I hated this book. So much.

V. is like some weird, half dreamed dispatch from a mind that is hermetically sealed off from the world. It's a book that seems to revolve more around a specific set of images and motifs, clocks, yo-yo's inanimate objects, Malta, espionage, etc. than around a set of characters, though the characters are often compelling and weirdly poetic in their own ways. It's hard to believe that this book is almost 50 years old. The way it tries to tie together so many odd, all but forgotten historical threads and to make you puzzle over them feels incredibly ahead of its time. Which probably goes to show just how widely influential Pynchon actually is. I feel like you could actually move into this book and drown in it.

Reread for a uni assignment I wrote on Pynchon's depiction of New York in this and Bleeding Edge. Coming to terms with the fact that a book I at one point would have called my favourite of all time is actually pretty middle of the pack for Pynchon, but that's not saying much because I've enjoyed them all and I still love it.

Il bello di leggere Pynchon è leggerlo.
A prescindere dalle aspettative, anzi meglio non averne, a prescindere dal significato che il testo può avere realmente. Del resto leggere è la capacità di un lettore di entrare in un mondo attraversandolo e facendosi attraversare. Con Pynchon l'esperienza è proprio quella di entrare in un mondo fatto di sottomondi, ricco di personaggi variegati, strani, assurdi ma totalmente credibili, perché lo stile di Pynchon è credibile e perfettamente aderente alla realtà che racconta. Non importa che l'uomo più desiderato sia descritto come uno spiantato con il corpo a pera, un mezzo ebreo buono a nulla, uno schlemihl, uno sciocco sfortunato senza grande volontà: Profane sarà per sempre l'uomo di cui tutte le donne si innamoreranno.
Tutti i personaggi di Pynchon sono stereotipi de-stereotipizzati.
Le donne sono sessualmente attive, disponibili e decisamente volitive.
I marinai sono ubriaconi capaci di innamorarsi davvero.
Gli amici sono unito nel delirio e nel dolore.
Non mi importa la storia di V.
È il secondo romanzo che leggo di P. Il primo è stato L'arcobaleno della gravità. Numerose le similitudini tra i due. Sono entrambi romanzi storici. Sono entrambi una sorta di odissea moderna. Si muovono su piani temporali diversi, arretrando e avanzando lungo la linea del tempo.
Entrambi i libri sono in diverse parti decisamente beat: la strada, l'alcol, la droga, il sesso libero e anestetizzante, una certa visione del mondo un po' decadente e autodistruttiva di parecchi personaggi. Non manca anche qui la critica al colonialismo, alle crociate, la grande guerra, la prima il V. La seconda ne l'arcobaleno.
Non manca l'Europa, il riferimento al popolo ebraico, all'Italia, all'Inghilterra, agli USA dall'altra parte dell'oceano che gli inglesi hanno fondato e gli italiani e gli ebrei hanno popolato (insieme agli africani).
Lo stile di Pynchon è di Pynchon.
Lirismo, realismo, assurdo, ironia (la scelta dei nomi è esilarante e credo sia interessante per gli studiosi di Pynchon studiarne origini e significati).
Mi piace la grande conoscenza che l'autore propone nei suoi romanzi. L'intersse per culture diverse, qui trovo anche un cenno di Orientalismo.
Alla fine non saprei dirvi perché piace leggere Pynchon né perché va letto.
Posso solo dire che mi piace tuffarmi nei suoi libri belli corposi.
Ma quanto scrive?
E poi ho la fortuna di avere un prof. di Pynchon, anzi due, che mi danno un sacco di dritte.

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.

I'm suffering from a painfully drawn out flu so I feel bad enough already. It can't be made worse by trying to review V. on gr. (If I wanna hit my head in frustration, well, it already hurts plentiful.)
V. was my first Thomas Pynchon. I chose it because it was cheapest (used). I like discounts. The notes in the margins for a college paper were fun too. I'm proud of my mercenary side. Now the self-congratulations end and I'll wrestle my mind and alligators in those mental gutters to convey why this is one of my favorite books. Benny Profane and the Whole Sick Crew. (Love those guys.) Getting through life without sketching circles in the sand. Yeah, going through life not quoting the philosopher Belinda Carlisle (it's too late for me). (Slacker characters appeal to me. I have an inferiority complex. It's torture to read fantasy novel after fantasy novel about over-achievers.) He Ventures out and has another friend, Herbert Stencil (stencilling in the sand? Shutup, Mariel) who sets him on his quest for the mysterious Victoria. I'm not gonna win this battle. There's no Victoria for me. It's gonna eat me alive. (Shit, maybe I need to consult that kid's notes.) (Because I never shutup: we'll get a "V" on our paper. V for venarial diseased.)
My pet alligator wants me to write that this book is about alligators who live in the sewers of New York City. (Her name is Gatorella. I can tell she is a she because of the bow on top of her head. Gators are reptiles and therefore don't have penises. Not that I checked.) (Could've been mutated into pizza loving ninjas in those sewers where people dump all manners of things like radioactive chemicals, in addition to taking a dump, after all. Anything is possible.) Shutup, you cold-blooded monster. It is not! There are alligators in the book though, those mythic gators flushed down the sewers when their humans (rightfully!) grew tired of them. I remember vividly reading Benny's time in those sewers, hunting and feeling hunted, not just by toilet reptiles but by nagging thoughts of right and wrong. (Gatorella says she wants to flush my review down the toilet.)
Argh. Yeah, it's dense and rambling and worth it for the spending of the time. Benny Profane, Stencil and the poet Fausto. V. connects to them as a circle: round and round unprogressively. And a line, like a connecting thread between them, because Pynchon does get somewhere about history and how it fucks with us. History doesn't make sense, and only rarely do we get to see the little man (or angel) it made in the snow. It takes its toll. Any place, any time.
It's easier to review books one doesn't like. Like breaking up with someone and you can name some reason to explain everything away (if it doesn't cut it. It just is what it is, is all) and explaining love is really hard to do if you're me. I like to ramble. I like reading the ramblings and looking for the happy and sad moments of clarity in the engaging messes. I know I felt something. That's love for me. Now I'll get eaten because Benny didn't kill all those gators.
p.s. I like the Sarah Silverman joke about getting raped by a doctor being bittersweet for a Jewish girl. Reminded me of Rachel.

Alright, I admit it.

I DID read it, but with a problem. I didn't get it, I know I didn't.

After all the overlapping narratives I lost track. I reread the first 100 pages and their sheer jolt of electricity just got to me. And it picks up!

Benny Profane is one of my favorite characters ever. It seems funny to be writing that since it literally just popped out at me but there it is. Schlub!

I think I understood it, maybe, I dunno....I FEEL like I did.

I don't know! I don't know! I don't know!

alright since I feel this way I definitely did.

the butler did it, right?

Reading Thomas Pynchon's first novel is like plunging head first into a room with very little light. As the novel progresses, Pynchon regulates that light sometimes letting the reader see very clearly, narratively speaking, and other times enveloping the reader into near darkness.

The two main characters are discharged Naval officer Benny Profane the self-described "schlemiel" and Stencil, the hunter of the elusive woman/idea known only as V. Though not exact opposites, their destinies do not intersect until the last part of the book. Profane's story is the more traditional narrative of the two as he passively wanders into alligator hunting, bar brawls, and an enigmatic security job. Profane with his friends known as "The Whole Sick Crew" could be Pynchon's alter ego and could be also an amalgamation of Naval and literary figures.

The breadth of Pynchon's encyclopedic knowledge comes through with the emergence of Stencil as he wanders through time and multiple identities taking up his father's mission to find V. V wanders time and space (presumably though- its never clear) showing up in 19th century British Egypt, as a rat in a New York City sewer, and (in a very difficult chapter) as a "bad preist" mangled by children in the ruins of World War II. Pynchon's strokes are most broad in sub-stories regarding a German colony in South Africa and later in another chapter surrounding an impaled ballerina that entrances V.

The connections are not often clear but the indictments of colonialism and war ring true. V is a challenging must-read postwar American whirlwind that remains consistent in its aggressively cubist tone.

My head is spinning happily like a gyroscope perched between forces at a Lagrangian in space and time. Thomas Pynchon was apparently 92 when he wrote this debut novel and was about 25 when he wrote Inherent Vice 45 years later. The wisdom and scope in V is astounding, and it comes at you like a rollicking , swinging Louis Jourdan record. I had to look up about 183 references, each one worth it, and each one indispensable and placed effortlessly.
This is not an easy book, I had to sit up and turn my brain on, but it is a ride I cannot imagine missing out on. My favorites now are: Vineland, the Crying of Lot 49, V and Inherent Vice. I have more to read and can’t wait for his next one.

So I opted to tango once more with Thomas. The results are a mix of the same frustrations I had with the first 150 pages of Gravity’s Rainbow (dropped thereafter), and a newfound appreciation for the most famous maximilist’s skill for writing sentences of incredible inventiveness, rhythm, and frenetic lunacy. After 300-odd pages of this novel, the niggles (new and old) returned—the introduction of innumerable madcap characters and their endless zing-flinging dialogue in the same voice; the overabundance of plots and their incoherent-seeming natures; the constant battle to nail a lucid understanding of every third or fifth sentence; the repeated use of ‘whaa’ in the mouth of too many characters; the painstaking detail and brilliance of contextless scenes that could not be appreciated without sufficient foregrounding or a roadmap; the guilt at feeling ennui when so much is happening on the page that screams ‘appreciate this’!; the screwball humour that lapses into searing pain through excess—and reading to the end turned to work. On the plus side, for the first 300-odd pages, I was zipping along on Thomas’s often divine prose style, allowing myself to be taken into weird and wonderful places, regardless of their driftless-seeming drift, and for a few days, I at last had a window into what ecstasy the Thomas fanboys experience when reading their man. It went many, many places, and somehow also nowhere, and for a little while, I ‘liked’ Thomas Pynchon. Triumph!

One of our greatest wielding his 25-year young erection for all to see. A mind too big to contain itself;

Capolavoro.