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V.

Thomas Pynchon

3.97 · Rating details · 17,011 Ratings · 884 Reviews

The wild, macabre tale of the twentieth century and of two men -- one looking for something he has lost, the other with nothing much to lose -- and "V.," the unknown woman of the title.

Pynchon's V. won the coveted William Faulkner Foundation's First Novel Award when it appeared in 1963, and was hailed by Atlantic Review as "one of the best works of the century".

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Paperback, 547 pages

Published July 5th 2005 by Harper Perennial Modern Classics (first published August 1st 1963)

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Jan 25, 2013 Aubrey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 4-star, reviewed, 1-read-on-hand, r-2013, r-goodreads

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 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. ...more

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Feb 22, 2011 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2010, exert-yourself, reviews-5-stars, pynchon, re-read, read-2013, reviews

How Hard Can It Possibly Be?

"V" isn't so much a difficult novel to read - it is after all just words, most of which are familiar - as one in which it is sometimes hard to understand what is going on and why.

What does it mean? Does it have to mean anything? How does it all connect?

Ironically, if not intentionally, the inability to determine what and why, as well as who, is part of its design. Pynchon mightn't want to answer all the questions he or life asks.

However, that doesn't mean there isn't ...more

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Nov 13, 2016 MJ Nicholls rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, merkins

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 overa ...more

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Nov 10, 2011 Madeleine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: head-in-the-clouds-nose-in-a-book, our-libeary, maybe-it-s-time-to-live, richard-python, 2013, blogophilia

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 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? ...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

“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.”
When I’ve been reading V. I couldn’t get out of dictionaries and encyclopedias – the book is a carnival of words and ideas.
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 bo ...more

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Nov 16, 2008 Jimmy rated it it was amazing · 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 "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?

...more

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Apr 16, 2015 Sean Wilson rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Thomas Pynchon... twenty six years old... first novel... twenty six... first novel... twenty six?

Reads like The Adventures of Tintin on hallucinogens. Full of great comic scenes mixed with political espionage and paranoia amidst philosophical comments on the nature of politics, religion, death, time, sexuality and war. V. is undeniably complex and I can admit that there were moments of mind numbing confusion, but the book is so beautifully written that you just go for the ride. It's a haunting a Thomas Pynchon... twenty six years old... first novel... twenty six... first novel... twenty six?

Reads like The Adventures of Tintin on hallucinogens. Full of great comic scenes mixed with political espionage and paranoia amidst philosophical comments on the nature of politics, religion, death, time, sexuality and war. V. is undeniably complex and I can admit that there were moments of mind numbing confusion, but the book is so beautifully written that you just go for the ride. It's a haunting and frequently hilarious postmodern satire.

V., to me, represents enlightenment, or finality. The quest itself is a long journey, hence the time and globe spanning nature of the story. The book itself is like a series of interconnecting short stories that sweeps through the majestic settings of New York, Paris, Malta, Egypt, Africa and Alexandria. The nature of V seems nurturing, motherly and caring in times of stress and suffering. Pynchon is operating on a metaphysical plain, where particles and matter can be seen and felt and the world is different from our own 20/20 vision. V is eventually seen, felt and experienced for those who are willing to take the necessary steps. Too many times are we fed little slices of fear from the characters who contemplate the nature of dying, growing old, separation from mans ignorance. These men in search of V are, in some way, in search of an ego death, to cure their fears in the face of God, a maternal presence of spirit, a being of upmost enlightenment.

Obviously, there is so much more packed into this near 500 page novel, but that's what I got out of it first time around. Political theory is examined extensively through different countries and characters. Sexuality and youth seems prevalent within The Whole Sick Crew. There are some comments on the Christian Church and Christianity in general. Freudian psychology, science and mathematics pop up and colonialism is touched on as well.

Or you could be a schlemihl and take Benny Profane's approach: "I haven't learned a godammn thing." ...more

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Jul 13, 2007 Dave-O rated it really liked it

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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Feb 21, 2012 Nathan "N.R." Gaddis added it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: V.

Recommended to Nathan "N.R." by: Stencil

Shelves: thomas-pynchon-completioniziert, dons-syllabus, 2015-gelesen

It’s a long distance from 1963 to 2009. The prior, V.’s pub date. The later, when I thought maybe I had found perhaps the Pynchon key in Inherent Vice. I unlocked a bunch of great stuff with that key. Fantastic stuff. Stuff I dug. Stuff I got lost in. Against the Day. The newest thing. That one from the early ‘90s. I’m still waiting to see if it fits Mason & Dixon. Gravity’s Rainbow is next, but I’ve already done 2/3 of that one and know I don’t need no damn key for it.

That key doesn’t fit ...more

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Jul 04, 2013 Geoff marked it as to-read

Ignore talk below of my previously setting this aside - I am giving it try #2 and am enjoying it much more - perhaps it's the timing - it begins on Christmas Eve and the first chapters unfold during the week between Christmas and the new year...

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Nov 17, 2008 Nate D rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Schlemiels, adventurers, foreign agents

Recommended to Nate D by: Jeff Geisinger

Shelves: post-modernism, read-in-2008, favorites, 60s-re-de-construction

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 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. ...more

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Jul 16, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, american-20th-c, post-modern, novels

The search for the identity of V is the primary question in this masterwork from Pynchon. It is funny and tragic and crazy and totally Pynchon. I honestly cannot remember everything this book - it does not stick in my memory as much as Mason&Dixon, Gravity's Rainbow or Against the Day. I mean, I loved the pleasure of reading it. But months later, I remember just the story of the genocide in Africa and some other snapshots but overall the image remains vague. Perhaps I read too much Pynchon i ...more

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Sep 25, 2013 Stian rated it it was ok

Shelves: owned-books, 2016

Thomas Pynchon has written some of the best pieces of English fiction that I've ever read. He projected worlds in Against the Day and in Mason & Dixon that were amazing, magical, utterly enthralling. The world he tries to project in V., however, went over my head.

The writing feels upolished, unrefined, not really the Pynchon I've grown used to. The sub-plots and digressions, which are rambling to an extreme degree even for Pynchon's standards, are less-than-stellar most of the time. Except ...more

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Feb 03, 2008 Lane Wilkinson rated it did not like it · review of another edition

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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Jul 19, 2007 Mk Tantum rated it it was ok

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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Nov 28, 2007 Mariel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 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. ...more

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Aug 21, 2015 J.L. Sutton rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Thomas Pynchon's V is one of my favorite novels (it's on my rotating list of favorites which also includes Dostoevsky's The Idiot, Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead and a few others). Describing it is next to impossible (for me at least). V seems like it's about so many things, but when you stop to think about it, it's not about any of those things at all, but something else. The main protagonists include Benny Profane, Rachel Owlglass, Stencil, a group of artists known as the Whole Sick ...more

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Sep 18, 2017 Οδυσσέας Μουζίλης rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

https://pepperlines.blogspot.gr/2017/...

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Dec 17, 2016 Franco Santos rated it liked it · review of another edition

3.5

Notas tomadas durante la lectura:

(view spoiler) ...more

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Feb 10, 2018 Makis Dionis rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: bourbon, malt

V *****
Τα γνωστά μοτίβα του Pynchon που θα τον κάνουν παγκόσμιο είναι εδώ. Ανακάτεμα χρονικο , τοπολογικό και ιστορικό της τράπουλας φέρνει συνεχόμενες κεντες , παρουσιάζοντας ένα ακόμα μωσαϊκό της περιφέρειας του κόσμου λίγο πριν κ λίγο μετά τους δύο πολέμους.
Το ανοίγεις τυχαία, διαβάζεις 50 σελίδες και παίρνεις ισχυρή ντόπα

Η Βεϊσού μπορεί να οριστεί ως ένα σύμπτωμα. Συμπτώματα σαν κι αυτό παραμένουν πάντοτε ζωντανά σε κάποιο σημείο του κόσμου.
Δεν έχουμε άλλο χρόνο να παραμείνουμε στη Βεϊσού

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Sep 24, 2017 Paradoxe rated it really liked it · review of another edition

4+
Ας γυρίσω σπίτι σκέφτεσαι. Βρίσκεις παρκάρισμα ακριβώς απέξω, σταθμεύεις, κατεβαίνεις, ψευτοχαμογελάς δεν ξέρεις γιατί χαίρεσαι κουτά που πάρκαρες αλφάδι. Ξεκλειδώνεις και μπαίνεις στο βασίλειο σου. Το φως είναι απαλό, μυστήριο συνήθως αφήνεις ένα πορτατίφ με σκληρή λάμψη, ώστε άμα γυρίζεις βράδυ οι κλέφτες να νομίζουν πως κάποιος είναι μέσα. Μπροστά σου βλέπεις ένα κύριο παχύ κι ατσούμπαλο, σε κοιτάει μ’ ενδιαφέρον, αλλά ανοίγει την πόρτα και φεύγει, πίσω του πέφτει ένα κομματάκι χαρτί, σκέφτ ...more

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Sep 22, 2016 Stela rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: unfinished

After 70 pages or so that bored me silly I decided to give it up. I know the author was young (a mere 26 if I remember correctly) but this does not completely justify the sponge-like absorption of so many and so different influences (from Heller to Joyce and Virginia Woolf and magic realism and so on), that cannot really talk to each other so that the narrative seemed to me like a fabric whose threads were all cut and left hanging.

Maybe, another time (another life) I will try to read a maturity ...more

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Jan 08, 2017 Mattia Ravasi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Video-review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prMAv...
Featured in my Top 20 Books I Read in 2017

A puzzling but glorious read that is, paradoxically enough, both breath-taking fast and extremely broody, thrilling and self-absorbed. It will require quite a lot of dedication to be fully enjoyed.

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Feb 05, 2008 Nicole rated it it was ok · review of another edition

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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Nov 13, 2010 Oscar rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mainstream, míos, postmodernos, historia-ficción, steampunk

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

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

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

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

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Oct 20, 2014 Christopher rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 20th-century, american, favorites, fiction, future-classics, modern-classics, picaresque

Pynchon takes his readers on a wild ride. We attend a party on an abandoned cruise ship. We witness an assassination in Cairo. We hunt alligators in the sewers beneath New York City. We time-and-space travel to 1904 Namibia to witness the Herero Revolt and ensuing genocide. Florence, Italy to watch an ill-conceived attempt at stealing Botticelli's Birth of Venus. We study atmospheric radio disturbances with a crossdressing German lieutenant. The list goes on...

The characters are as diverse as th Pynchon takes his readers on a wild ride. We attend a party on an abandoned cruise ship. We witness an assassination in Cairo. We hunt alligators in the sewers beneath New York City. We time-and-space travel to 1904 Namibia to witness the Herero Revolt and ensuing genocide. Florence, Italy to watch an ill-conceived attempt at stealing Botticelli's Birth of Venus. We study atmospheric radio disturbances with a crossdressing German lieutenant. The list goes on...

The characters are as diverse as the book's settings. I counted more than 160 of them, all with truly bizarre names. There are our protagonists (as far as this book has any protagonists; it's really an ensemble performance), Benny Profane and Herbert Stencil. Then there's Pig Bodine, Pappy Hod, Fergus Mixolydian, Fausto Maijstral, Father Avalanche, etc.

And thematically, V. is puzzle. It's hard to pin down what this book is really about. There's a lot about yo-yoing, which is a drifter's kind of lifestyle. (Dude, I just spent the year after I graduated college just yo-yoing up and down the coast, bra.) There's a lot about fathers and sons. If there's one major plotline in the book, it's Stencil's search for the mysterious woman V., who is somehow connected to his father, and it's kind of unclear if she's even a woman; perhaps she's a place or just an idea. There's the idea that all the major world events are connected in a heinous plot born out of some deviant mind. And there's that creeping dread of the inanimate that shows up from time to time.

So it seems like my point with this review would be to say that this is a big, complex, difficult book. But what I'd actually like to say is that this is a fun, lovable book that will grab you and won't let you go until you've read every word. Sure, you have to be the type of person who doesn't mind a challenge to fully enjoy it, but if you are that type, if you like David Foster Wallace or William Gaddis (there is a straight line drawn from Gaddis to Pynchon and from Pynchon to Wallace), then this could very easily be your next obsession.

Note: When you read this, it's imperative to keep a written character list. Minor characters often reappear later to assert themselves as major characters and it would behoove you not to forget them. Enclosed in this spoiler is my dramatis personae if you'd like to take a look.
(view spoiler) ...more

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May 26, 2017 Loring Wirbel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 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. ...more

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Oct 09, 2012 Cymru Roberts rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century-american

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 n ...more

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Sep 24, 2011 Jeremy rated it it was amazing

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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Jan 01, 2014 sologdin rated it really liked it

Shelves: of-best-sentence-and-moost-solaas

Nutshell: orthographic mystery spins out of control as narrative ponderously stencils over trifling profanities.

Quite an achievement. Probably should’ve read this prior to reading Underworld, Dissident Gardens, or Bleeding Edge--all New York stories, working out of the same imaginary as Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn. The first chapter of V is the closest to Selby, and it’s almost unreadable. After that, it calms down and is readily digestible in large pieces.

Ian Vance is correct that the marxist ...more

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About Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon

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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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