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Available
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Description
Follows the orbits of old acquaintances headed for a less than harmonic convergence in Northern California in 1984.
User reviews
LibraryThing member stillatim
I've read four Pynchon books, and the only one I was healthy for was Lot 49, which barely counts. For Gravity's Rainbow I was not only violently ill, but also on a cross-country road trip with my also violently ill father and my long-suffering mother, who could do little more than look on while we
The lesson is that one shouldn't read Pynchon when doped out on legal drugs, because all I remember of GR is an octopus, and I don't recall much from IV, either. On the other hand, I remember nothing from 49 despite having read it twice, and I suspect that's because it just isn't that good. This whole trend worries me some, but the good news is I won't be forgetting V any time soon, because it's a flat out masterpiece and, I suspect, better than GR.
'V,' in ascending order of abstraction, is a person with a robot eye, is a Utopia that large numbers of people think actually exists, probably stands for 'vagina' as in the source to which a large number of people wish to return, is a way of symbolizing reflection, either with reference to the mirror stage or reflection theories of vulgar materialism ('culture is simply the reflection of economics'), and is the convergence of two strands of the plot.
The two strands follow, respectively, Stencil, a paranoid obsessive, whose story should, according to the paranoid perspective, be perfectly coherent but is in fact an endless search for an indefinable x (V). The second follows a picaro (Profane the schlemihl) whose story, as with any good picaresque, should have no coherence whatsoever but is, in fact, a fairly good illustration of the twentieth century decadence ("falling away") that 'V' chronicles, and the despair that decadence can induce.
Various characters have various ways of coping with this decadence: different religions, art, drunkenness/hedonism, dentistry, and so on, but none of them can hold a candle to the disasters that follow everybody, like colonialism, war, unemployment, deracination and general ennui. The human beings slowly giving way: a nose job here, a belly ring there, becoming more and more object and less and less subject, more and more merely what "is the case" and less and less that which cannot be said(there's much play with early Wittgenstein here), more and more cyborg, less and live alive.
The two narrative strands converge in Malta; the guiding metaphor is siege (Malta, which was besieged by the Ottomans, French under Napoleon, and the Axis powers in World War II). The human being is under siege, and neither the paranoid truth seeker nor the schizoid schlemihl can cope. Those who can and do cope (e.g., Schoenmaker) are manifestly dehumanizing evil bastards. But the book's manic energy makes it much less depressing than this sounds, and after all, there's still wine, wo/men and song. Including song about Wittgenstein.
Books of which 'V' weirdly reminded me: Vile Bodies (decadence); Siege of Krishnapur (siege & colonialism); Graham Greene & Javier Marias for the spy thriller aspects; Roth for the 'Jews in America' aspects; Rilke for the ambivalent drive to become pure matter.
Many reviewers say this is a really hard book, but I think maybe they're over-reacting: once you know or work out that there are two narrative strands, one of which is 'present day' and one of which is historical narrative, you can make your way through this book pretty easily. Particularly if you eschew all the 'V moves through time' nonsense. V does not move through time. Stencil's paranoia connects a number of things that need not be connected, just as my paranoia has linked together many aspects of the novel. The difficult aspect of the novel is to read it not as another dull pomo pastiche, but as the late modern masterpiece it is, dealing with difficult psychological concepts and historical realities. You can only read this book with paranoia: the urge to connect and seek order. Maybe that's not such a bad thing.
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fought over things like whether it was acceptable to order dessert. For Inherent Vice, I was recovering from having my wisdom teeth removed. And now for V, not only did I finish it with Hurricane Sandy knocking limbs from trees outside my windows, but I was at the depths of a comparatively mild cold. The lesson is that one shouldn't read Pynchon when doped out on legal drugs, because all I remember of GR is an octopus, and I don't recall much from IV, either. On the other hand, I remember nothing from 49 despite having read it twice, and I suspect that's because it just isn't that good. This whole trend worries me some, but the good news is I won't be forgetting V any time soon, because it's a flat out masterpiece and, I suspect, better than GR.
'V,' in ascending order of abstraction, is a person with a robot eye, is a Utopia that large numbers of people think actually exists, probably stands for 'vagina' as in the source to which a large number of people wish to return, is a way of symbolizing reflection, either with reference to the mirror stage or reflection theories of vulgar materialism ('culture is simply the reflection of economics'), and is the convergence of two strands of the plot.
The two strands follow, respectively, Stencil, a paranoid obsessive, whose story should, according to the paranoid perspective, be perfectly coherent but is in fact an endless search for an indefinable x (V). The second follows a picaro (Profane the schlemihl) whose story, as with any good picaresque, should have no coherence whatsoever but is, in fact, a fairly good illustration of the twentieth century decadence ("falling away") that 'V' chronicles, and the despair that decadence can induce.
Various characters have various ways of coping with this decadence: different religions, art, drunkenness/hedonism, dentistry, and so on, but none of them can hold a candle to the disasters that follow everybody, like colonialism, war, unemployment, deracination and general ennui. The human beings slowly giving way: a nose job here, a belly ring there, becoming more and more object and less and less subject, more and more merely what "is the case" and less and less that which cannot be said(there's much play with early Wittgenstein here), more and more cyborg, less and live alive.
The two narrative strands converge in Malta; the guiding metaphor is siege (Malta, which was besieged by the Ottomans, French under Napoleon, and the Axis powers in World War II). The human being is under siege, and neither the paranoid truth seeker nor the schizoid schlemihl can cope. Those who can and do cope (e.g., Schoenmaker) are manifestly dehumanizing evil bastards. But the book's manic energy makes it much less depressing than this sounds, and after all, there's still wine, wo/men and song. Including song about Wittgenstein.
Books of which 'V' weirdly reminded me: Vile Bodies (decadence); Siege of Krishnapur (siege & colonialism); Graham Greene & Javier Marias for the spy thriller aspects; Roth for the 'Jews in America' aspects; Rilke for the ambivalent drive to become pure matter.
Many reviewers say this is a really hard book, but I think maybe they're over-reacting: once you know or work out that there are two narrative strands, one of which is 'present day' and one of which is historical narrative, you can make your way through this book pretty easily. Particularly if you eschew all the 'V moves through time' nonsense. V does not move through time. Stencil's paranoia connects a number of things that need not be connected, just as my paranoia has linked together many aspects of the novel. The difficult aspect of the novel is to read it not as another dull pomo pastiche, but as the late modern masterpiece it is, dealing with difficult psychological concepts and historical realities. You can only read this book with paranoia: the urge to connect and seek order. Maybe that's not such a bad thing.
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LibraryThing member wodehousegirl
I just finished reading this one, on the recommendation of someone who said that V. was a good way to get into Pynchon. I'm a Pynchon newbie, always heard of him as one of the pioneers of 20th century literature, but I had no idea what to expect when starting this novel. I can honestly say I've
Reading this novel is not a pleasant experience in the normal way. At times it drags and you think it's going nowhere, then it switches over into a grand period mystery that completely captures your imagination, and then it goes into subject matter that is so depressing and grim that I started to squirm in my seat (see the particularly uncomfortable chapters 4, which describes a rhinoplasty in such incredible detail that I felt ill, and 9, in which genocide and torture are discussed in equal detail). It's a difficult read, but it's worth it, if only for the fact that it is so strange and off-kilter that I felt as if my brain was expanding and stretching just to be able to take it all in, which can't be a bad thing, right? I liked it enough to try more Pynchon in the future but, in the meantime, I'll recuperate with some lighter fare!
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never read anything quite like it. It reminded me of a sort of dream, one that appears to fracture and and yet retains its inner structure at all times. Like a dream, it's full of confusion, allegory, symbolism, self-conscious meanderings, and nostalgia. Reading this novel is not a pleasant experience in the normal way. At times it drags and you think it's going nowhere, then it switches over into a grand period mystery that completely captures your imagination, and then it goes into subject matter that is so depressing and grim that I started to squirm in my seat (see the particularly uncomfortable chapters 4, which describes a rhinoplasty in such incredible detail that I felt ill, and 9, in which genocide and torture are discussed in equal detail). It's a difficult read, but it's worth it, if only for the fact that it is so strange and off-kilter that I felt as if my brain was expanding and stretching just to be able to take it all in, which can't be a bad thing, right? I liked it enough to try more Pynchon in the future but, in the meantime, I'll recuperate with some lighter fare!
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LibraryThing member inaudible
Can I give this book seven or eight stars? An incredible book by itself, this work is remarkable when one remembers it is Pynchon's first novel.
Funny, disturbing, dense, absurd, horrific, casual. There are some sentences and paragraphs that only a dozen writers in the world are capable of
Throughout reading I found myself drawing connections to Bolano's 'The Savage Detectives': The Whole Sick Crew vs. The Visceral Realists, V. vs. Cesárea Tinajero, and so on. I wonder if Bolano read Pynchon?
Funny, disturbing, dense, absurd, horrific, casual. There are some sentences and paragraphs that only a dozen writers in the world are capable of
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matching.Throughout reading I found myself drawing connections to Bolano's 'The Savage Detectives': The Whole Sick Crew vs. The Visceral Realists, V. vs. Cesárea Tinajero, and so on. I wonder if Bolano read Pynchon?
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LibraryThing member tyroeternal
V was, in all honesty a wonderful book. My joy in postmodern fiction is extremely limited. While I did not absolutely enjoy it, I do recognize that it was well written.
Unfortunately much of the book involved me declaring something along the lines of: "Wow, I have no idea what is happening!" My
Unfortunately much of the book involved me declaring something along the lines of: "Wow, I have no idea what is happening!" My
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struggling mind was relieved to see the conclusion of the book and the conclusion of the twisting tale. As I have come to understand, all of Pynchon's novels take the same overwhelming approach... I look forward to another book of his is the future. Show Less
LibraryThing member owenino
I have long underestimated this book, having read it only once, back in the 1980s. Now that I have read it again, I like it as much as anything else of Pynchon's. His 1950s, the fifties of the Whole Sick Crew, do not seem so different from American life today. The chapter on the genocide of the
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Herero in German Southwest Africa, seemingly at right angles to the rest of the novel, aligns the book squarely with all of Pynchon's major works, which invariably include examples of human barbarity at its very worst. Show Less
LibraryThing member dypaloh
As Yogi Berra sort of said: “When you come to a V. in the road, take it!”
So I did.
But I wish Thomas Pynchon had found a way not to take any fork leading to the soporific Stencil, no matter which character so named paraded into view. Focus on Pig Bodine! Let McClintic Sphere preside! It’d be
That’s my only big complaint.
Mr. Pynchon is funny, imaginative, and knows way more than the average Yogi (be prepared to encounter obscurities). There’s much to hold one’s interest while reading his novel and V. inspires respect for the author’s abilities. It also can strain one’s patience. How many named characters are there, 200? How many of them mattered?
V. is a curious book that becomes curiouser as things go along. Then, it ends. Don’t count on finding full satisfaction in that. But for the right reader (one whom Stencil interests), V. might be a marvel.
So I did.
But I wish Thomas Pynchon had found a way not to take any fork leading to the soporific Stencil, no matter which character so named paraded into view. Focus on Pig Bodine! Let McClintic Sphere preside! It’d be
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a different book and maybe a worse one, I guess, if my wishes had been anticipated and fulfilled. I don’t care.That’s my only big complaint.
Mr. Pynchon is funny, imaginative, and knows way more than the average Yogi (be prepared to encounter obscurities). There’s much to hold one’s interest while reading his novel and V. inspires respect for the author’s abilities. It also can strain one’s patience. How many named characters are there, 200? How many of them mattered?
V. is a curious book that becomes curiouser as things go along. Then, it ends. Don’t count on finding full satisfaction in that. But for the right reader (one whom Stencil interests), V. might be a marvel.
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LibraryThing member andersonden
At the time a new experiment in fiction writing. The storyline is not linear - more like following a web of tenuous connections between characters, places, and events. A challenging read.
LibraryThing member DRFP
Somewhere along the way this novel went awry. For the first half or more I found V an exhilerating dash through various histories and subject matters, with the language to match. Then it started juddering to a halt once the narrative heads to German SW Africa. That section and the Siege of Malta,
Perhaps it's nothing too complicated and V simply falls down like many other novels by failing to deliver a satisfying enough climax after all that has come before? Or is the novel little more than a cobbled together collection of interesting short story ideas that Pynchon had, which explains its uneven quality? Either way, tt remains a good novel and a very impressive debut, but after enjoying the first half of the story so much, I can't help but feel let down having turned the last page with the book's early verve long since disappated.
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perhaps because of both's fever dream aspects, made a challenging but entertaining novel head further into the abstract, and my interest waned as a result. The antics of The Whole Sick Crew also seemed to spiral in to pointlessness as well, which may be the point, but it doesn't make it any more interesting to read.Perhaps it's nothing too complicated and V simply falls down like many other novels by failing to deliver a satisfying enough climax after all that has come before? Or is the novel little more than a cobbled together collection of interesting short story ideas that Pynchon had, which explains its uneven quality? Either way, tt remains a good novel and a very impressive debut, but after enjoying the first half of the story so much, I can't help but feel let down having turned the last page with the book's early verve long since disappated.
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LibraryThing member Gazgnu
This is one of the best books I've ever read. It's not easy, but it's amazingly rich, beautiful and strangely funny. It's about the relationships between people and objects in this crazy modern world of ours (well, circa 1960). The man is a genius.
LibraryThing member Ramirez
I've the deep convinction that this book is completely nonsense.
Still, it's beautiful to read...
Still, it's beautiful to read...
LibraryThing member flashgirl
An excellent read for aspiring adventuresses
LibraryThing member JasonMehmel
I will write a longer review later, but as a very general overview: some of Pynchon's novels may be 'better' or 'richer' in some measure of the word, but V is the most beautiful. It has the most heart.
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
A strange and gruesome tale of two men in pursuit of an unidentified object. The story of this difficult book is equally evasive. I delved into the story with reckless abandon, fearing that I might never come out.
Awards
National Book Award (Finalist — Fiction — 1965)