V. is a cross-section of the first half of the 20th century as understood by paranoist/entropist extraordinare Thomas Pynchon.

In many ways, this book reminded me of Adam Curtis’s most recent documentary series, Can’t Get You Out of My Head. Curtis and Pynchon are two old-school leftists (well, that's my guess; neither of them is open about their political beliefs) who share similar concerns about the modern world and the rise of neoliberalism. At the very least, they share two: the lack of grand unifying narratives making all information equally plausible, engendering paranoia; and what room the spread of technology leaves for humanity in society.

V. touches upon the crumbling of grand narratives and man’s subsequent drifting into individualism, a free-for-all chapter in human history in which each person seeks his own version of the truth, based on whims, suspicions and manias.

As is typical with Pynchon, there are several themes dispersed throughout, the most notable of which seemed to be dehumanisation. Throughout the novel, the narrator constantly highlights the way the ‘inanimate’ (Pynchon’s word; I take it to broadly but not exactly mean ‘technology’, though it might be more closely related to Heidegger’s ‘tool’) is encroaching upon on our lives, this being made most explicit through several characters that I can only describe as steampunk cyborgs, with eccentric glass eyes, protheses and dentures.

Still, this is early Pynchon and I think this theme was presented a bit sloppily in light of his subsequent ouvre. At first, it seems a personal mania of Bennie Profane, but as the book advances we find these observations being made by a wide array of characters, both in the 1950’s timeline and in the early 20th century timeline - which was confusing. You can make it a running theme on the state of the post-industrial world or you can make it a character’s obsession. Making it both weakens the point.

Could the same story have been told and the same ideas conveyed in fewer pages? Yes, but then it wouldn’t be Pynchon. And he is one of few authors I feel compelled to humour.

You will want to abandon the book several times throughout, but I think it is worth reading to the end. The epilogue ties up a lot of loose ends, both plotwise and thematically - which I honestly was not expecting and was quite thankful for, as it made the journey feel more worthwhile.

I know of machines that are more complex than people. If this is apostasy, hekk ikun. To have Humanism we must first be convinced of our humanity. (302)

V. is a paranoia-steeped tale of swirling conspiracy and political intrigue, where lowbrow characters with highbrow philosophy do silly and obscene and profound things, where the language sings and the reader is often frustrated but well-rewarded for perseverance.

In so many ways this is a denser Lot 49, a weightier Inherent Vice, a quicker AtD and a more forgiving Gravity's Rainbow... My lord, Pynchon did it all from the start.

5 stars.

*First read-through, 2017:

I haven't often been as excited to start a new book as I was to start V. Daddy's first Pynchon! I was eager and abuzz for a while--the man has been adjective-ized, for crying out loud. Consider the greats that have that honor. Dickensian. Kafkaesque. Vonnegut-y. What in the world does it mean to be Pynchonian? I couldn't wait to find out. And reading Pynchon's first novel felt like a good place to start.

Based on V., I'd say reading Pynchon feels dense and dream-like. There's a lot of surreal weirdness, and an overarching ambiguity that you must embrace to move forward. Things aren't plot-driven so much as mood-driven; characters and scenes wash over you, wave-like. Here is a world of shark-toothed sailors, bohemian subway performers, girls in need of nose jobs, captivating clocks, international espionage, sewer alligators and oracular skeletons... Sentence by sentence, Pynchon's writing is dazzling. I started dog-earing examples I might point to and quickly found myself marking every other page, feeling for all the world like an entomologist describing the diverse jeweled shells of some species of beetle:

"Snow fell in tiny glittering pinpoints, the alley held its own curious snowlight: turning Pig to black-and-white clown's motley and ancient brick walls, dusted with snow, to neutral gray." (15)

"He walked; walked, he thought sometimes, the aisles of a bright, gigantic supermarket, his only function to want." (31)

"Was it home, the mercury-lit street? Was he returning like the elephant to his graveyard, to lie down and soon become ivory in whose bulk slept, latent, exquisite shapes of chessmen, backscratchers, hollow open-work Chinese spheres nested one inside the other?" (35)

"It was a desire he got, off and on, to be cruel and feel at the same time sorrow so big it filled him, leaked out his eyes and the holes in his shoes to make one big pool of human sorrow on the street, which had everything spilled on it from beer to blood, but very little compassion." (149)

"Uptown was a bleak district with no identity, where a heart never does anything so violent or final as break: merely gets increased tensile, compressive, shear loads piled on it bit by bit every day till eventually these and its own shudderings fatigue it." (158)

"For that moment at least they seemed to give up external plans, theories and codes, even the inescapable romantic curiosity about one another, to indulge in being simply and purely young, to share that sense of the world's affliction, that outgoing sorrow at the spectacle of Our Human Condition which anyone this age regards as reward or gratuity for having survived adolescence." (216)


Taken one after another, these elegant sentences have a soporific effect, so that by the bottom of a page it may be hard to hold onto what you read at the top. Certainly this is not a novel to rush through, and one that can frustrate with its jangling, jazz-like composition. But if you trust Pynchon to set the pace and follow along, enjoying what's laid out immediately before you, this is a remarkable novel, deep and thoughtful in a way unlike most I've read before. And as it continues on, an impressive sort of craftwork is revealed in the structure that amplifies the meaning.

4.5 stars out of 5. Truly a massive talent, but there is a streak of juvenalia here and some wholesale repeating of phrases which highlights the fact that this is Pynchon's first novel. It's a bit rough or strained in a few spots, plus there's a strange and repetitive tendency to include song lyrics. Still, what a debut! I thought of it more as an artistically-crafted piece of entertainment than an entertaining art piece (if you catch my hair-splitting drift) but then--smack!--there comes into this rollicking montage of characters and patchwork of conversations some profound insight into art, society, humankind. I am eager to read more of his oeuvre, to see what's come after he refined a bit more.

(Read in 2017, the twenty-second book of my Alphabetical Reading Challenge)

Πριν απο αρκετα χρονια ειχα επισκεφτει ενα μουσειο μοντερνας τεχνης σε μια μεγαλη ευρωπαϊκή πρωτευουσα.εδω να πω οτι σιχαινομαι τη μοντερνα τεχνη και ειμαι συνηθως αυτη η ανωριμη που στεκεται πισω πισω απο επισκεπτες σε μουσεια που θαυμαζουν πχ ενα εκθεμα με εναν κουβα και μια σφουγγαριστρα και απλα γελαω.σε εκεινο το μουσειο ομως ετυχε να δω εναν απλουστατο πινακα με διαφορα χρωματα "πεταμενα" στον καμβα. Ακομη και σημερα ,δεν εχω ιδεα για ποιον λογο, αλλα εμεινα εκει να το κοιταζω περισσοτερο απο οσο εμεινα σε οποιοδηποτε αλλο πινακα.ειμαι ενας ανθρωπος που μου αρεσει η λογικη, το νοημα , η κυριολεξια πισω απο τις μεταφορες.ομως εκεινος ο πινακας με εκανε να σκεφτω οτι πρεπει να επιτρεπω στον εαυτο μου να θαυμαζει απλα κατι ωραιο που και που χωρις γιατι και πως.
Ετσι, μετα απο αυτη τη μεγαλη εισαγωγη και για να συνδεσω τα παραπανω με την πρωτη αναγνωση μου βιβλιου του Πυντσον, εχω να πω πως προφανως και οποιος διαβασει το συγκεκριμενο(και ισως ολα?)βιβλιο του πυντσον, δε πρεπει να περιμενει ενα μυθιστορημα με αρχη μεση και τελος, με καταιγιστικες εξελιξεις και μια τελικη καθαρση και λυση ολων των "μυστηριων". Γενικως δεν πρεπει να περιμενει τιποτα.πρεπει να βουτηξει με το κεφαλι και απλα να απολαυσει την καταδυση στο μυαλο του συγγραφεα.ειναι πραγματικα σαν να σε εχει καλεσει ο Πυντσον στο ονειρο του.εικονες, χαρακτηρες, ανεξηγητα γεγονοτα παρελαύνουν μπροστα σου χωρις καμια λογικη σειρα και πολλες φορες χωρις συνδεση.ομως το αισθητικο αποτελεσμα -ειδικα σε ορισμενα σημεια- ειναι τοσο μεγαλειωδες που απλα ξεχνας τη "λογικη" που οι περισσοτεροι αναγνωστες εχουμε τοσο αναγκη στα αναγνωσματα μας.το βιβλιο αυτο λοιπον ηταν σαν εκεινον τον μοντερνο πινακα πριν χρονια.εσπασε κατι στον αναγνωστικο μου χαρακτηρα.καποιο φραγμα.και το ευχαριστηθηκα οσο δεν περιμενα.

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.

The fact that Pynchon wrote ‘V’, his debut novel, in his early 20s whilst still in college is just about as mind boggling as the book itself. It is a stunning work, and one that will have you Googling almost as much as reading. The Googling will mostly likely be on events mentioned in the book, most notably the Fashoda Incident or the Fashoda Crisis in 1898, the South African Bondelswarts Rebellion in 1922, and the siege of Malta in WWII.

Reading Pynchon is always a roller coaster of an experience, that readers just about manage to hang on to throughout. The best advice is just to roll with it, letting yourself be carried along for the ride. If you’re looking for a linear plot line, you won’t find it here; and we certainly feel Pynchon warming up, flexing his literary muscles in preparation for ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ – which if you haven’t yet read, I’d definitely now recommend reading ‘V’ first.

Who or what then is V? That’s the question we’re all asking as we embark with Pynchon on this first voyage of a novel. Is V a person? A movement? A feeling? A perception? A war? A revolution? A paranoia? It could just about be all of those things, and I won’t clarify here… you’ll have to read the book for that.

As the central tapestry of the book, we have Benny Profane, a discharged US Navy Sailor, who falls in with a group of artists/hangers-on/bums known as the Whole Sick Crew, rollicking around in 1950s New York. Profane gets caught up in the quest of a one Herbert Stencil to discover who or what is V.

The hijinks and shenanigans of Profane and his Sick Crew are certainly entertaining, but it’s the historical sections of the book that really stood out for me, the incidents/events I first mentioned above, particularly the South African Bondelswarts Rebellion in 1922. This section of the book is incredibly dark and intense (be warned, there is plenty of deeply upsetting, triggering and racist language to reflect this awful historical period).

There is also a wonderful section about a ballet company in Paris in 1913, which is clearly inspired by/borrowed from the infamous first performance of Stravinsky’s ‘The Rite of Spring’, which caused a riot due to the nature of the music and Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography. (As a bassoonist, The Rite has long been one of my favourite works, so this felt particularly close to my own heart!)

As with most of Pynchon’s work, it’s incredibly hard to pinpoint exactly what the book is about, there is so much going on, it’s about so many things. But there are central and reoccurring themes throughout, namely the uprisings I’ve mentioned along with the periods of decadence that proceed them. The word ‘decadence’ is used throughout the book, and there is one quote that for me goes someway to summing it up…

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

It’s a truly amazing book, and one that will definitely challenge. I feel like it often gets overshadowed by ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’, but if you’re gonna read Pynchon, then it absolutely should not be overlooked.

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.

Keep cool but care :)

Ultimately, an immensely depressing and kinda frightening read, but in good postmodern fashion this is presented with such whimsy, such insanely creative energy, and such hilarious, genuinely hilarious prose and bonkers narrative that it’s definitely my favorite Pynchon I’ve read

Seems to be a book of 2 separate (although related parts):

1) The present (well, as of the time the book was written) involving a rag-tag set of characters centred on a group of US Navy sailors (probably based on Pynchon's own stint in the navy)
2) A series of flashbacks to periods from late 19th century up until the end of the 2nd World War, at various locations around the Mediterranean

For me not classic Pynchon, it shows signs of the greatness to come with some hints of the humour and wackiness to come later but some parts I found hard to get through.

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...

a story split in two, converging to a sharp, crisp point. one story, that of a group of go-nowheres, is fun and light, and probably a more accurate and unforgiving portrait of the beats than is present in their own work. the other alternating half are Stencil's tales of potentialities and impressions concerning espionage in various exotic locales earlier in the century, all tied around the enigma of the entity V.

I've read four Pynchon books, and the only one I was healthy for was Lot 49, which barely counts. For Gravity's Rainbow I was not only violently ill, but also on a cross-country road trip with my also violently ill father and my long-suffering mother, who could do little more than look on while we fought over things like whether it was acceptable to order dessert. For Inherent Vice, I was recovering from having my wisdom teeth removed. And now for V, not only did I finish it with Hurricane Sandy knocking limbs from trees outside my windows, but I was at the depths of a comparatively mild cold.

The lesson is that one shouldn't read Pynchon when doped out on legal drugs, because all I remember of GR is an octopus, and I don't recall much from IV, either. On the other hand, I remember nothing from 49 despite having read it twice, and I suspect that's because it just isn't that good. This whole trend worries me some, but the good news is I won't be forgetting V any time soon, because it's a flat out masterpiece and, I suspect, better than GR.

'V,' in ascending order of abstraction, is a person with a robot eye, is a Utopia that large numbers of people think actually exists, probably stands for 'vagina' as in the source to which a large number of people wish to return, is a way of symbolizing reflection, either with reference to the mirror stage or reflection theories of vulgar materialism ('culture is simply the reflection of economics'), and is the convergence of two strands of the plot.

The two strands follow, respectively, Stencil, a paranoid obsessive, whose story should, according to the paranoid perspective, be perfectly coherent but is in fact an endless search for an indefinable x (V). The second follows a picaro (Profane the schlemihl) whose story, as with any good picaresque, should have no coherence whatsoever but is, in fact, a fairly good illustration of the twentieth century decadence ("falling away") that 'V' chronicles, and the despair that decadence can induce.

Various characters have various ways of coping with this decadence: different religions, art, drunkenness/hedonism, dentistry, and so on, but none of them can hold a candle to the disasters that follow everybody, like colonialism, war, unemployment, deracination and general ennui. The human beings slowly giving way: a nose job here, a belly ring there, becoming more and more object and less and less subject, more and more merely what "is the case" and less and less that which cannot be said(there's much play with early Wittgenstein here), more and more cyborg, less and live alive.

The two narrative strands converge in Malta; the guiding metaphor is siege (Malta, which was besieged by the Ottomans, French under Napoleon, and the Axis powers in World War II). The human being is under siege, and neither the paranoid truth seeker nor the schizoid schlemihl can cope. Those who can and do cope (e.g., Schoenmaker) are manifestly dehumanizing evil bastards. But the book's manic energy makes it much less depressing than this sounds, and after all, there's still wine, wo/men and song. Including song about Wittgenstein.

Books of which 'V' weirdly reminded me: Vile Bodies (decadence); Siege of Krishnapur (siege & colonialism); Graham Greene & Javier Marias for the spy thriller aspects; Roth for the 'Jews in America' aspects; Rilke for the ambivalent drive to become pure matter.

Many reviewers say this is a really hard book, but I think maybe they're over-reacting: once you know or work out that there are two narrative strands, one of which is 'present day' and one of which is historical narrative, you can make your way through this book pretty easily. Particularly if you eschew all the 'V moves through time' nonsense. V does not move through time. Stencil's paranoia connects a number of things that need not be connected, just as my paranoia has linked together many aspects of the novel. The difficult aspect of the novel is to read it not as another dull pomo pastiche, but as the late modern masterpiece it is, dealing with difficult psychological concepts and historical realities. You can only read this book with paranoia: the urge to connect and seek order. Maybe that's not such a bad thing.

Although not nearly as perfect as some of his later works, there are many traces of Pynchon's genius in this novel. It is not as drug-induced, decadent or heartbreaking as Gravity's Rainbow, nor is it as beautiful, ambitious or creative as Mason & Dixon, not to mention as impressively human or historically conscious as Against the Day.

Pynchon's writing in this early novel, though showing early incarnations of his later works, seems unrefined and confused. There are so called "Pynchon sentences" here, but none as decisive or as wonderful as in his later writings, in which almost every page is stacked full of incredibly sharp, yet long and haunting passages. Most significant in Pynchon's later writing is his incredible writing on the movement of social and political structures and mechanisms. In other words, Pynchon's later writing is dynamic; things and people move in Pynchon's world and the movement feels significant, as if it reflects on the movement of things and people in real life; a movement that is hard for us to grasp unless it is written by Pynchon's genius-pen.

That being said, "V", is a very good book. I really enjoyed it. There are some incredibly funny passages, specifically some about alligator-hunting in the New York sewers, and some interesting passages on Malta. Many of Pynchon's later thematic concerns appear in "V", such as automata, transhumanism, war, capitalism, historicity, truth, and most important: Love, but none of those thematic concerns seem as important as in his later novels, given the fact that Pynchon had not found his artistic style yet.