And, after all, what does "Vi" mean? Well, at least one thing I can rule out, definitely not "vendetta" (according to Alan Moore). The local V is in the middle between a coin that has rolled off the lining through a hole in the pocket and the Holy Grail. Wow, such a great run-up. So after all, Pynchon - he is like this, fearlessly mixes the ugly and the beautiful, buffoonery and tragedy, exquisitely subtle and grotesque in a thundering cup - take communion.

So, in the novel there are two central male characters: Benny Profane (to whose name "profane" is directly asking), a retired sailor, a yo-yo man, where the next exhalation of fate takes him, and every time he returns to his circles in the same shlimazlov guise. He does not hold on to anything good, sent towards him by fate, but the really bad cannot catch, hold him. He takes on various outlandish jobs (what it costs to shoot alligators in the Nuevo York subway), encounters different people and gets into different circumstances. Sometimes he thinks about difficult things, without giving himself the trouble to think through to the end. Maybe because he knows that when the answer comes, he will no longer be here, the inexorable yo-yo-planida will take him to new distances.

Herbert Stencil (a stencil, a template, but if a template, then to create the perfect image), he is my knight in the book. I don't know how much this role really corresponds to the character, how much other readers are ready to see Parsifal in him, and in general I don't need to correlate my feelings with anyone else's. Because I like him. He is cool, it is he who wonders about the mysterious V, looking for its reflections and projections in the beautiful Victoria Ren, Veronica the rat, Venice, Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" and the sacred land of Weiss. And he stands up for the weak, and loves Rachel, and he is looking for his father, in the "Rainbow of Gravity" he transforms into a Slotrope, as Profane becomes the Pirate Prentice.
V - значит...?
Люди читали те новости, какие хотели, и каждый, соответственно, строил собственную крысиную нору из клочков и обрывков истории.
Пинчон, потому что иногда возникает потребность выйти из зоны читательского комфорта. Не "порою блажь великая", но род категорического императива, когда знаешь заранее, что соприкосновение с текстом окажется болезненным, заставит ощутить собственную малость. Что это в очередной раз разобьет в мелкие осколки твое всегдашнее стремление упорядочить мир, найти ключи к его пониманию, ввергнет в хаос и тут же из ничего сотворит новую систему мира с чуть смещенными векторами. Пинчон всегда такой аттракцион неслыханной щедрости.

О V думала давно, вот пришло время. Читала в переводе Николая Махлаюка, Сергея Слободюка и Анастасии Захаревич. Имея возможность выбора, остановилась бы на варианте Максима Немцова, не потому что тройственный союз плох, он замечательно хорош. Но потому что пинчонова проза для меня плотно увязана с интеллектуальной игрой и поэтикой переводческих решений Немцова. Однако вышло как вышло, взяла до чего проще было дотянуться, и наверно это было ошибкой, попадание в резонанс с одним человеком не гарантирует того же с другим/другими, у меня во все время чтения не случилось волшебных озарений, которые подсвечивают восторгом мгновенного узнавания трудный текст.

И, все-таки, что значит "Ви"? Ну, по крайней мере, одно могу исключить, точно не "вендетта" (по Алану Муру). Здешнее V посередине между укатившейся за подкладку через дыру в кармане монетой и Святым Граалем. Ого, нехилый такой разбег. Так ведь Пинчон - он такой, бестрепетно смешивает в громокипящем кубке уродливое и прекрасное, буффоннаду и трагедию, изысканно тонкое и гротеск - причащайтесь (ох, а это не может быть расценено как оскорбление чувств верующих? теперь ведь очень легко кого-то оскорбить, вовсе не имея того в виду.)

Итак, в романе два центральных мужских персонажа: Бенни Профейн (к имени которого прямо-таки просится "профан"), отставной моряк, человек йо-йо - чёрти куда заносит его очередной выдох судьбы, и всякий раз он возвращается на круги своя в том же шлимазловом обличье. Не держится ни за что хорошее, посылаемое навстречу ему судьбой, но и по-настоящему худое не может зацепить, удержать его. Берется за разные диковинные работы (чего стоит отстрел аллигаторов в нуэво-йоркском метро), сталкивается с разными людьми и попадает в различные обстоятельства. Порой задумывается над сложными вещами, не давая себе труда додумать до конца. Может быть, потому что знает, что, когда ответ придет, его уже здесь не будет, неумолимая йо-йо-планида увлечет в новые дали.

Герберт Стенсил (трафарет, шаблон, но если и лекало, то для создания идеального образа), он мой рыцарь в книге. Не знаю, насколько эта роль реально соответствует персонажу, насколько другие читатели готовы увидеть в нем Парсифаля, да мне в целом и не нужно соотносить свои ощущения с чьими бы то ни было. Потому что он мне нравится. Он классный, именно он задается вопросом о загадочной V, отыскивая ее отражения и проекции в прекрасной Виктории Рен, крысе Веронике, Венеции, боттичеллиевом "Рождении Венеры" и сакральной стране Вайссу. И он встает на защиту слабых, и любит Рэйчел, и он ищет отца, в "Радуге тяготения" он трансформируется в Слотропа, как Профейн станет Пиратом Прентисом.

И все-таки единственный женский образ из пестрого калейдоскопа здешних персонажей, Рэйчел Оулгласс (стеклянная сова) отозвалась во мне узнаванием в этой пинакотеке. Молодая женщина , принадлежащая по праву рождения к совершенному истеблишменту, общается, тем не менее сомнительными личностями, работает секретарем, была любовницей Профейна, покровительствует дурочке Эстер, реализуя материнский инстинкт. И в целом, нормальная, она мне нравится.

Самые крутые истории книги. Мальчик с винтиком в пупке (вообще пупок здешняя идея-фикс, каких только тут не встречается), который искал возможность открутить, а когда нашел, у него отвалилась задница. Аллигаторы в манхеттэнской подземке. Операция Эстер. История Ивана Годольфина, которому натолкали в лицо всякой хрени, и история кукольной девушки Мелани л`Эрмодитт погибшей во время спектакля потому что забыла надеть защитные трусы. Еще попытка самоубийства не помню кого из двоих, все-таки кажется Профейна, когда полицейские растягивали защитную сетку. И да, разобранный на запчасти Подлый священник. И да-да-да, обращение крыс, чего стоил сомневавшийся Игнациус (Лойола?)

Роман крутейший, он останется со мной, займет место в ряду книг, которые и уму, и сердцу.

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.
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 1932

Beatrice: barmaid, sweetheart of Benny's Navy ship, USS Scaffold

Beatrice Buffo: owner of the Sailor's Grave, calls all her barmaids Beatrice

Ploy: 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 butt

Dewey 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 Profane

Morris 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 other

Da 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 it

Patsy Pagano: got hit in his stomach by an SP's nightstick at the New Year's Eve party

Tolito, Jose, and Kook: Puerto Rican kids who woke Benny up on the subway to dance for money

Angel: Kook's brother, hunts alligators

Josefina/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 Benny

Mr. & Mrs. Mendoza: Angel's and Fina's parents

Geronimo: Angel's friend

Mr. Zeitsuss: Geronimo's Angels' boss at the alligator hu

Shale 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 Esther

Irving: Schoenmaker's assistant and mistress, he gave her a new nose and freckles

Trench: his other assistant, a juvenile delinquent

Esther 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 it

Slab: 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 Malta

Pappy 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 WW2

Sidney 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 Vheissu

Margravine di Chiave Lowenstein: left by Stencil in 1946 so that he could seek V

Hugh 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 party

Chiclitz the munitions king and Eigenvalue the physician: Stencil wants to talk to them about V

Fergus 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 it

Raoul: 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 Crew

Brad: a fraternity boy, meets Esther at the WSC party

McClintic Sphere: saxophonist at the V-Note

P. Aïeul: cafe waiter and amateur libertine in Alexandria

Eric Bongo-Shaftsbury: father of the apartment owner, killed Porpentine

Porpentine: one of Sidney Stencil's colleagues, killed by Eric Bongo-Shaftsbury, had a bad sunburn that looked like leprosy

Mr. Goodfellow: Porpentine's partner, in love with Victoria, gets in a fight with the Arab on the train

Victoria 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 Goodfellow

Sir Alastair Wren: Victoria's widowed father

Mildred Wren: Victoria's younger sister

Evelyn: Victoria's Australian uncle

Yusef: an anarchist, working at the Austrian consulate

Tewfik: 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 consulate

Count Khevenhüller-Metsch: the Austrian consul, Porpentine's alter ego

M. de Villiers: the Russian consul, Goodfellow's alter ego

Maxwell Rowley-Bugge: aka Ralph MacBurgess, likes young girls, moved to Alexandria after he was busted with a ten year old

Alice: the ten year old girl who got Max/Ralph busted

Lepsius: 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 Cairo

Waldetar: a Portugese train conductor on the Alexandria-Cairo express

Nita: his pregnant wife

Manoel, Antonia, Maria: his children

Gebrail: 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 Victoria

Hanne Echerze: waitress at the German bierhalle in Cairo, Lepsius's lover, although she doesn't love him anymore

Boeblich: owner of the German bierhalle

Varkumian: pimp, had a conversation with Porpentine at the bierhalle

Evan 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 expedition

Pike-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 boss

VA "Brushhook" Spugo: 85 years old, keeps track of alligator sightings on a map

Dolores, Pilar: friends of Angel and Geronimo

Delgado: vibes player in the band Angel, Benny and Fina see, is getting married tomorrow

Bung: the alligator hunter foreman

Father 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 Bellevue

Mafia: 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 friend

Fu: other friend

Lucille: 14 year old girl Benny met out partying with Angel and wants to screw

Dudley Eigenvalue: dentist, does work for the Whole Sick Crew for free, anticipating that they will be powerful in the future

Clayton "Bloody" Chiclitz: of Yoyodyne, a defense contractor

Signor Mantissa: depressed Italian, trying to steal Botticelli's Birth of Venus from a museum by hiding it in a tree, friend of Hugh Godolphin

Cesare: his friend, pretends to be a steamboat

The Gaucho: helping Mantissa, wears a wideawake hat, Venezuelan revolutionary who formed the Figli di Machiavelli

Cuernacabrón: the Gaucho's lieutenant

Gadrulfi: a florist, Mantissa's Judas tree provider, the English Foreign Office thinks it's an alias for Evan Godolphin

Salazar: Venezuelan Vise-Consul in Florence

Ratón: Salazar's chief

Angelo: one of the Gaucho's captors

Major Percy Chapman: from the English Foreign Office, captured the Gaucho in Florence to interrogate him about Vheissu

Demivolt: Sidney Stencil's coworker at the foreign office, offered him the chance to talk to Victoria but he said no

Covess: Sidney's chum in diplomatic school who went rogue and tried to recruit locals to invade France

Moffit: takes orders from Sidney at the Foreign Office in Florence

Ferrante: Italian neo-Machievellian secret policeman, assigned to the "Venezuelan problem"

Vogt: Austrian who runs the secret police headquarters

Gascoigne: black man who works for Vogt

Borracho: night watchman at the Figli di Machiavelli's garrison

Tito: makes a living selling dirty photos to soldiers

Oley 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 parts

Potamós: Scaffold cook

Kurt 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 WWI

Foppl: 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 months

Willemstad van Wijk: leader in the African community

Abraham Morris: leading a rebellion, destroyed Mondaugen's antennae

Jacobus Christian, Tim Beukes: Morris's followers

Sergeant van Niekerk: insulted Abraham Morris, incidentally starting the rebellion

Vera 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 below

Lieutenant Weissmann: Vera's "companion", accuses Mondaugen of being a traitor because he thinks the sferics are a code from the enemy, crossdresses

Hedwig Vogelsang: a sixteen year old singer/dancer at the Siege Party, Mondaugen's crush

Andreas: a rebel that Foppl was keeping in his basement and torturing

Schwach, Fleische: Mondaugen's comrades in his dreams of 1904

Sarah: African woman that Mondaugen rapes and keeps prisoner in his house in his 1904 dream, she drowned after trying to escape

Matilda Winthrop: runs a whorehouse in Harlem where Sphere goes to meet Ruby

Ruby: Sphere's whore, wants to visit her ailing father far away

Sylvia: another whore there

Murray Sable: race car driver

Fausto 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 son

Elena Xemxi: Fausto's wife, Paola's mother, died in a bombing

Maratt: Fausto's school chum, studied politics

Dnubietna: Fausto's school chum, studied engineering

Father 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 there

Carla Maijstral: Fausto's mother

Saturno Aghtina: lived in the sewers in Malta with his wife, Elena and Paola

Tifkira: Maltese merchant who hoards wine, Fausto and Dnubietna drank some of it together while bombs fell

Patrolman 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 sell

C. Osric Lych: commander on the Scaffold, gave Pig a break when he got caught stealing the radio parts

Groomsman: "crab-ridden", another of Lych's sailors saved from dishonorable discharge

Hanky, Panky: the girls that Groomsman and Pig visited on days off

Gino Profane: Benny's father

Neil: Profane and Stencil witness him beating up a plainclothes cop who was trying to catch him soliciting homosexual sex

Melanie 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 her

M. Itague: owns a theatre company

Satin: Russian choreographer

Porcepic: Russian composer, a fictionalized Stravinsky

Gerfaut: playwright

Kholsky: "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 one

Sgherraccio: a "mad Irredentist", ran off with V. after Melanie died

Flip, Flop: girls Profane and Pig party with in DC

Iago Saperstein: found Flip and Profane sleeping on the steps of a Masonic temple, invite them to a party

Howie Surd: drunken yeoman, American sailorp

Fat Clyde/Harvey: super skinny, American sailor, goes out on liberty with Pappy Hod in Valletta

Tiger Youngblood: "spud coxswain"

Lazar: "the deck ape"

Teledu: tries to pee out the bus window

Leman: "red-headed water king", bad drunk

Tourneur: ship's barber, kept Leman from throwing a rock through a window

Elisa: barmaid, Paola's friend

Johnny Cantango: Scaffold's damage control assistant, feels responsible for messing up the propeller

Pinguez: steward's mate striker, got sick at a bar

Falange: snipe, Pinguez's buddy

Baby Face: another sailor

Antoine Zippo, Nasty Chobb: took over the bandstand at the Union Jack bar

Sam Mannaro: corpsman striker

Dahoud: SP along with Leroy

Leroy 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 sea

Aquilina: tells Stencil about Mme. Viola

Mme. Viola: hypnotist who bought the glass eye in 1944, Stencil leaves Valletta to find her

Brenda Wigglesworth: American traveler Profane meets after Paola and Stencil leave him

Veronica Manganese: Hiding V. in Malta

It’s a long distance from 1963 to 2009. The prior, V.’s pub date. The later, when I thought maybe I had found perhaps the Pynchon key in Inherent Vice. I unlocked a bunch of great stuff with that key. Fantastic stuff. Stuff I dug. Stuff I got lost in. Against the Day. The newest thing. That one from the early ‘90s. I’m still waiting to see if it fits Mason & Dixon. Gravity’s Rainbow is next, but I’ve already done 2/3 of that one and know I don’t need no damn key for it.

That key doesn’t fit V..

Well, at least it didn’t key it open in the kind of immediate manner a million+ candle Klieg might have brightened it up. In other words, to my only slight disappointment, it’s still the same damn novel it was back when I first tried my hand at it ages and ages ago with the mere assistance of Sam Adams. I don’t think Sam Adams or any of his kin are helpful in the reading of V.. And probably not helpful for reading other Pynchon either. But that might just be my thing about disavowing any pretense about drugs of various sorts making entertainment products better. Drugs are entertaining enough on their own without the supplement of other artistic genres.

But speaking of drugs of various sorts, what one should point out is that the distance between 1963 and 2009 is a length of 46 years. That’s a pretty damn old Scotch. And I’ve never been able to afford one. These later vintage’d Pynchons have treated me very very well. And GR is being sweated with a great deal of anticipation by me. But this V. thing would require a third pass through to get itself cracked (or key’d, depending on our metaphor here) by Yours Truly. And it doesn’t need to be cracked by My Truly. You’ll do just fine with it. I liked lots of stuff it in though. To be sure. There’s a lot of that stuff that pops onto a wave length I’ve tuned myself to and I really like it and there’s other stuff where you know the sentences don’t really follow from themselves so much the way I prefer my sentences to follow themselves. And they really don’t need to. I really liked the way sentences followed themselves in Against the Day.

On thing I really like about Pynchon, and a thing I noticed first when reading his 2006 novel, or maybe it was his 2009 novel, is that when you’re reading along and you get this recollection of something that happened a while ago and you start paging backward to find that thing that happened a while ago and you realize that what happened a while ago happened only three pages back not thirty pages back like you had anticipated because that’s how long back things like that usually happen in other novels you read. I had that experience with V. and really kind of appreciated it.

I guess so the reason maybe why I’m hemming and hawing is that I sort of failed to do that part where the reader picks up his part of the task and sews the whole damn thing into a unity. And I know that with someone like a Pynchon that unity is designed to be frustrated, but dammit! there’s still a unity even within that fracturing. So the episodic stuff of course is de rigour these days and I dig it; making a novel out of a collection of short stories. Which is emphatically not what V. is. So with a bit of a synchronic approach I have no doubt that I’d be able to zip this thing into a proper novelistic unity were I to read it a fourth and fifth time. (I really can’t believe that in this post-structuralist age folks still think novels need to be written and read diachronically!) That’s not the thing. The thing is, the thing that sort of bugged me or kicked me out or left me cold or didn’t work for me was the way the sentences didn’t exactly follow themselves. And thank the gods they didn’t! because in 1961 The Novel needed some shaking up. And I’m glad Pynchon shook it up. And I’m glad he continued to write novels because I think he’s written some of the Best Novels Ever. This is just not quite one of them. Maybe. Still and all, it’s Pynchon so lots of good people will read it. Some will love it. Some will move on with great Begeisterung back to GR and M&D. (That’s me!)

reading pynchon is like viewing a kaleidoscope through a piece of gauze - you’re never entirely sure you can see clearly what’s going on but from what you can deduce it’s riotous and unpredictable and somehow incandescent in its obscurity. only my second work of his and it is not at all going to be the last

What to say of Pynchon's half-century spanning epic?

Like Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon's first novel (published, I think, at an astonishing age 26) is concerned with questions of life and death, here both at the internal, personal scale of our relations to people, things, and the outer world, and on a broad international scale of war, colonialism, and political intrigue. Linking the two, Herbert Stencil, adventurer and obsessed historian, tracking the intertwined history of his British foreign office agent father and the enigmatic V., represented in various forms across 50 years in a slow progression towards the inanimate. Questions of the animate and inanimate worlds serve as central life/death dichotomy here, and the novel is filled to the brim with significant objects, automatons, prostheses, and bouts of tourism/colonialism (both of which, it seems, are joined in their ability to take a living place and convert it to small spheres of inanimacy, both literal, in a truly chilling Sudwest setpiece, and metaphorical, everywhere else people cluster around notable buildings and monuments (embodied by frequent references to mid 19th-century travel guide writer Karl Baedeker)).

Stencil himself, curiously, seems to be one of only a few characters in the teeming cast not occupying an obvious spot on an animate to inanimate continuum, as his obsessions simultaneously encompass the human and inhuman worlds (people, but lost to the unliving past). His off-the-scale foil is ultimate sad-sack ex-seamen Benny Profane, whose role as uber-schlemiel seemingly places him at both the far left position of animacy (the born bungler's natural enemy, we are told, being the inanimate objects that conspire to trip them up like so many banana peels (which, fortunately, appear nowhere in the novel -- it would just be too much)) and the deepest inanimacy of sloth and of one who, giving in to his perceived (self-created?) role, inevitably sabotages every human relationship he finds himself in. Potential Profane paramour Rachel Owlglass, on the other hand, may sit at the fulcrum and be as a result the novel's healthiest character overall.

What can be said? Lots apparently, and yet much, much more than I can possibly describe here. What matters most is that the novel is beautiful and tragic, a marvel of both clockwork convergent plotting and the ultimate nonconvergent spinout of human passions. And one which manages to be considerably more gripping and less opaque than some of the subsequent Pynchon I've read.

I've seen the book described elsewhere as "cubist". It is an accurate term, evoking both the book's violent modernism and chorus of impossible angles. Angles which, we find, are still capable of describing a human portrait.

4.5/5
Brazen and smart. Pynchon's debut is a work of many layers. To be re-read to catch what I am sure I missed the first time.

The books moves rather fast despite Pynchon's heavy prose. The book reads like an examination of post war malaise and fear that many surely felt. Perhaps it mirrors Pynchon's own restlesness.

In Profane, we see that malaise clearly: drunken and clearly directionless. And in Stencil we see the fear in the fact he never wanted to visit Malta because he inherently knew it would end his quest for V.

The fact that V. was written when Pynchon was so young is incredible. I will say this book, along with Inherent Vice, has made me a Pynchon fan, eagerly awaiting to read Gravity's Rainbow, Vineland, Mason & Dixon, which have all been purchased in the last few weeks.

V. spoke to me in a way few novels can, with its encyclopedic breadth and sly humor. It is recommended to those who seek a challenge and who have faith in the power of a novel.

Update 8/22/15 - Moving this to 5 stars.

Finals this week, so review will be a bit delayed. But it should be a good one. Lots to talk about; lots to chew on.

I will be taking notes a la Ian Graye, if you'd like to follow along.

http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...

An imaginative, humorous, interesting, obscure, well written novel that covers a range of subjects including art, jazz, a nose job, New York’s sewage system wildlife and the Malta bombings of World War II. There’s lots of jokes and a number of song lyrics. The strength of this novel is the many well described scenes, the amount of interesting information covered and the humour.

Pynchon has strung together a number of short stories, some interconnected and linked them by providing clues as to the identity of V and V’s many different guises. It’s Pynchon’s first novel.

There's lots of thought provoking lines, for example:
'Life's single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.'
"Love with your mouth shut, help without breaking your ass or publicising it: keep cool, but care."
"To have humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult."
An interesting, entertaining reading experience.

I said the next Pynchon book I'd read was Gravity's Rainbow; then I found a copy of V. Considering V is Pynchon's debut and an introduction to his style I thought it might be good to have it under my belt before attempting to get more than 100 pages into Gravity's Rainbow again. I think I was right to do so. I wasn't sure what to expect going into V but found it to be another interesting piece in the Pynchon puzzle.

The criticism I often see of V is that it's too disjointed and more so a sign of things to come rather than a fully fleshed out concept. I kind of have to agree. This book is segmented into two different stories; the conspiratorial mystery around Stencil and his search for V and the vagabond romp of Benny Profane. V is far from the first book to have two narratives that eventually converge, it's also not the most successful at doing so. I think it does a fine job of telling these two stories simultaneously but there wasn't anything spectacular about how it was done. It felt rough around the edges, something that is a bit of a theme for V.

Personally, I was more drawn to the chapters revolving around Profane and his "Sick Crew". The dialog and shenanigans that they get into with their endless parties is some of what I've enjoyed most from previous Pynchon reads. He knows how to craft a lovable bum character who gets up to all sorts of hijinks.

Unfortunately, the other half of the book is where the real weight and literary prowess is and that didn't always grab me in the same way. I think this is just what an initial read of any Pynchon book will do to the reader. You initially are drawn to the fun and absurd of his writing and in later reads really catch the weight and nuance to what he is writing.

What truly lost me the most was the chapters surrounding Malta and Maijstral, which is unfortunate because that's where the central focus of the book lies. I found these sections to be a slough to read through and limiting in what kept my interest. I think this is for a few reasons. One the sheer length of the main chapter that depicts this part of the story which is about 70 pages alone and my lack of historical knowledge of Malta.

I'm someone who loves history and international conspiratorial espionage, you'd think this book would be the perfect thing for me. Maybe on a reread it will be. The other sections of the Stencil tale caught my attention to varying degrees. I loved the section on modern day Namibia and enjoyed the chapters covering Italy and Egypt although I won't say I caught all he was going for here. I think this was because I had a better understanding of the history of these regions and time periods being discussed. When it comes to Malta I really only have a basic cultural and geographic understanding of the country. I had no idea what Sette Guigno was until I looked it up after finishing the book. I think centering the book around such an obscure country and time period is what offers one of the major barriers to this book, but I'd imagine that is why Pynchon picked it.

While I wasn't fully engrossed in the story I did appreciate this book for what it stands for in the grander literary landscape. With this being Pynchon's first novel it obviously means a lot for his bibliography but it also means a lot for all of the post modern and maximalist literature that came after it. In the 60 years since this book was first published we've had multiple generations try their hand at writing maximalist novels; we're at a point now where the blueprint that was laid out here has been perfected. Many of the rough edges have been sanded down and we are left with the "perfect" plan to structure a novel like this. Reading a newly published maximalist novel in the 2020's can almost feel too formulaic and predictable, falling on genre troupes and cliches (I'm looking at you Adam Levin).

While these newer books may leave you feeling more satisfied after a first read, it is those rough edges and unexpected elements that bring you back to a reread and keep your mind pondering the work.

Of course there were authors that came before V that did a lot for the post modern and maximalist genres, Joyce and Gaddis being the two that come to mind. While I have not actually read works from either author, the work that I have actually read that I drew most comparisons to was John Dos Passos' USA Trilogy. Many of the time period, location, and character jumps in the narrative felt very similar to what I read there. I think Dos Passos did a much better job at combining these story elements to convey one theme but I also know Pynchon grows and improves from this point with his following works.

I've now read three Pynchon novels, Inherent Vice, Crying of Lot 49, and V, all of which I've rated 4 stars. Each of these books had their own unique issues and pleasures for me. Currently I'd say Inherent Vice was the most fun, Crying of Lot 49 had the most interesting mystery, and V has been the most impressive from a literary perspective. I've got high hopes for Gravity's Rainbow and will be reading it before the end of this year (its 50th anniversary).

“Life's single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.”



Thomas Pynchon's V has long been one of my favorite novels. Describing it, however, is next to impossible (for me at least). There are a host of fascinating characters including including Benny Profane, Rachel Owlglass, Stencil, a group of artists known as the Whole Sick Crew and as well as the mysterious entity known as V who seems to represent one thing and then another and is tied up in endless webs of conspiracy.

Pynchon goes back and forth in time between Profane's yo-yoing on the subways in Manhattan in the present to Stencil's search for clues to V's identity in the late 19th and early 20th century. This isn't the easiest of books to tackle, but it pulls you in and is nothing short of fantastic! If you aren't ready for this one but want to experience Pynchon, you might give The Crying of Lot 49 a try. It's more accessible and much shorter, but definitely another great book! V, however, is my go-to and a book I will return to again and again!

Who or what is V? Would love to sit here and say that I even cared - but then again, you don't have to; you aren't really suppose to. This all about getting lost in a postmodern maze. And what a fun maze it was. It's certainly advisable to read this novel with a clear head. Not the sort of book you want to sit up in bed with late at night when knackered. No, this requires complete and utter attention. Alternatively, you could forget what I just said, let one's hair down, grab a drink, forget the plot, and just be dazzled by some preposterously madcap and rollickingly eccentric passages of writing. If someone passed me this book and I didn't know who had written it, I would assume it was some wacko who's marble bag is a few balls sort of full.

For a debut novel this truly carries the status of being highly original; it truly is. If Pynchon really is the Godfather of postmodern hip lit then I can see why. I remember reading Vineland back in 2015, and it still remains the most fun I have had with a book, so for me this isn't as good as that, but one, amongst many things, I would love to give Pynchon a pat on the back for is his characters names. They have to be some of the most brilliant out of the ordinary in all of literature. So then, what does V. have that other early post-war novels lack? It certainly emphasizes the creation of a sort of modern mythology which becomes apparent the further in you go. Digressions of both idea and narrative here prove hard to crack most of the time: it was like playing around with a device that had a ten-digit code. The mode of storytelling stretches far back from the postmodern era though, and of course most will think Of Joyce. He did it for the moderns with Ulysses, writing a Homeric odyssey for a generation in which heroism lay flat on its face.

V. kind of reminds us that we never really made it that far away from ancient polytheism. Benny Profane, one of the central characters walks the streets of New York City alternating between spells of Erotic and Bacchic revelry. As wanderer back from the war, an archetype as old as written words, Profane lacks a homeland where he might end his voyage. Whilst the obsessive Herbert Stencil, searching for V., finds the quest for his Holy Grail undercut with the eternally unknowable.
He isn't the only one.

Profane and the whole sick crew blunder along, tormented by drunkenness and misunderstanding, where Pynchon creates characters, so many of them in fact, that it can be difficult to truly make heads or tails of any of them. His world and his overstretched sentences seem bent on proving that even though the planet may be more nonsensical than say Alice’s Wonderland, there’s no reason we can’t have fun along the way. Their crackpot epic journey fun as it was, also seemed to have the feel of one running blindfolded down an alley before nutting a brick wall.

V gets a 4/5 as it was way more enjoyable than the Crying over Lot 49, but wasn't as good or as fun as Vineland.

For once, these one-lined reviews on the cover has it right. I doubt if people actually read the book before writing those lines/words : Fantastic, soul-crushing, zeitgeist, terrifying, razor-sharp—It might just be anything for any book and could just be right. For all these 496 pages I didn't care for who or what V. is, but there hadn't been an enjoyable read as this one. I should've started Pynchon with this one and moved to Gravity's Rainbow. I'd have to reread Mondaugen's chapter again and move onto GR for the second time, or just read full bibliography and come back to GR again at last. V. and GR had been so good that COL49 and IV seem a bit inferior (or needs a reread), even what I've read of Bleeding Edge (200 pages) is just not on par with early Pynchon.