Reading 1001 discussion

This is for reviews of V. by Thomas Pynchon.

Initially I enjoyed this quite a bit - each paragraph lucid but wacky, stacks of them almost creating a plot but then taking you off in ricochets (much more like a pinball machine than the yo-yo analogy being used). This of course ultimately is the point - everyone is a seeker, creating a narrative, to infuse meaning into random occurrences. All except Profane, who is literally without desire or attachment, the counterpoint to all - but centrally Stencil fils et père. The son now seeking V, a woman mentioned as an initial in his father's papers and then mystically multiplied over the landscape and history by any coincidence of the initial. The father in flashbacks, a civil servant trying to understand and handle The Situation in his foreign placements during the Great War. The self-referential creation of conspiracy theories here a nice illustration that everything new is really old, we have just forgotten.

It did get tiresome after 300+ pages however, once one got the point and also I don't find sadism that much fun to read even as social satire. I'm curious about his new book. It's kind of amazing he is still going.

One of Pynchon's first books, he took a huge bite out of what is possible in literature, building around themes of the breakdown of whole societies to the breakdown of individual connections with others. He sets us up with parallel characters and representatives of various ways of being from the wise Rachel who is working toward connection to the cold almost robot like V of Valette. He throws in more characters than I could handle and he often threw them in at the last minute without time to development them. He builds a chronology but it is not reliable as it is a "told" chronology from Stencil's brain and is therefore flawed. We meet again people that were too old in one section to be in another....we even have one person killed off that reappears later quite fit. Our representatives of V cling to no common behaviors or characteristics that we would know them without the referent to V. Some of the individual flash backs or reconstructions from the Stencil side of the novel are quite magnificent on their own (particularly Mondaugen's story). It is not unusual in a long dense book for me to have to go back and reread something that has gone before but I believe that I reread all the Stencil chapters multiple times to make sure that I understood at least some of what was going on. And uniquely I would be reading chapter 20 and go back to read chapter 8 for example. On the Profane side, I simply became exhausted. I didn't care to experience any more drunken parties, sexual miscommunication, and violence. I, for example, didn't understand why I had to read through pages and pages of sailors on leave in Valette in order to get to Pig, Profane and Paola together with Pappy again which only takes a page and a half. Other than illustrating a last ditch effort at imperial presence maybe it was simply just fun to write.
Although I thought Mason and Dixon holds together better, I thought it did not have the raw energy and wild swings of V. I thought that Pynchon in V captured something remarkable and gave it back to the reader in a way that was unique, tasty and a bit difficult to swallow.

I am not going to pretend that I understand what this book is all about. I listened to and read various summaries and analyses of each chapter as I read it, which helped me understand the significance of characters and events as well as the majors themes of the book. I liked some chapters and hated others. I really struggled with chapter 11, e.g.. Like Gail, I didn't enjoy the long passages detailing just nonsensical drunken actions and conversations between the Whole Sick Crew or groups of sailors. Long story short – I liked it more than Mason + Dixon, but Pynchon is still not my cup of tea. However, now that I’ve pushed through V., I have resolved to read The Crying of lot 49 and Gravity’s Rainbow next year. I must be some kind of masochist ;)

⭐ ⭐ ½

Reason read: This is the 4th quarter read for Reading 1001 group. This book was published in 1963. I think it is his debut novel. It is a post war book that looks at humanity verses technology. Isn't that still the situation all these years later? There are two threads. There is Benny Profane and the Sick Crew who really do nothing but "yo-yo". They have no meaning in their lives. The second thread is Stencil and his search for V. The two threads merge in the Mediterranean and nothing really is resolved. This is not my favorite Pynchon. I liked Mason & Dixon and even the Crying of lot 49 better.

I'll agree with Kristel that this wasn't my favorite Pynchon (I did enjoy Mason & Dixon and Crying of lot 49).

Overall, I was a bit torn on this book, there were parts of it that I found really clever , and others that seemed to be of that "hey look at how edgy I am" variety that coming from a man in the 60s end up reading ironically really dated and stale. Like a lot of the ways that the narrative allows the 'cool mysterious guys' to literally use women often got a few eye rolls out of me.

On one hand, I thought one of the most successful chapters provided examples of how the decadence of the 1950s-1960s Western culture was quite grotesque below the surface. "In Which Esther Gets a Nose Job" the explicitly medical language of the procedure leans heavy into gore territory, and reflects the clawing monster of Esther's hated of her own nose and by extension self esteem, and how the sordid history of antisemitism contributes to how she sees her own face as undesirable. It analyzes the decadence by taking something supposed to be perceived as luxurious and lifting someone into something better into something very lowly that preys on the socially informed inferiority complexes of others. I thought this chapter was quite effective.

On the other hand, I'll admit I found Billy Profane's whole "schlemihl" bit kind of annoying because he really isn't one. He is not a passive victim and is actually is an active acting cultural outsider, and while there are a few examples of what happens to him that aren't really "his fault", what he largely experiences in his book are just consequences for his actions, or things that reasonably follow given the kind of life he lives. The "schlemihl" bit is both self-pitying to the point of it being irritating, which is also enforced by the fact that he uses it for self-gain (such as when he is at that party and he becomes the limelight because everyone wants to meet a genuine schlemihl). I'm not sure that Pynchon actually wants us to like Billy Profane, but I did identify him as a type of person I find exhausting through reading this.

I gave this one 3 stars.