V. 187861 221976634 2008-06-26T23:22:36Z 80.121.35.82 Kilroy Schematic: Vector version available. {{Otherusesof|V}} {{Infobox Book | name = V. | title_orig = | translator = | image = [[Image:vbytrp.jpeg|210px|]] | image_caption = Cover of first edition | author = [[Thomas Pynchon]] | illustrator = | cover_artist = | country = [[United States]] | language = [[English language|English]] | series = | genre = [[Novel]] | publisher = [[J. B. Lippincott Company]] | release_date = [[1963]] | media_type = Print ([[Hardcover|Hardback]] & [[Paperback]]) | pages = 492 pp | isbn = ISBN 0-397-00301-3 | preceded_by = | followed_by = [[The Crying of Lot 49]] }} '''''V.''''' is the debut [[novel]] of [[Thomas Pynchon]], published in [[1963]]. It describes the exploits of a discharged [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]] sailor named Benny Profane, his reconnection in [[New York City|New York]] with a group of pseudo-[[bohemianism|bohemian]] artists and hangers-on known as the Whole Sick Crew, and the quest of an aging traveller named Herbert Stencil to identify and locate the mysterious entity he knows only as "V." It was nominated for a [[National Book Award]]. ==Plot summary== The novel alternates between episodes featuring Benny, Stencil and other members of the Whole Sick Crew (including Profane's sidekick [[Pig Bodine]]) in 1956 (with a few minor flashbacks), and a generation-spanning plot which comprises Stencil's attempts to unravel the clues he believes will lead him to "V." (or to the various incarnations thereof). Each of these "Stencilised" chapters is set at a different moment of [[international crisis|historical crisis]]; the framing narrative involving Stencil, "V.", and the [[journals]] of Stencil's [[United Kingdom|British]] spy/diplomat father threads the sequences together. The novel's two storylines increasingly converge in the last chapters (the intersecting lines forming a V-shape, as it were), as Stencil hires Benny to travel with him to [[Malta]]. The Stencil chapters are:<!--the layout of the titles, with lower-case on chapter italics and a line break, is Pynchon's--> ;''Chapter Three'' In which Stencil, a quick-change artist, does eight impersonations This chapter, set among the British community in [[Egypt]] toward the end of the 19th century, consists of an introduction and a series of eight relatively short sections, each of them from the point of view of a different person. The eight sections come together to tell a story of murder and intrigue, intersecting the life of a young woman, Victoria Wren, the first incarnation of V. The title is a hint as to how this chapter is to be understood: Stencil imagines each of the eight viewpoints as he reconstructs &mdash; we do not know on how much knowledge and how much conjecture &mdash; this episode. This chapter is a reworking of Pynchon's short story "Under the Rose", which was first published in [[1961 in literature|1961]] and is collected in ''[[Slow Learner]]'' ([[1984 in literature|1984]]). In the ''Slow Learner'' introduction, Pynchon admits he took the details of the setting ("right down the names of the diplomatic corps") from [[Karl Baedeker]]'s [[1899]] travel guide for Egypt. Stencil's reconstruction follows the same basic conflict as "Under the Rose", but it gives the non-European characters much more personality. ;''Chapter Five'' In which Stencil nearly goes West with an alligator Only marginally part of the Stencil/V. material, this chapter follows Benny and others, as Benny has a job hunting alligators in the sewers under [[Manhattan]]. It figures in the Stencil/V. story in that there is a rat named "Veronica" who figures in a subplot about a mad priest — Father Linus Fairing, [[Society of Jesus|S.J.]] — some decades back, living in the sewers and preaching to the rats; we hear from him in the form of his diary. Stencil himself makes a brief appearance toward the end of the chapter. ;''Chapter Seven'' She hangs on the western wall In [[Florence]] in 1899, Victoria appears again, briefly, but so does the placename "Vheissu", which may or may not stand for [[Vesuvius]], [[Venezuela]], or even (one character jokes) [[Venus (mythology)|Venus]]. ;''Chapter Nine'' Mondaugen's story [[Image:V Pynchon (Picador).jpg|thumb|right|200px|1975 [[Picador (imprint)|Picador]] edition.]] Kurt Mondaugen, who will appear again in ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'', is the central character in a story set in South-West Africa (now [[Namibia]]) partly during a siege in 1922 at which one Vera Meroving is present, but most notably in 1904, during the [[Herero Wars]], when South-West Africa was a [[Germany|German]] [[colony]]; in ''V.'', Pynchon clearly sees the German treatment of the [[Herero]] at that time as prefiguring the [[Holocaust]] of the [[Jew]]s in the [[Nazism|Nazi]] era. At the same time, this part of the novel is a haunting indictment of Western [[colonialism]] and [[racism]]; later, in ''[[Gravity's Rainbow]]'', Pynchon would emphasize this latter aspect, acknowledging the facile identification made between the Herero genocide and the Nazi Holocaust in his earlier novel as "superficial". In a letter to Thomas F. Hirsch, reprinted in David Seed's book ''The Fictional Labyrinths of Thomas Pynchon'', London, MacMillan, 1988, pp. 240-3), Pynchon wrote, "…When I wrote ''V.'' I was thinking of the 1904 campaign as a sort of dress rehearsal for what later happened to the Jews in the 30s and 40s. Which is hardly profound; it must occur to anybody who gets into it even as superficially as I did. But since reading [[Marshall McLuhan|McLuhan]] especially, and stuff here and there on comparative religion, I feel now the thing goes much deeper. […] I feel that the number done on the Herero head by the Germans is the same number done on the American Indian head by our own colonists and what is now being done on the Buddhist head in Vietnam by the Christian minority in Saigon and their advisors: the imposition of a culture valuing analysis and differentiation on a culture that valued unity and integration." ;''Chapter Eleven'' Confessions of Fausto Maijstral Fausto Maijstral, Maltese civilian suffering under the German bombardment and working to clear the rubble during [[World War II]] writes a long letter to his daughter Paola, who figures in the Benny Profane story; the letter comes into Stencil's hands. The letter includes copious quotations from Fausto's diary. Besides the place name [[Valletta]], V. figures in the story as an old — or possibly not-so-old — woman crushed by a beam of a fallen building while children play around her. ;''Chapter Fourteen'' V. in love In this chapter V. — if V. it is — is entranced with a young ballerina, Mélanie l'Heuremaudit. The story centers on a riotous ballet performance, almost certainly modeled in part on the premiere of [[Igor Stravinsky]]'s ''[[Rite of Spring]]''. The performance centers on a virgin sacrifice by impalement. The young ballerina fails to wear her protective equipment and actually dies by impalement in the course of the performance; everyone assumes her death throes simply to be an uncharacteristically emotional performance. ;''Chapter Sixteen'' Valletta [[Image:KilroySchematic.svg|thumb|right|"Kilroy" schematic. Technically, a band-''stop'' filter.]] As the [[Royal Navy]] mass on Malta in the early stages of the [[Suez Crisis]], Stencil arrives with Benny in tow, searching for Fausto Maijstral. (As always, [[Kilroy was here]] first, and Pynchon proposes a novel origin for the face: that Kilroy was originally part of a [[schematic]] for a [[band-pass filter]].) ;''Epilogue'' 1919 The last chapter is a flashback to Valleta when Stencil, Sr. was still alive. He becomes entangled in an incident involving a Maltese couple. At the end of the chapter he leaves in a ship and a water spout throws into the air then plunges into the depths of the Mediterranean. The paths of Stencil and Profane through the novel form a sort of metaphorical V. The incident of the boat sinking on the last page could be seen as the dotting of the apex on the v, the final plunge into nothingness. ==External links== *[http://v.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page ''V.'' Wiki] *[http://www.hyperarts.com/pynchon/v/ HyperArts' ''V.'' Web Guide & Concordance] ==References to ''V.'' in other works== *The title of the [[United States|American]] [[post-hardcore]] band [[Thrice|Thrice's]] album ''[[Vheissu]]'', released in October 2005, refers to Pynchon's book ''V.'' *[[Mimi Farina|Mimi]] and [[Richard Fariña]]'s 1965 debut album, ''Celebrations For A Grey Day'', includes an instrumental entitled ''V.'' which is linked directly to the novel in the liner notes. *In congruence with his [[V]]-themed speech and surroundings, the main character in the [[comic book]] series ''[[V for Vendetta]]'' reads Pynchon's ''V.'' *The English band [[Benny Profane]] took their name from Pynchon's character. *Los Angeles based porn actor/director Benny Profane takes his stage name from Pynchon's character. *In [[Chris Bachelder]]'s 2002 novel ''[[Bear V. Shark]]'', Thomas Pynchon is mentioned in Chapter 70 "The Ghost of the American Vacation", hinting that V. rather than VS is somehow a homage to Pynchon.{{Fact|date=March 2008}} *Also mentioned in the original screenplay of [[V for Vendetta]], where several characters (Evey, Finch, and V) are seen reading the novel (specifically). {{Thomas Pynchon}} [[Category:1963 novels]] [[Category:novels by Thomas Pynchon]] [[Category:Debut novels]] [[Category:Postmodern literature]] [[ko:브이]] [[it:V.]] [[ja:V.]] [[pl:V.]] [[zh:V.]]