils over trifling profanities.Quite an achievement. Probably should’ve read this prior to reading Underworld, Dissident Gardens, or Bleeding Edge--all New York stories, working out of the same imaginary as Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn. The first chapter of V is the closest to Selby, and it’s almost unreadable. After that, it calms down and is readily digestible in large pieces.Ian Vance is correct that the marxist rat is awesome (123 ff.). First chapter regarding protagonist spy Stencil is very impressive, also--involving the perspectives of eight others into whose ambit the master spy moves. One of the best things that I’ve ever read, though, is the scene wherein one character gets a nose job (104-12), which is told with fine attention to detail of the clinical language of the physician, but also mixes in bizarre sexual commentary from the physician’s assistant during the procedure, with reference to the tools entering patient‘s face (she remains aware under local anesthetic!): “Stick it in…pull it out…stick it in…ooh that was good” (108)--and, eventually, the physician starts mingling German into his speech, like in Dr. Strangelove (“Now ve shorten das septum, ja” (111)), which kinda hammers home the nastiness of elective cosmetic surgeries. (Patient ends up screwing the doctor, incidentally.) Novel contains several great set pieces in the Stencil sections: intrigues in 1899 Florence, then 1922 Namibia (lotsa Germans excited about Mussolini, killing natives in preparation for WW2, apparently), then Paris 1913, then Malta during the second world war. Central, eponymous mystery is disclosed early: “His journals, his unofficial log of an agent’s career. Under ‘Florence, April, 1899’ is a sentence, young Stencil has memorized it: ‘There is more behind and inside V. than any of us had suspected. Not who, but what: what is she. God grant that I may never be called upon to write the answer, either here or in any official report’” (49). The Florence 1899 episode is laid out later when Stencil is at therapy with his psychodontist, and involves a mission to:"a place called Vheissu, [...] on camel-back over a vast tundra, past the dolmens and temples of dead cities; finally to the banks of a broad river which never sees the sun, so thickly roofed is it with foliage. The river is traveled in long teak boats which are carved like dragons and paddled by brown men whose language is unknown to all but themselves. In eight days’ time there is a portage over a neck of treacherous swampland to a green lake, and across the lake rise the first foothills of the mountains which ring Vheissu. Native guides will only go a short distance into these mountains. Soon they will turn back, pointing out the way." (179). Revealed that the clouds, “they are Vheissu, its raiment, perhaps its skin,” but “beneath?” Answered: “I wondered about the soul of the place. If it had a soul. Because their music, poetry, laws and ceremonies come no closer. They are skin too” (181). Rather, “dreams are not, not closer to the waking world” in Vheissu, but “they do seem more real” (181-82) (cue baudrillardism). Easy then, at this early point of the novel that V. may well be Vheissu, a place rather than a person, a place similar to many others in the British Empire (180). That was my initial reading, considerably complicated as the text spun out.Nevertheless, same chapter describes a caper to steal a painting of Venus, enacted by one of the few survivors of elder Stencil’s Vheissu mission. So: V. as the Venus? Or is it Victoria Wren, who re-appears in this instantiation? No idea. Not sure I really want to know. Other chapters note a Vera, Viola, the city of Valletta, Veronica (a sewer rat, of all things), Vesuvius, the V-2. It’s a mess. More interesting: the novel is structured around the distinction animate/inanimate, and I suspect that a close neo-formalist reading will bear out the structuration. The binary shows up repeatedly, both expressly and implicitly:Pig Bodine: “in times of crisis he preferred to sit in as a voyeur” (9) (dude likes to hit on women with “What do you think of Sartre‘s thesis that we are all impersonating an identity?” (137));Profane’s desire to piss out the sun is rooted in the fact that “inanimate objects could do what they wanted. Not what they wanted because things do not want; only men. But things do what they do” (19-20);Profane’s search “for something too to make the fact of his own disassembly plausible as that of any machine” (35);Servile types are considered “as much a feature of the topography as the other automata” (69-70);Bongo-Shaftsbury as a “mechanical doll” (80-81);The physician’s favoring of “allograft: the introduction of inert substances into the living face” (102); physician is expressly in “alignment with the inanimate“ (103);Godolphin carps that he “was nearly killed in something that could not have been an accident, a caprice of the inanimate world” (207);Profane muses that “anybody who worked for inanimate money so he could buy more inanimate objects was out of his head. Inanimate money was to get animate warmth, dead fingernails in the living shoulderblades, quick cries against the pillow, tangled hair, lidded eyes, twisted loins” (230);“Community may have been the only solution possible against such an assertion of the Inanimate” (296);Regarding voyeurism: “At least he was to experience a for him rare Achphenomenon: the discovery that his voyeurism had been determined purely by events seen, and not by any deliberate choice, or pre-existing set of personal psychic needs” (301);Dude who paints only cheese danishes explains his “revolt against Catatonic Expressionism” as “The beauty is that it works like a machine yet is animate. The partridge eats pears off the tree, and his droppings in turn nourish the tree” (307);Profane understands what I mean: “In the eighteenth century it was often convenient to regard man as a clockwork automaton. In the nineteenth century, with Newtonian physics pretty well assimilated and a lot of work in thermodynamics going on, man was looked on more as a heat-engine, about 40-percent efficient. Now in the twentieth century, with nuclear and subatomic physics a going thing, man had become something which absorbs x-rays, gamma rays, and neutrons” (310). Profane feels a kinship with crash test dummies, especially one which is “the first inanimate schlemihl he’d ever encountered” (id.);Profane is of course dead wrong, as he himself is a schlemihl from page one of the novel, and admits that he is the opposite of the “master of the inanimate,” is rather a “schlemihl, that was hardly a man: somebody who lies back and takes it from objects, like any passive woman [!]” (314);Great bit wherein a series of accidents are catalogued as “the world started to run more and more afoul of the inanimate” (316);Maijstral’s confession (very well done, this) complains that he “Was meant only to live at the threshold of consciousness, only exist as a hardly animate lump of flesh, an automaton” (339) (much relevant in the confession). The confession advises that it “will limit the inevitable annotating to this request. Observe the predominance of human attributes applied to the inanimate”--which is a key instruction in the reading of this novel, asking the reader to turn back to page one and mark out each and every prosopopeia (I haven’t done this.);We find that the “Bad Priest” (another reiteration of V.) is disassembled (381-82) piece by inanimate piece, like the fable of the golden screw (34) and Profane’s desire to be disassembled, supra;And so on, proliferating to the end, including theatrical automata and a proto-fascist complaining about decadence in pre-WWI Paris, how “we foist off the humanity we have on inanimate objects and abstract theories” (450).We see, then, that the first appearance of V., supra, is marked out with passive verbs and relative pronouns, a dearth to be filled by something else (viz. readers): what is she, not who; what is behind or inside her. (stick it in…pull it out…oh that‘s good). V. is primarily something therefore that lacks grammatical animation. We know that animate/inanimate is grammatical in the novel because one character laments that “he had the Saxon habit of attaching diminutive endings to nouns, animate or inanimate” (246). Just to prove that all of those horrible Ayn Rand books that I’ve been reading aren’t a complete waste: one character is noted to be an aspiring novelist--“All her characters fell into disturbingly predictable racial alignment. The sympathetic--those godlike, inexhaustible sex athletes she used for heroes and heroines were all tall, strong, white though often robustly tanned, Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, and/or Scandinavian” (132). Pretty good description of randian output and theory.Anyway, lotsa inventiveness, humor, great turns of phrase, good politics, &c. Some kinda analysis of tourism, perhaps placing it in dialectic with espionage or exploration or surveying, which show up repeatedly. Hard to say. Forms a nexus with the animate/inanimate stuff, late: “This is a curious country, populated only by a breed called ‘tourists.’ Its landscape is one inanimate monuments” &c. (454). A similar pre-occupation with surface/depths, as in Bleeding Edge. Much more going on here than my little review lets on. Recommended for those with some intention of pissing on the sun to put it out for good, readers who adhere to Heroic Love (i.e., screwing five or six times a night, every night, with a great many athletic, half-sadistic wrestling holds thrown in), and persons with a complex system of pressure transducers located in a marvelous vagina of polyethylene.
What do You think about V. (2001)?
Pynchon and I have a love/hate relationship. The man is brilliant in his own right but he fails to appeal to me. Moderism just isn't my cup of tea. I do find his writing unique, original and initially intimidating. I was much more successful with V. than Crying of Lot 49. I fancied V. much more as well. Now that I am no longer intimidated by Pynchon, this read was more relaxed and I actually "got it" without wanting to bang my head against a brick wall. I realized I'm not stupid Pynchon is nothing short of brilliant. Reading his work is similar to playing with a Rubik's cube, took me a while before my breakthrough aha moment. �� V. carries many themes, some overt, some tucked away until you unleash their presence. You'll find ��in V. a theme of "searching" as well as "replacement." I don't want to elaborate as to leading to spoilers, however, in my experience these two themes were present.��Whatever you have heard about Pynchon - good/bad, take a shot and enjoy the experience. He might turn out to be your favorite author, his style might appeal to you but you'll never know unless you try. For goodness sake don't be intimated like I was, you'll waste time reading into more than what's printed. Relax and enjoy, whatever the outcome it will be a ride you'll remember. ��
—Melinda
I propose that the titular "V." is neither a person nor a place but a preposition.What, really, is more personal than a first novel? It's that all-or-nothing, balls-to-the-wall debut effort that can either send a fledgling writer plummeting to dream-shattering depths with an effort that falls flat for any number of reasons or it can be the inaugural celebration all starry-eyed young scribes dare to hope for, that which heralds a staggering new talent to a canon populated by the many great wordslingers who've scribbled their way to well-deserved immortality. (For argument's sake, we'll work under the assumption that those flimsy flavor-of-the-month bestsellers that are so in vogue for their seemingly eternal 15 minutes will, in time, be forgotten and written off as yet another regrettable mistake born of groupthink's lapse in judgment while these truly remarkable feats of literature persist through the ages.)If one is to write what one knows, how daunting must it be to know so much about such a wide range of complicated topics -- minute historical details of a time one either never experienced or was simply too young to fully digest, regardless of youthful precociousness; engineering equations requiring mathematical acrobatics and a more than adequate grasp on physics; an insider's take on the naval experience; an innate understanding of how to perfectly mix high-minded concepts and lowbrow humor with a dash of poetic lyric -- and attempt to whittle it all down into a tome that won't crush potential readers under the weight of both the volume itself and the awe-inspiring ideas roiling within?The little we do know about literature's most elusive enigma points to pieces of Pynchon being flung along the narrative's parade route like confetti, adding flashes of biographical color to his intricately structured and beautifully written first novel that pits the animate against the inanimate and the internal self against the external veneer (and has the best-ever bonus of an Ayn Rand stand-in reduced to baby-talk in the presence of a pwecious widdle kittums-cat?). Aside from what can only be thinly veiled allusions to his Cornell days with Richard Fariña and their cult of Warlock -- regarding the Generation of '37: "And we did like to use Elizabethan phrases in our speech"; "A farewell celebration for Maratt on the eve of his marriage"; "Dnubietna leapt up on the table, upsetting glasses, knocking the bottle to the floor, screaming "Go to, caitiff!" It became the cant phrase for our "set": go to."; "The pre-war University years were probably as happy as he described, and the conservation as "good."", to say nothing of the nod to a novel called Existential Sheriff -- the internal conflicts of the writer seem to be scattered throughout V. like a breadcrumb trail back to the source himself.Because Pynchon has be one conflicted dude. To be a notoriously private man juggling such derision for the spotlight with the compulsion to write for unseen but rabid fans, to churn out maddeningly, densely obscure works that are nevertheless guaranteed to meet both critical and commercial success (and increase sales of Excedrin in the following months), to posses such finely tuned right and left brains that he can be considered nothing less than an engineer-poet in his own right, to walk such a fine line between historical fictions and fictional histories -- is it any wonder that a man so in touch with dueling perspectives would build his first novel on the foundation of This v. That?
—Madeleine
I tried, lawd knows I tried.“It is something less than heavenTo be quoted Thesis 1.7Every time I make an advance;If the world is all that the case isThat’s a pretty discouraging basisOn which to pursueAny sort of romance.I’ve got a proposition for you;Logical, positive and brief.And at least it could serve as a kind of comic relief:[Refrain]Let P equal me,With my heart in command;Let Q equal youWith Tractatus in hand;And R could stand for a lifetime of love,Filled with music to fondle and purr to.We’ll define love as anything lovely you’d care to infer to.On the right, put that bright,Hypothetical case;On the left, our uncleft,Parenthetical chase.And that horseshoe there in the middleCould be lucky; we’ve nothing to lose,If in these parenthesesWe just mind our P’sAnd Q’s.If P [Mafia sang in reply] thinks of meAs a girl hard to make,Then Q wishes youWould go jump in the lake.For R is a meaningless concept,Having nothing to do with pleasure:I prefer the hard and tangible things I can measure.Man, you chase in the faceOf impossible odds;I’m a lass in the classOf unbossable broads.If you’ll promise no more sticky phrases,Half a mo while I kick off my shoes.There are birds, there are bees,And to hell with all your P’sAnd Q’s.And by the time Profane finished his beer, the blanket covered them both.”The songs have been my favorite part of reading Thomas Pynchon’s V. Really, I have enjoyed some of the reading, but as I’m typing this and feeling the urge to justify and push myself to like it, I realize that I’m just not that into it. I’m dropping it. My bookmark is on page 302-303 of the 1963 edition. I like his naming: Profane, Stencil, Mafia, The Sick Crew. I like the geography; I’ve dreamt of Florence and Cairo since the reading. But I’m not excited, I’m not finding why I should continue reading.Maybe it’s because I’ve been apart of a Sick Crew; I’m not in wonder about it.***********Finished reading the chapter “V. in love” with really the same reaction as the my last reading of the previous chapters. Things I really enjoyed: the number obsession in the first few paragraphs, the rich visual descriptions of Melanie’s clothing and costuming and her occupation with herself in them, the discussion of fetish and otherness and even tourism which I always find rather interesting as a person who travels. But I’m still just not that excited. I didn’t feel like I wanted to continue reading again although this was a much more interesting chapter to me than many of them. But fetish and otherness have been done much better by others, and having Melanie be a victim of sexual abuse that he then killed off at the end leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Still, pretty interesting to read.****Couldn't finish it, not interested.
—Nicole
