Sometimes, when what we've sought is almost within our grasp, we make our faith a lie so that we don't have to give up our quest by achieving its goal.

Huhu tại sao mới 26 mà người ta đã có thể viết được một cuốn như vầy! Tầm tuổi này tôi vẫn còn đang vắt óc suy nghĩ caption 10 chữ cho mấy tấm ảnh chụp chó mèo up instagramm!

Si leer 'La subasta del lote 49' es como prepararse la mochila con un bocadillo y una botellita de agua para pasar el día en el campo, la lectura de 'V.' supone sacar la caravana con lo que ello conlleva, es decir, preparar la tienda de campaña, comprar víveres y coger ropa suficiente porque vas a estar fuera una par de semanas, vivienda en plena naturaleza. Por esta regla de tres, el día que me decida a afrontar la lectura de uno de los libros de más de mil páginas de Pynchon, será como prepararte para un safari en Kenia o una aventura por el Amazonas. ¡Miedo me da!

Querer hacer una reseña, no ya de 'V.' sino de cualquier libro de Pynchon, es una ardua tarea, que además supone contar algunas de las tramas, sorpresas y trampas que el bueno de Pynchon nos ha preparado. Porque la novela se compone de múltiples historias, unas más largas que otras, incluyendo cambios temporales y localizaciones, además de docenas de diferentes personajes. Hay varios de éstos más recurrentes que otros, como son Profane, un ex soldado de marina; Stencil, que tiene fijación por encontrar a V., alguien o algo que apareció entre los papeles de su padre, antiguo miembro de Asuntos Exteriores; o Rachel, que mantiene una extraña relación con Profane.

Leer 'V.' es como adentrarse en Territorio Pynchon, donde todo está relacionado y no existen las casualidades. Al principio cuesta adaptarse al terreno, pero dándole un poco de tiempo, llegas a disfrutar del paisaje. Sin embargo, de vez en cuando es posible que te pierdas mientras exploras, pero no pasa nada, siempre terminas encontrando la salida, aunque a veces no sepas cómo y por lo tanto no te hayas enterado muy bien de dónde has estado (salido). Pero en cuanto terminas tu estancia en 'V.', te queda la sensación de haber pasado unos momentos bastante agradables e interesantes, y no te importaría repetir.

Hay que leer a Pynchon, aunque algunas veces no lo pilles del todo, porque lo importante es dejarse llevar por sus ardides conspiratorios. ¿Recomendaría leerlo a todo el mundo? Ni mucho menos. Sobre todo porque no quiero estar pendiente de mis espaldas por si alguien me sacude con el libro en cuestión.

Mettiamola così: opera prima di un (futuro) genio letterario – qui solo in nuce – di una bellezza strana, che io non ho saputo cogliere appieno. Il mio problema con questo libro è che l'ho letto dopo aver letto il bellissimo “Contro il giorno”, quindi viziata da un'aspettativa che sarebbe certo andata delusa. Cominciare dall'ultima opera di un autore e raffrontarla con un'opera prima è, di solito, un errore fatale. Ho ritrovato in V. le mille storie incastrate, i frammenti di vite e persone eterogenee, di epoche e luoghi diversi, tanto che non si capisce dove l'autore ci voglia portare. Questo accadeva anche in “Contro il giorno”, ma lì c'era una nostalgia per epoche che si andavano rivisitando, una malinconia e pessimismo cosmico struggenti, una critica al sistema occidentale e un'ironia spassosa che facevano vibrare corde profonde o divertire. Tutto questo qui non c'è.

C'è amore per la narrazione in sé, c'è la sua visione astorica della Storia (che non esiste, ma esiste il puzzle che ciascuno si costruisce con i pezzetti che gli capita di vivere); c'è l'amore per i derelitti, gli strani, ineffabili uomini dell'altra faccia dell'americano medio arrivato e consumista, c'è la simpatia per gli anarchici (perché fanno saltare in aria la Storia?) e per le spie (perché cercano di tesserne le trame, suppongo), ma nessuna delle tante storie narrate mi ha davvero coinvolta o divertita. Capisco comunque bene, perché al suo apparire V. fece gridare la critica all'Osanna. Un ventiseienne che scrive per frammenti, per visioni oniriche, per brandelli di vite grottesche, un po' strambe e che ha ben chiara in mente la sua visione di mondo (caotico, ineffabile, soggettivo), non può non destare interesse.
Per nostra fortuna la maturità ha arricchito questo scrittore geniale anche della capacità di coinvolgere, oltre che di tessere trame labirintiche, e di toccare nel profondo l'animo del lettore, cosa che, secondo me, lo fa passare da virtuoso della letteratura al grado di grande scrittore. Ma non ora, non qui.

men

The quandary: Would a full five-star ranking tend to reduce the luster of five for Gravity's Rainbow or Against the Day, or does a ranking automatically take into account a certain grade inflation allowed for youthful indiscretions? After all, for a Pynchon not yet 30 to accomplish such a degree of research into pre- and post-WW1 Europe, in a time well before Google searches, seems astonishing.

My solution is to address V. the way Thomas Jefferson addressed his copy of the Holy Bible: carry along a pen-knife, and slice pages from the Bible when he found passages he disagreed with. My own abridged V. might excise most of the book that took place in 1955-56 in Norfolk and New York. I'm not dispensing with any worth for Benny Profane or Pig Bodine, particularly for the time Benny spent under the streets and in the sewers of New York chasing albino alligators. When I first read this novel in high school, the adventures of the Whole Sick Crew represented the core of the book. Since then, I've grown too grumpy and old to care about the mind-altering adventures of dissolute youth. Except for the rare lucid moments of Hunter S. Thompson, where a spate of gettin' fucked up actually seems to lead somewhere, the manic parties of Pynchon's Crew, Kerouac's Beats, Brad Easton Ellis's brat pack, etc. ad infinitum, bore the hell out of me.

By contrast, the older Stencil, Godolphin, Maijstral seem on to something in a more direct sense in their quest for V., who I take to be a witch (with familiar) guarding the underworld. Fashoda, Florence, Valetta are the strings that matter, both for the novel in its own right, and as a precursor for Gravity's Rainbow. In fact, Kurt Mondaugen's tales of Namibia in 1924 seem to be a necessary prelude to Pynchon's later masterpiece, making V. a prerequisite that can't be skipped. The Pynchon neophyte may well want to retain all the intervening 1955-56 chapters of wild living, simply to rest from the dense poetry of the chapters from earlier points in time. And since all those earlier points come to a partial head with the Suez Crisis of November 1956, one could argue that every word in this novel was necessary.

For most readers, the occasional senseless party will serve as a break from trying to figure out what the hell Pynchon is talking about, anyway. If the book is concluded without its critical 1919 epilogue, my younger self would count the most important passage to be Benny Profane's final admission that "Offhand, I'd say I haven't learned a goddamned thing." These days, I'd be more inclined to give weight to Brenda Wigglesworth's embarrassing free-verse poem on the page previous, which seems to summarize the 20th century and the search for V. fairly well.

One visible factor was notable in this reprise reading of V. Many analyses of Gravity's Rainbow compare plot structures to a rocket's parabolic path. There's another possible parabola present in Pynchon's first novel. In this novel, the young Pynchon displays a compassion and caring that is sweet and often a bit maudlin. By The Crying of Lot 49, much is conspiratorial and full of hurt. Of course, Gravity's Rainbow is the peak of the rocket's trajectory in fear, paranoia, and a feeling that human presence on this planet will never resolve itself well. But by the time we move on to Mason & Dixon, Against the Day, and Bleeding Edge, Pynchon has returned to the idea that compassion is acceptable and happy endings are occasionally possible. While we can't say V. has a happy ending, the young Pynchon does give us signs of hope that are not revisited until Pynchon is 60, 70, and 80. That makes his first novel a fine place to start.

Should you find the time, an inverse reading of Against The Day, Gravity’s Rainbow, and this provides a completely new, immersive look into the larger Pynchonian obsession with pinpointing where it all went wrong. The whole human mess, our whole sick crew of population. Read in this fashion, you’ll find different perspectives on key players (Blicero; Mondaugen) that, to me, reveal characters like Benny or Pig or Jessica or Mexico or (insert your name here) as window dressing and framing-devices; they, as literary analogues of the We, are nothing more than the ineffectual raspberry chorus unable to alter the Big Evil shepherding our transition into the anti-Individual, anti-literate, anti-Art, conformist modern era. Well, at least ‘We’ were goddamn funny, hey.

Combined, you’re covering the late 1800’s to, at least, the middle of the century. Considering the omniscience and intentionally-betrayed dispositions of the narrators of the latter two novels—the voice of America, looks like Kilgore—you’re offered a survey of centenary fuckery I’ll take over Proust’s any day.

Who is V.? V. was the spirit of intrigue, mystery, exoticism, and magic that was found, isolated, and liquidated from existence somewhere in the mechanism of the 20th-Century’s war machine-cum-boardroom.

The Earth isn’t flat, but it may as well be with the way we’ve pounded the fuck out of it.

From this book I learned that:

a) Thomas Pynchon may be the smartest man alive.
b) Pynchon's vocabulary is one of the most extensive I've ever come across.
c) Reading Pynchon is tedious and often unpleasant.

Even with the companion and a book discussion group, reading this novel was like wading through a bog. Every time I grasped the plot, I'd lose track of Pynchon's message, and every time I caught a glimpse of the message, I lost the plot.

No wonder the man's a recluse. Talking to him must be like spending an afternoon with Stephen Hawking.

Pynchon surely can write awesomely. He proves it in hilarious clips such as the description of a nose surgery. But the book is such a jumble of bizarre stories, characters and messy stuff in all kinds of marginal environments, that it's almost impossible to get a clear view on what it is about. Perhaps that is the intent of Pynchon, to suggest the chaos and opaqueness of life. The most outlined story is that of the quest of Herbert Stencil for a woman (V) that turns up in many forms and in different periods of time. Occasionally the book gets some Joycean allure, but for me there's too much fog in it to enjoy it.

I didn't want this book to finish. First, because I enjoyed reading it too much. Second, because once I finished it, there would only be one Pynchon's book left for me to read :( (Mason&Dixon)
Review will follow (at some point).
---
REVIEW TITLE: The little review that could (because it wanted to be the last review of 2017).
----
This being the penultimate Pynchon book I read, I can see all the later Pynchon in it, but filtered by his 26 years of living on this planet. I repeat, 26th. All the themes and techniques that will mature in the later novels are showing their younger faces here. (Interestingly, paranoia is less prevalent in this book. Entropy is key. Also, less funny.)

V. feels like a balloon violently exploding from wayward intelligence and talent that were much better harnessed in Pynchon’s later works. In a way, reading this book, I could somehow see the masterpiece, but I could also see the seams behind it, the stuffing of the creation. But having said that, I can’t say that it affected my enjoyment of it. Maybe because I find exploding genius minds, Videodrome-style, fascinating. And I can’t help but feel amazed at the foresight this 26 year old had in ‘63, about where this century is going.

You have this young writer who decides he’s gonna tell stories but he’s not gonna be confined by the usual way of telling them. Because, you see, he can effectively write like any of his predecessors and literary influences, so he sets out to find new ways to tell stories.

So, he puts stories inside stories, then puts these inside other stories and the point of view changes continuously, like when you are in front of a rotating carousel and it’s crowded,both on it and around it, and the story plays inside the carousel but each viewer sees a different angle of the story at each given moment and the book is the final collection of the stories these people see, plus each viewer’s and merry-go-rounder’s personal story.

The yarn of a story tossed all over by kittens.

As expected, Pynchon won’t serve you his book, you’ll have to claim it. There is so much information in it (and he’s only 26 at this point, I repeat) that each reader can focus where he wants and each exit with a different book at the end of the maze.

For example, I can’t forget the story of the man that fought the desert and the desert won. Or the disassemblement of the woman priest. Or the end. Or cheese danishes.

Reading this novel was like a week-long binge on high-grade pot, while you’re at home feverish with COVID-19 and swilling massive quantities of Robitussin-with-codeine and endless pots of English Breakfast Tea, all the while channel-surfing on a television set that only plays twelve different obscure early-60s TV shows whose plots you can never quite follow. I give the book five stars.

Этот роман – прихотливый пазл, сотканный из поисков таинственной V., как одна из сюжетных единиц, но на самом деле, - лоскутное одеяло современной истории, трактуемой с позиции декаданса. Пинчон считает, что декаданс - это отпадение всего человеческого, навязывание этой утраченной нами человечности неодушевленным предметам и абстрактным теориям. Повествование разорвано, сюжетные линии причудливо переплетаются. Несмотря на явную сатирическую направленность, обилие грязи, секса, попоек, всех этих поверхностных признаков упадка мира, Пинчон ищет причины войн и зла и находит, что « Чтобы претендовать на гуманизм мы сначала должны убедиться в собственной человечности. По мере нашего углубления в декаданс сделать это становится все сложнее.»