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V.

3.95 of 5 stars 3.95 · rating details · 9,229 ratings · 497 reviews

Having just been released from the Navy, Benny Profane is content to lead a slothful existence with his friends, where the only real ambition is to perfect the art of "schlemihlhood," or being a dupe, and where "responsibility" is a dirty word. Among his pals--called the Whole Sick Crew--is Slab, an artist who can't seem to paint anything other than cheese danishes. But Pr...more

Mass Market Paperback, 640 pages

Published by Seuil (first published 1963)

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May 10, 2013 Madeleine rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live, richard-python, mmxiii

I propose that the titular "V." is neither a person nor a place but a preposition.

What, really, is more personal than a first novel? It's that all-or-nothing, balls-to-the-wall debut effort that can either send a fledgling writer plummeting to dream-shattering depths with an effort that falls flat for any number of reasons or it can be the inaugural celebration all starry-eyed young scribes dare to hope for, that which heralds a staggering new talent to a canon populated by the many great wordsl...more I propose that the titular "V." is neither a person nor a place but a preposition.

What, really, is more personal than a first novel? It's that all-or-nothing, balls-to-the-wall debut effort that can either send a fledgling writer plummeting to dream-shattering depths with an effort that falls flat for any number of reasons or it can be the inaugural celebration all starry-eyed young scribes dare to hope for, that which heralds a staggering new talent to a canon populated by the many great wordslingers who've scribbled their way to well-deserved immortality. (For argument's sake, we'll work under the assumption that those flimsy flavor-of-the-month bestsellers that are so in vogue for their seemingly eternal 15 minutes will, in time, be forgotten and written off as yet another regrettable mistake born of groupthink's lapse in judgment while these truly remarkable feats of literature persist through the ages.)

If one is to write what one knows, how daunting must it be to know so much about such a wide range of complicated topics -- minute historical details of a time one either never experienced or was simply too young to fully digest, regardless of youthful precociousness; engineering equations requiring mathematical acrobatics and a more than adequate grasp on physics; an insider's take on the naval experience; an innate understanding of how to perfectly mix high-minded concepts and lowbrow humor with a dash of poetic lyric -- and attempt to whittle it all down into a tome that won't crush potential readers under the weight of both the volume itself and the awe-inspiring ideas roiling within?

The little we do know about literature's most elusive enigma points to pieces of Pynchon being flung along the narrative's parade route like confetti, adding flashes of biographical color to his intricately structured and beautifully written first novel that pits the animate against the inanimate and the internal self against the external veneer (and has the best-ever bonus of an Ayn Rand stand-in reduced to baby-talk in the presence of a pwecious widdle kittums-cat?). Aside from what can only be thinly veiled allusions to his Cornell days with Richard Fariña and their cult of Warlock -- regarding the Generation of '37: "And we did like to use Elizabethan phrases in our speech"; "A farewell celebration for Maratt on the eve of his marriage"; "Dnubietna leapt up on the table, upsetting glasses, knocking the bottle to the floor, screaming "Go to, caitiff!" It became the cant phrase for our "set": go to."; "The pre-war University years were probably as happy as he described, and the conservation as "good."", to say nothing of the nod to a novel called Existential Sheriff -- the internal conflicts of the writer seem to be scattered throughout V. like a breadcrumb trail back to the source himself.

Because Pynchon has be one conflicted dude. To be a notoriously private man juggling such derision for the spotlight with the compulsion to write for unseen but rabid fans, to churn out maddeningly, densely obscure works that are nevertheless guaranteed to meet both critical and commercial success (and increase sales of Excedrin in the following months), to posses such finely tuned right and left brains that he can be considered nothing less than an engineer-poet in his own right, to walk such a fine line between historical fictions and fictional histories -- is it any wonder that a man so in touch with dueling perspectives would build his first novel on the foundation of This v. That?(less)

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Feb 20, 2013 Sean rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

If V. bears the mark of the debut novelist at all, it's only in palimpsest, lying shadowy beneath winding passages of testosterone-charged postmodernism, and remaining implicit in the Young Tom's eagerness to please his reader. Still, this is a big 'if' we're dealing with, because V. is a remarkable novel for anybody to have written let alone a twenty-six year old (twenty-six!), and if he hadn't grown the fuck up and written two tomes of mind-expanding and heart-stopping wonder then this would r...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Aubrey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bring-it-on, 1001-06-12, on-hand, 4-star, reviewed, barthelme

4.5/5

Knowledge is a funny business. Everyone pretends omniscience in the classroom, but god forbid you spout off like an intellectual outside of it. And then you have the subculture of people making an effort to read Pynchon in public, and the other subcultures that amuse themselves at their expense. The verdict seems to be know it all, but please, spare us from your efforts to prove it.

I'd sell my soul to write like this at the age of six and twenty. There, I admitted to lack of know-how when i...more 4.5/5

Knowledge is a funny business. Everyone pretends omniscience in the classroom, but god forbid you spout off like an intellectual outside of it. And then you have the subculture of people making an effort to read Pynchon in public, and the other subcultures that amuse themselves at their expense. The verdict seems to be know it all, but please, spare us from your efforts to prove it.

I'd sell my soul to write like this at the age of six and twenty. There, I admitted to lack of know-how when it comes to the realm of Pynchon. Of course, the reference to souls might not be worth much coming from someone with no memory of being religious in any sense, but I'd like to think the Catholic upbringing accredits the statement somewhat. My horse may be hitched to atheism, but I can still appreciate good theological diatribes with healthy roots in philosophy and literature.

Which is what I'm getting at here. Roots. Easily graspable statements with esoteric legs to stand on. A sense of context that spans the contemporary as easily as the ancient, and ties the two together in the delightfully tangible sense. Ivory computers, porcelain circuitry, old materials caking the eternal Street from 1955's Norfolk to 1919's Malta and beyond. To say the word 'automaton' and have the images of golems and cyborgs seamlessly interweave on the succeeding pages.

This isn't your banal tactic of cultural references and knowledge dropping at every turn. I suppose I should give credit to Neal Stephenson for setting up an apparatus of tin foil and pipe cleaner, to better display Pynchon's idol of ebony and titanium. The desire to imitate that deceptive depth of story is understandable. Not everyone can write in the style of the yo-yo, apex to apex, apocheir to apocheir, without the bottom ponderously dropping out or the string severing at the zenith or the snagging speed making the ride sickening to the stomach.

And again, six and twenty! 1963! In the US! Did you know that this book passes the Bechdel Test? I wouldn't have believed it either, least not without reading it for myself. Or believed without experiencing for myself how conscious the story is of life and its seeming coincidences, long lines of 'plot' drifting back and forth from immediate relevance to useless trivia. It never forsakes the surface details for the underlying meaning, and vice versa, and there's even spots of real humor and true beauty to be found. It's a rare talent that belies Pynchon's youth, to describe the passions that drive the intricate clockwork of the small days, and contextualize them in the themes that have, do, and will span for millenia. And to switch from one to the other without any noticeable jerks or shuddering! It makes one question the validity of the categories of knowledge that we function in, conventional discourse that so many gain use of by sacrificing the essence of their critical thinking. Puzzle pieces guaranteeing a pretty picture, inherently forsaking its right to a blank canvas.

"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 be ordered into an ominous logic.

So, knowledge? Pynchon has it, and shows it in endless waves of connective tissues. I don't claim to understand all of it. But I have to thank him for my new-found way of thinking about this reading business of mine, my yo-yoing along the V shaped tracks of books like his, picking up bits and pieces with every passing over the same old stomping grounds. There's a surface of tin cans and plastic rubbish in those lands, and a wind whistling of ages past that sounds all the clearer the longer you walk. You can walk forward, and you can walk back, but to tread the same way twice is an impossibility, for better or for worse.(less)

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Jul 13, 2007 Dave-O rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 int...more

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Oct 28, 2010 Mariel rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: yesterday didn't know either

Recommended to Mariel by: tomorrow never knows

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 thi...more 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. (less)

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Nov 25, 2008 Nate D rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Schlemiels, adventurers, foreign agents

Recommended to Nate D by: Jeff Geisinger

Shelves: post-modernism, favorites, postwar-re-de-constructions

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 off...more 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.(less)

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Jul 03, 2007 Aerin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: litrachur, well-that-was-awesome, twisty-turny

I've been meaning to tackle Pynchon for some years now, because everything I'd read about him made it seem like his books would be right up my alley.

I should have known, however, not to start reading him now, when I'm crazy-busy with school and work. Pynchon is famously difficult and dense, and I just don't have the time to devote to serious reading these days. I kept telling myself, "After summer term finishes up, then we can get into some more meaty novels."

But I went to the library last week,...more I've been meaning to tackle Pynchon for some years now, because everything I'd read about him made it seem like his books would be right up my alley.

I should have known, however, not to start reading him now, when I'm crazy-busy with school and work. Pynchon is famously difficult and dense, and I just don't have the time to devote to serious reading these days. I kept telling myself, "After summer term finishes up, then we can get into some more meaty novels."

But I went to the library last week, and V. was staring at me from the shelf, looking deceptively slim next to the behemoth of Gravity's Rainbow, saying, "Come on, read me! I'm just a little book! You'll find the time!"

You, book, are a lying little bastard. I didn't get any homework done all week. And yet, I almost don't care, because this book kicked my ass in a way that no book has done in a long time.

I don't even know what to say V. was about, because the storyline constantly splits and meanders, flashing back and forth between different time periods, continents, and groups of characters. To give a very rudimentary summary, it follows Stencil, a man obsessed with a single paragraph that his father wrote in a diary before being killed in WWI: "There is more behind and inside V. than any of us had suspected. Not who, but what: what is she. God grant that I may never be called upon to write the answer, either here or in any official report." Without knowing why, Stencil is compelled to find out who or what V. is, and he spends all his time tracking down old documents, talking to acquaintances of his father, and traveling around the world in pursuit of her.

But it is the quirky little moments and subplots that truly make V. an addictive read: the priest who, convinced that humans are on the verge of being wiped out, retreats to the sewers to convert the rat population (who will, naturally, inherit the earth after humanity's demise). Or the beatnik bohemian artist who only ever paints cheese Danishes. Or the adventures of the New York City Alligator Patrol, who hunt the reptiles in the city sewers.

Yes, at times, the book gets tedious, and the style is occasionally impenetrable (I swear, there is a single sentence that lasts for a page and a half and contains -- I counted! -- 440 words). But this is the kind of book you can really sink your teeth into, that rewards careful attention, and that is bursting with themes and symbols and interesting characters and small threads of plot that meander, and merge, and split, and wind up utterly satisfying.(less)

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May 18, 2013 Mk Tantum rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: lovers of Thomas Pynchon and those who adore reading with a companion.

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...more

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Jun 12, 2010 Jimmy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

"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 in...more "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 a sort of an opposite of Profane, still shares a set of common characteristics, namely, humility or humanity.

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.

To me, 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 a 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?

(less)

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Oct 11, 2012 Con McVeety rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: great-and-dense

Friday in the A.M. while on the Trolley, a little before nine, before I would be delivering packages all day downtown, I noticed a woman doing the New York Times Cross Word Puzzle, And I thought Thomas Pynchon does crossword puzzles in the time it takes him to brush his teeth, later I was going to pick up “Against The Day” between deliveries, so Pynchon was one my mind. His vocabulary and knowledge is so vast. Pynchon’s first novel is “V.” and it seems written by someone late in his writing care...more

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Feb 05, 2008 Nicole rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I tried, lawd knows I tried.

“It is something less than heaven
To be quoted Thesis 1.7
Every time I make an advance;
If the world is all that the case is
That’s a pretty discouraging basis
On which to pursue
Any sort of romance.
I’ve got a proposition for you;
Logical, positive and brief.
And at least it could serve as a kind of comic relief:
[Refrain]
Let P equal me,
With my heart in command;
Let Q equal you
With Tractatus in hand;
And R could stand for a lifetime of love,
Filled with music to fondle and purr t...more

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Aug 06, 2007 Dustin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: summerreading2007

I think the only thing I'd say about this book that hasn't been said already (at least that I've seen) is that Pynchon's narrative style adds and drops characters like a c-average senior drops and adds classes--frequently.

There's something very appealing about this attitude in a novel. We are, according to P, moving from the animate to the inanimate, so I suppose the fact that characters serve only a fleeting function is to be expected. The minor members of the Whole Sick Crew were engaging, qui...more

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May 02, 2008 Lane Wilkinson rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature, 20th-century

EDIT: I give up again. 'V' is a travesty of juvenile puns, unconvincing dialogue, and (my own pet peeve) characters with impossibly trite names. Seriously, what gives?

EDIT: I decided to try reading it again.

have you ever had the feeling that an author is simply trying to bludgeon you over the head with abstruseness? have you ever read one of those books that all of the "serious readers" swear is an infallible masterpiece, despite its meat-fisted appropriation of the stylistic innovations of Eli...more

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Dec 05, 2011 Jeremy added it · review of another edition

Shelves: american-fiction

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 threa...more

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May 07, 2012 Stephen M rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: save-me-from-what-i-want, metafictive-madness, too-mass-pin-cushion

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...

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Dec 17, 2008 Cody rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, mid-century

'The experience, the experience. Haven't you learned?' Profane didn't have to think long. 'No,' he said, 'offhand I'd say I haven't learned a goddamn thing.'"

Moral of the story: our entire trajectory, as animate humans, consists of nothing more than an inevitable progression from being animate to being inanimate. What? You don't find solace in this point? It makes you feel a bit uneasy, and, dare I say, paranoid? Welcome to Thomas Pynchon's world.

"V." is my favorite Pynchon novel--quite the boa...more

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May 29, 2007 Bill rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: newcomers to Pynchon

Shelves: novels

Between the extended novella The Crying of Lot 49 and the sprawling behemoth Gravity's Rainbow lies V, a book that's neither long nor particularly dense but still finds space for Pynchon's trademark historical digressions and lyrical flights of fancy. Pynchon's first novel is a thrilling mish-mash of Baedeker-Guide colonial intrigue, 1950s bohemia, and a hilarious set piece about alligators in the sewers of New York, all held together by an enigmatic meta-textual thread that is one of the mo...more

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Feb 17, 2008 matt rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fictions-of-the-big-it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 12, 2013 Louisa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: american-literature

He started telling her about Vheissu. How it was reached, on camel-back over a vast tundra, past the dolmens and temples of dead cities; finally to the banks of a broad river which never sees the sun, so thickly roofed is it with foliage. The river is traveled in long teak boats which are carved like dragons and paddled by brown men whose language is unknown to all but themselves. In eight days' time there is a portage over a neck of treacherous swampland to a green lake, and across the lake ris...more

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Jun 03, 2008 Jeffrey rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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.

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Oct 08, 2009 Max rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, favorites

This book won me over completely. Its unhinged prose captures the Twentieth Century in its entirety better than anything I have ever encountered - and it was written barely halfway through the century! Pynchon has a reputation for being difficult, and this book is certainly no exception, but if you lean back in your seat, trust him, and let him take the reins, you won't find it difficult at all. I find that you have to read Pynchon with a kind of soft focus, unclenching certain parts of your min...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Marius Hancu rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction

Highly recommended, but be careful, this is a great and original brain at work, so don't be surprised if you're not getting everything.

"The novel eschews continuity, muddles the relationship between cause and effect, and calls very much into question the tendency to seek evidence of the operation of reason in the events out of which historical accounts are fabricated." [Clark]

One of the reasons is Pynchon was an engineering physics student first at Cornell, before getting into Navy and English,...more

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Sep 16, 2007 Mark added it

Shelves: books-i-read-but-have-no-memory-of

Except for German missiles and some scatological sex, it is all a swirling morass ...

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Jan 26, 2013 Alexm rated it 5 of 5 stars

So, it took a great length of time to finish this book as I read it in two large blocks of time. I began in winter of 2011 and read the first 200 pages. I was engrossed by the Benny Profane plots and lost when it came to the Stencil chapters. My imagination was activated but at some point I burned out on it.
I realize I was making it quite difficult for myself by trying to read it as I would read any book, which is to try to fully understand what is going on at every point, to know the precise m...more So, it took a great length of time to finish this book as I read it in two large blocks of time. I began in winter of 2011 and read the first 200 pages. I was engrossed by the Benny Profane plots and lost when it came to the Stencil chapters. My imagination was activated but at some point I burned out on it.
I realize I was making it quite difficult for myself by trying to read it as I would read any book, which is to try to fully understand what is going on at every point, to know the precise meaning of every word, and keep track of every detail and character..
I started the book from scratch towards the end of 2012. The funny thing is, maybe just because of my previous exposure, the book started to make a lot more sense to me. You could say it started to take on an "Ominous logic".
I realized that certain events clearly mirror each other. Some characters, in a rather Lynchian fashion, drop out of view and then seem to almost reappear as different character's later on in the book (did anyone else note a parallel between young Gadrulfi and Mondaugen?) and V. itself is represented in a pluralistic fashion as a number of places, people and/or things.
Over time it felt as if my mind's eye dilated in the dark and then gradually became overwhelmed by the glare as it learned to see a whole new kind of light.
The depth in which he strings together his discussion of animate vs. inanimate is clearly a crux of the book and it will leave me thinking of the world in new terms probably for all time to come. On one level it is a representation of chaos theory, on another the dehumanization of mechanized industry, on yet another the story of a "schlemiel's" obsession and act of forming the world around him to his own slanted philosophical ideas and expectations; making his theory into a constant self-fulfilling prophecy. The most interesting idea I got out of it is that as humans move closer to any idea of "perfection", that is, that they are more completely capable of acting perfectly according to a set of "rules" or ideals; as they are able to walk unfalteringly the path they see revealed in front of them and/or eliminate their physical imperfections, they become in a sense "less human" or more inanimate. If any being were completely perfect, it would always act in a precise way dependent on something akin to it's programming when in a particular Situation. God can then be viewed as.. an automaton.
This also ties into Pynchon's apparent rejection of Platonism which he satirizes through the character of Schoenmaker and his act of "revealing the perfection of Esther's soul in physical form". It could also be tied into the dialectic within the book on the forces which cause all human history to play out.. Randomness and chance; moving bodies merely bashing into each other and spinning out; or is there some reason behind things? Do things play by a certain set of rules? Surreptitious rules which don't always even seem like rules. The Social Field Theory interacting with physics and government forces, the will and consensus of the people, and maybe some more mysterious forces? It would seem that he doesn't want us to perceive either of these as "the answer" but to consider the way in which all of these elements together Conspire to create The Situation which basically amounts to.. the way things are.
Other things to note (it would be very difficult to account for everything which struck me in this book) would be Eigenvalue's perspective as an observer of "Post-modernism" and the criticisms of the Whole Sick Crew reflecting every depreciated thing one may be able to think to say about Pomo (when they run out of things to rearrange, nothing new will be created, this amounts to death or "information entropy").
Perhaps the first time I tried reading through the book I read it from a Benny Profane-esque perspective. I saw all of the random details just as random meaningless information that doesn't add up to much of anything. The second time I took it on as Stencil, poring over every bit of information as a kind of "clue", seeing connections everywhere and feeling enveloped in some grand Mystery. In the end, it's a fascinating book of ideas, revelations minor and major, and great entertainment value if you just accept the responsibility of using your imagination, and keeping your mind open to the multiplicity of meanings and implications. (less)

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Sep 03, 2008 Jan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was utterly confused and I LOVED it. Of all the books that I've read, this was one of the select few that had me biting my fingernails on one hand, as I cradled its spine with my other. What had me so nervous was not the suspense in the plot, or a concern for the characters, but the thought, "Can he keep this up? Can he write 600 pages of prose that is so stupefyingly beautiful, so unctuous, so enveloping?" The answer is yes, that Pynchon's style continued to deliver on the promises made in th...more

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Jul 02, 2008 Stephen Gallup rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This very complicated novel was introduced to me in a literature class in the mid-1970s. I’m not sure I managed to read it all then, because despite an amusing bar brawl at the outset and some truly bizarre scenarios it’s mostly tough going. However, my love for puzzling out complicated plots led me back to it later. At that point I was a technical writer for a defense contractor, which made parts of the story more relevant: Pynchon had also been a tech writer for a defense contractor, and his p...more

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Jun 02, 2008 Stephanie A. Higa rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: everyone who thought The Crying of Lot 49 should have been longer

Amazing, incredible book. Amazing, incredible writer. -1 for the two chapters I didn't like and for a few other sections that dragged on a bit longer than they could have. Otherwise: wow. Just wow. I still can't believe Thomas Pynchon wrote this when he was 26 or that this is his first novel. Off the charts imagination plus really exciting language. Pynchon's sentences are sometimes convoluted beyond belief, which is why he is rather difficult to read (I say "rather" because I've had much more t...more Amazing, incredible book. Amazing, incredible writer. -1 for the two chapters I didn't like and for a few other sections that dragged on a bit longer than they could have. Otherwise: wow. Just wow. I still can't believe Thomas Pynchon wrote this when he was 26 or that this is his first novel. Off the charts imagination plus really exciting language. Pynchon's sentences are sometimes convoluted beyond belief, which is why he is rather difficult to read (I say "rather" because I've had much more trouble with other books) but the word choice is so unique that it kept me reading even when I was lost with or bored by the story. But: the story is mostly great, full of great adventures like traveling, spying, stealing, cheating, loving, drinking, cross-dressing, and rollicking (my personal favorite).

This great adventure story is, like The Crying of Lot 49 (also good but V. is better), infused with great ideas. I probably missed half the great ideas, but the ones I did get really resonated with me. The study of the relationship between inanimate objects and animate beings struck me because I've thought about that a lot since the beginning of time, although not in such an organized or profound way.

Other things I liked:
* Pynchon deemphasizes coincidence even though this story seems to rely largely on crossing paths.
* There is a line about mosques making love.
* The character development is much better than that of TCL49. Benny Profane is a cute character although I can't say why exactly. Eigenvalue and Rachel are cool. Stencil is...interesting.
* Tons and tons of scientific metaphors in this book. Unlike literary metaphors, these all seemed refreshing to me (and impressive-- mention "nodes of Ranvier" and hear me squeal).
* Most of the historical sections (oh, Stencil) made me go, "OK...right...." and then suddenly something spectacular would happen and once again I would find myself terribly, terribly humbled. Similar case with the entire novel itself: it gets really good in Chapter 13. The remainder is great too, but I love 13 most.

Overall: V. makes me ashamed to call myself a writer. Ashamed, I tell you.

EDIT: I think this book has temporarily impaired my ability to read. Also I can't stop thinking about it. Also I realized the 5-star system is flawed and that while this is somewhere between a 4 and a 5 it's actually closer to a 5.(less)

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Sep 29, 2012 Ivan Ivic marked it as to-read

Shelves: dropped-it-dead, nutjob

Decided to give up.. Pynchon is simply too smart for me, it seems :D Not to mention, too random.. Even for me! And I adore randomness, but this is way too much. Dude is nuts, no other way to put it. No way can a sane (or drug free) person understand half of what the author is saying, and still have a basic grip on the plot's direction.. Honestly, I can go on and on about characters, their sudden appearance and even more sudden disappearance, utterly boring setting, plot that runs like a headless...more

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Dec 12, 2007 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In keeping with Pynchon's penchant for songs, I wrote one as the review for this book (and perhaps Pynchon in general). As I do whenever I come across songs in his books, you'll have to make up a melody and sing it yourself:

You don't come for the plot, cos its tied in a knot,
you don't come to escape, cos your mind will get raped,

[Refrain]:
but you do....
....come for....
.....the fun!!!!

There's a whole lotta fun, on-a every page,
songs and insights, Tommy earns his wage!

[Refrain]:
and your eyes....
.....more

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May 08, 2007 Ben rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

"I write poetry," she announced. They were at her place, a modest hotel near the great lift.

"Oh," said Profane.

"I am the twentieth century," she read. Profane rolled away and stared at the pattern in the rug.

***

Like that last reviewer below me, V. is also my favorite Pynchon novel. This isn't exactly any kind of definitive statement, as I've only started four (Lot 49, V., Vineland, Gravity's Rainbow) and finished two (Lot 49, V.). Even so, it's easily one of my top 5 favorite novels. Few other b...more

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About Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American writer based in New York City, noted for his dense and complex works of fiction. Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon spent two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known today: V. (1963...more

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Quotes from V.

“Life's single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.” — 919 people liked it

“I am the twentieth century. I am the ragtime and the tango; sans-serif, clean geometry. I am the virgin's-hair whip and the cunningly detailed shackles of decadent passion. I am every lonely railway station in every capital of Europe. I am the Street, the fanciless buildings of government. the cafe-dansant, the clockwork figure, the jazz saxophone, the tourist-lady's hairpiece, the fairy's rubber breasts, the travelling clock which always tells the wrong time and chimes in different keys. I am the dead palm tree, the Negro's dancing pumps, the dried fountain after tourist season. I am all the appurtenances of night.” — 79 people liked it

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