Thomas Pynchon is supposed to be a premier American author. When deciding which book of his to read first, I took some advice from a reviewer and picked up V. V. is Pynchon's first novel, and according to the reviewer, it is shorter and easier than his most famous book, Gravity's Rainbow. Taking this into consideration, it was an ominous sign when I lifted V. from the library shelf to find it so thick. Clocking in at 547 pages, I knew I had a wordpuker on my hands.

Then we get to the names. The names are diabolical in their stupidity. Benny Profane. Oh, cuz he is kinda profane, right? Lame. Horrible name. Rachel Owlglass? What is this, Harry Potter? Not going to take her seriously. Then the crown jewel: Bongo-Shaftsburry. All of these names are supposed to be hilarious but the joke feels like it is on me for reading this book in the first place. The absurdity of this novel made it a failure; if none of this has a point or it is all supposed to be a parody it simply does not have to be so painfully long. The way every digression, every ADD tangent is indulged is the literary equivalent of jacking off and Pynchon is a nymphomaniac.

Non-plot related rambling can be enjoyable (Savage Detectives), but Pynchon's pointless backstories and tedious explanations were aggravating. If you find his brand of prolix humor funny, then maybe you won't mind so much. I didn't laugh the whole time, despite feeling like the book wanted me to. The stream of consciousness and flashback/flashforward shifts destroyed momentum, the pseudo-spy capers were like a bad soap opera and the characters in general never inspired anything but sighs of frustration.

Sarcasm and parody in general work well when delivered quickly. This book is a 547 page joke without a punchline. Get it?

“Keep calm and be kind”

Thomas Pynchon’s first novel, V, is often labelled a prototype for Gravity’s Rainbow. Pynchon himself considered V as juvenilia. Despite not particularly enjoying the experience, it’s still a fact-filled odyssey.

The story jumps back and forth in time, one moment focusing on New York delinquents refusing to embrace adult/submit to conformity, and another moment being in British-occupied Egypt in the 19th century.

So why didn’t I enjoy it? Well, for one thing I didn’t really feel much for the characters. Whilst I sympathised with their disillusionment with society, I never really connected with them on a deep level. It also requires a serious amount of focus. One small lapse in concentration and it all becomes a jumbled mess.

Pynchon’s Seafaring days in the Navy are reflected in the novel as is his obsession with European/colonial history. It’s really impressive to think he published V when he is 27 years old.

As mentioned before, Gravity’s Rainbow looms large when reading V. The books are very similar in a number of ways and even features a character that appears in both stories. All of Pynchon’s trademarks are here, including archaic language and an abundance of wordplay and double entendres that ensure the reader’s brain is rattled throughout.

Some of the chapters are easy to comprehend whilst others, such as Chapter 3 (painful to even think about it), are a complete mess. In fact, contrary to popular opinion, I found the plot more challenging than each featured in Gravity’s Rainbow or Mason & Dixon.

Maybe it was because I was less engaged with the characters and their fates, but I was regularly checking how many pages were left. Of all the books I’ve read by Pynchon, V and Vineland both feel the least essential, particularly because he covered sinilar themes but more successful in Gravity’s Rainbow and Inherent Vice, respectively.

So why didn’t I rate V lower? Like all of Pynchon’s novels, it’s filled with a plethora of historical detail that never ceases to impress. There are numerous lines that are hard to shake and I’m sure that I would gain more from a re-read.

P.s. I didn’t realise but Radiohead’s Fog features the lyrics “baby Alligator’s in the Sewers” due to Thom Yorke reading this novel (I wonder if Paul Thomas Anderson introduced Pynchon’s work to the band).

“Every night to the Dog and Bell
Young Stencil loved to go
To dance on the tables and shout and sing
And give is’ pals a show.
His little wife would stay to home
‘Er ‘eart all filled wiv pain
But the next night sharp at a quarter to six
‘E’d be down to the pub again. Until
That one fine evening in the monf of May
He announced to all as came wivin ‘is sight
You must get along wivout me boys
I’m through wiv rowdiness and noise.
Cause Stencil’s going home tonight.”


Pynchon Ranked:

Gravity’s Rainbow
Mason & Dixon
Inherent Vice
Vineland
V
Slow Learner

Pynchon to Read:

Against the Day
Bleeding Edge

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.

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 n  V.n than Crying of Lot 49. I fancied n  V.n 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. ��

n  V.n carries many themes, some overt, some tucked away until you unleash their presence. You'll find ��in n  V.n 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. ��

When I’ve been reading V. quite a while ago I couldn’t get out of dictionaries and encyclopedias – the book is a carnival of words and ideas.

Say a man is no good for anything but jazzing around. He’ll go live in a cathouse, he’ll jazz it all over town.

People like anything: gossip, rumours, hearsay, tall tales, myths… The only thing they don’t like is truth…

Geronimo stopped singing and told Profane how it was. Did he remember the baby alligators? Last year, or maybe the year before, kids all over Nueva York bought these little alligators for pets. Macy’s was selling them for fifty cents, every child, it seemed, had to have one. But soon the children grew bored with them. Some set them loose in the streets, but most flushed them down the toilets. And these had grown and reproduced, had fed off rats and sewage, so that now they moved big, blind, albino, all over the sewer system. Down there, God knew how many there were. Some had turned cannibal because in their neighborhood the rats had all been eaten, or had fled in terror.

V. is a luscious and scrumptious salad of baroque urban legends, frilly drinking bouts and fanciful history lessons.

Love’s a lash, Kisses gall the tongue, harrow the heart; Caresses tease Cankered tissue apart. Liebchen, come Be my Hottentot bondsman tonight, The sjambok’s kiss Is unending delight. Love, my little slave, Is color-blind; For white and black Are only states of mind.

The style and language of the tale is a quintessence and epitome of that lush, rebellious, tumultuous and alchemical epoch.

To have humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult.

And somewhere in the wings of history stands a cosmic actress – a capricious, mercantile, decadent and frigid harlot.
And this omnipotent cocotte is entropy. And entropy rules equally the doom of a soap bubble and the destiny of human being, therefore any human life is nothing but a soap bubble.

One of the worst novels I've ever read: bad prose, stupid idea of "humor", pointless fog and symbolism everywhere. Yeah, vaginas, we get it.

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.

"A phrase (it often happened when he was exhausted) kept cycling round and round, preconsciously, just under the threshold of lip and tongue movement: "Events seem to be ordered into an ominous logic." It repeated itself automatically and Stencil improved on it each time, placing emphasis on different words-"events seem"; "seem to be ordered"; "ominous logic"-pronouncing them differently, changing the "tone of voice" from sepulchral to jaunty: round and round and round. Events seem to ordered into an ominous logic. He found paper and pencil and began to write the sentence in varying hands and type faces."

As wartime paranoia, obsessiveness, elusiveness, and ambiguity all seem to be trademark characteristics of Thomas Pynchon's more epic narratives, it's easy enough for the reader to constantly stumble upon these intentionally scattered, meta-clues. Because his novels cover such a broad realm of subjects, while proposing a very unique, and humorous philosophy of history, the connections and transitions of V.'s hodgepodge of vignettes concerning a rich tapestry of characters struggling with both World Wars becomes more and more apparent as the "story" reaches its conclusion. Overall, this passage seems to function as an accurate metaphor for what it feels like to read V..

With his eagerly anticipated seventh novel coming out in August of this year, V. now stands as one of his more accessible works, not to mention a fascinating example of his writing to look back upon in retrospect. Benny Profane is the archetypal Pynchonian schlemihl; an endearing protagonist, merely trying to get by as the rest of the world struggles obsessively with finding existential meaning in a universe full of closed systems. Tyrone Slothrop of Gravity's Rainbow would later act as a more carefully constructed version of this character. While it's true that not all of Pynchon's protagonists are slackers simply looking for a good time, they still function as tour guides who offer a more or less objective view of the events taking place. Even Herbert Stencil who exists as sort of an opposite of Profane, still shares a set of common characteristics, namely, humility or humanity. Call it what you will.

We follow Profane after just getting out of the navy, living in New York. He falls in with a crowd of bohemians and drifters referred to as the Whole Sick Crew. This group resembles the social crowd in the Recognitions as well as characters belonging to any standard party scene in a beat novel (albeit far more tolerable, and acting as intentional parodies). Profane loafs around, finds a job hunting alligators in the sewers of New York. After shooting Stencil in the ass on one of his jobs more characters enter the picture, and we are introduced to Stencil's obsessive quest to find the elusive V., a sort of character that his father before him had been fascinated with. From there the narrative drifts back and forth between historical episodes set during the tail end of the 19th century, and the first half of the 20th.

Pynchon's sympathies have always been directed at the marginalized, poor, oppressed, idealistic, liberal, etc. Even when he sketches portraits of his capitalist, fascist, hateful villains, he still manages to show their early development from wide-eyed, idealistic dreamer to avaricious monster, while avoiding a sort of idealistic bias because he presents the reader with the inherent weakness and hypocrisy of his liberal heroes just as well. Gaddis did the same thing with Wyatt Gwyon and Edward Bast, albeit both met more morbid, Faustian ends.

V. functions as a metaphor for the late twentieth century, synthetic dehumanization, which has now become one of the more blatant examples of postmodern theorizing, but in 1961 this all must have read as more of a prescient idea. Several episodes in the book, as ambiguous as they are, sort of portray "her" as an unattainable object of desire. The fourth chapter entitled "In Which Esther Gets a Nose Job" is the earliest introduction to this theme. Naturally, Shoenmaker the man who performs this operation, later to become her insensitive lover is the first sort of villain to appear. Robots modeled after humans appear later on. Profane has a particularly profound and hilarious conversation with one of them. Pynchon utilizes this theme as a way of revealing how human beings desire this sort of mechanical, empty ontology, as a way of escaping their own horrific human condition. Once again, this is why Profane's character is so very important. He exemplifies the human spirit. In his lackadaisical approach to life, he achieves what is of the utmost importance to Pynchon. The ability to merely exist, and deal, regardless of whatever sort of astronomical terror will abound. Another reason why his own unique brand of historical fiction functions so well. What's more horrifying than the first half of the twentieth century?

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.»

I'm pretty convinced Thomas Pynchon might actually know everything. I was explaining a typical Pynchon reading experience to my partner during this, my first go-around with V. (Pynchon's first novel written while he was a twenty-something in college (!)): When you know everything, it's probably really hard to stay on any kind of narrative track. Every proper noun could be (and often is) a potential springboard into a lengthy digression. Using the word "butterfly" in a metaphor? Well now we have to write a 50-page scene set in 1938 so we can include American actress Butterfly McQueen playing a student in the Broadway comedy "What a Life," which will somehow tangentially (and more than likely symbolically) relate to the main story.

20 pages in and I had already Googled at least 20 different words or events, including the siege of Malta in World War II, the South African Bondelswarts Rebellion in 1922, Muammar Gaddafi, the History of Veneuzuela (1830-1908), the Fashoda Crisis, and what a Mahdi is (a messianic figure in Islamic eschatology). Pynchon could probably rewrite by heart most articles on Wikipedia having to do with any event in world history from the 19th century to now.

Most readers struggle with Pynchon because he is a "systems novelist"; a writer much more interested in how an entire society and its ideologies work, and how those ideologies provide a regulating framework for the action of its people. His characters are often mostly well-meaning losers who are hopelessly caught up in these giant systems, yo-yoing around events beyond their control, trying to uncover what seems like a larger conspiracy to it all. It's not about traditional story -- if you're looking for an A-to-B plot or character development, you're not going to get it from Pynchon. You have to try and look at the bigger picture behind the bigger picture.

Most Pynchon novels have so much going on that it's impossible to summarize, and V. is no exception. The main "storyline" consists of a discharged U.S. Navy sailor named Benny Profane bouncing around between different jobs and locations in the 1950s. He eventually ends up in New York and falls in with a group of pseudo-bohemian artists and hangers-on known as the Whole Sick Crew, and gets caught up in the quest of an aging traveler named Herbert Stencil who aims to identify and locate the mysterious entity he knows only as "V."

Understanding who (or what) V. is is instrumental to understanding the novel, and Pynchon doesn't make it easy for you, particularly because we often aren't sure if it's the same person (or even a real person), and the effort to track V. down is often interrupted by large, seemingly unrelated chapters in different time periods with lots of kooky characters.

I was just enjoying the ride (which is the best advice I can give to any Pynchon newcomer), but eventually started to piece together an interpretation. V. shows up in various points throughout time, always in places right on the verge or war or violent rebellion. These are times of decadence, where the evil powers-that-be are enjoying the remains of their money and influence (mostly by enacting violence on slaves and having fabulous orgies) right before their fall. As one character tells us: "To have humanism we must first be convinced of our own humanity. As we move further into decadence this becomes more difficult." Had this novel been written today, you could pretty much envision V. showing up in our current society as it seems to be reaching the end of a period of decadence.

As V. moves throughout time, she also becomes less human quite literally, by becoming more and more inanimate, slowly replacing parts of her body with glass, stones and prosthetic appendages. V. descends into automation throughout the 20th century along with our society; and Pynchon makes it clear that it IS a decent. He seems to imply that the West's rise into mechanization has proportionally declined our humanity.

You could also read V. as representing religion, and as we fall fuse further into technology, we fall further from God, worshipping objects instead. Or maybe V. is our declining humanity pushing us towards fascism, as there are allusions to V. serving to represent the ideals of Mussolini and Hitler.

It's striking how much is there when you start to look for it in what could otherwise read like 500 pages of seemingly unrelated nonsense. But Pynchon is a master at making it feel like you are peeking behind the ultimate curtain, giving you just the tiniest glance at the real Truth behind it all, and then making you question if you really saw anything at all.

Each Pynchon novel is a treasure and this one is no different. I'm only giving it 4 stars because it was basically a dry run for Gravity's Rainbow, which takes a lot of the themes here and cranks it to 11. Any time I'm in a reading rut, Pynchon never fails to get me out of it.

“Events seem to be ordered into an ominous logic.”

V is for Virginia, V-Note, Victory, Victoria, Vendetta, Vibration, Voice, Vision, Valletta, Voyeur, Vodka, Vieux, Villas, Villages, Voluptuous, Vainglorious, Vinegar, Vistas, Vomit, Victims, Vehicles, Veins, Vocal, Vice Versa, Voodoo, Volunteer, Virtue, Vertical, Vicious, Vanity, Vanishing, Vitality, Vacated, Ventures, Visible, Virgin, Venery, Veiled, VaudeVille, Vantage, Vegetables, Vicinity, Valley, Verge, Villiers, Violence, Vagrant, Voslauer, Vague, Violation, Vast, Varkumian, VelVet, Vatican, Veronica, Viennese, Violin, Vocalist, Vibes, Vultures, Volume, Vessels, Via, Vheissu, Vecchio, Vaporetto, Venus, VoVV, Veil, Veteran, Venezuelan, Vicinity, Vice, Vials, Vaulted, Vat, Vary, Vindicating, Vogt, Viola, Volcanoes, VesuVius, Votes, Vada, Void, VergeltungsVVaffe, Van, Veldschoendragers, Vera, Vogelsang, Vestiges, Vernichtungs, Vellum, Vampire, Versailles, Virility, Vibrato, Vaterliche, Vile, Valediction, Vinyl, Vittoriosa, Vulnerable, mons Veneris…V is for V.

Like the number 23 enigma, V is eVeryVVhere if you look for it, and once you see it your Vision is irreVersibly altered/altared.

In general, Pynchon’s prose is quite unique and the generous amount of songs he includes, depending on the context, sometimes feel Lynchian, like VVhen Mondaugen leaVes the communal shelter in South-VVest Africa, other times they giVe a musical Vibe (and by “musical” I mean the noun). There is an epically long sentence in chapter nine, a sentence of utter VerVe, something I VVish occurred more often, not just once.

The stories, taking place around the VVorld, including NueVa York, France, Egypt, and Malta, do not eVolVe but orbit a black hole of misinformation, noninformation, or VVhat one could simultaneously call a (non)eVent horizon. “V.’s is a country of coincidence, ruled by a ministry of myth.”

There are a lot of great scenes, including the Visceral rhinoplasty, the alligator hunting in the seVVers VVhich has an eVen stranger substory about a priest VVho VVent beloVV the streets to conVert rats and VVho may have sodomized a rat VVhose name begins VVith, you guessed it, V. Alas, some scenes are not as interesting as all that and I ended up ploVVing through them to see VVhat VVould come next.

I found all the characters more or less unlikeable, but I simply cannot understand the notion of reading something in order to ‘like’ (or like like) the characters, it seems immature, VVhich is not say that I’m unable to haVe fondness for characters in noVels, it’s just that this is not a criteria for my enjoyment, and if anything, disliking characters might help me understand my oVVn misanthropy. Jokes aside, does our ‘antihero’ learn anything at the end of the noVel? VVell, this is hoVV he puts it: “Profane didn’t have to think long. ‘No,’ he said, ‘offhand I’d say I haven’t learned a goddamn thing.’”

OVerall, this is a great first noVel, complex and richly peopled, but this is not Pynchon’s masterpiece, yet there are seeds of a masterpiece in here that I hope blossom as an arbor Vitae in GraVity’s RainboVV, VVhich VVill probably be the next Pynchon I read. Voilà!

After I finished this book, I think my being frustrated at not "getting" V. translated into my not loving the book, initially. But then I realized that (a) I'm completely missing the point of Pynchon's novels if I reading them to "get" them, and that (b) you don't read Pynchon's novels to get them, you read them because for the experience they give, because you want something different, because you want to work hard and be gratified at the end.

One of the best things about V. is that it shows how masterly Pynchon's juggling of tones is. On the one hand you've that goofy slapstick tone that he uses with Profane and Stencil, and then you've got this very serious tone he uses with the historical sections of the book. The historical vignettes are probably the best parts of the book, balancing the setting and themes and tone, shifting periods back and forth from Profane to Mondaugen, from young Stencil to old Stencil, etc. Not to mention the way he describes one of the character's getting a nose job, that one . . . phew, that was quite something.

Pynchon does something really beautiful here: you're reading a dense passage and not understanding as much as you'd want to, and just when you think he's just playing with you--the reader--just then will he turn around everything you have read and felt so far, all within a single sentence. You, in a way, feel in a way disorientated; disorientated now not by the dense prose or language, but by the change in setting and tone of the piece. But he doesn't twist things or shatter expectations by being cold on the characters or on the reader, neither does he do it in a Haha-I-got-you-you're-stupid kind of way. (This whole change of emotion reminds me a bit of McCarthy's Suttree.)

There's a difference between V. and his next novel, The Crying of Lot 49 in that you're not detached from the characters of V. as you are from the characters of Lot 49. Lot 49's all Oedipa and the book is three times shorter. V. has both the multiple characters and the heft of later Pynchon. They're just different books, V. is more like Gravity's Rainbow, where as Lot 49's more like a detective novel.

But there is something deeper in V., something deeper than the absurdity, the weird character names, the goofy humor, the equations, the mathematics, the historical references; beyond the pyrotechnics and beyond the ostensibly "cold and pretentious" things Pynchon's known for: there is a heart and a soul inherent in his writing; but you'll have to look for it, because V. by no means is a casual read. And this book captures what I found "lighter" Pynchon novels like The Crying of Lot 49 and Inherent Vice couldn't capture, i.e. the human aspect of Pynchon's novels. Maybe it's a result of V.'s difficulty and length, if so then it's a testament to the fact that books like these gratify a reader who's patient.

As for the things I didn't like so much about this book: I think Pynchon is a master of prose and V. is good proof of that, but I must add that there are a few instances in this book where the sentences just aren't great and sometimes they're just not clear: some long sentences could've been done better, some of them are a little muddy--but that's just like 5% of the sentences. The book also on the whole can seem a little uneven, too, maybe it's the structure, maybe it's some of those sentences, I don't know. Some parts--the historical ones--are just clearly better than the other ones.

And oh did I mention that the historical vignettes are easily the best parts of the book?

I definitely will read this book again soon; I can only imagine how wonderful and rewarding the second reading will be. I'm now through with the early works of Pynchon and am now going to move to his later books, like Bleeding Edge and Vineland.