欧宝娱乐

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 intersect until the last part of the book. Profane's story is the more traditional narrative of the two as he passively wanders into alligator hunting, bar brawls, and an enigmatic security job. Profane with his friends known as "The Whole Sick Crew" could be Pynchon's alter ego and could be also an amalgamation of Naval and literary figures.

The breadth of Pynchon's encyclopedic knowledge comes through with the emergence of Stencil as he wanders through time and multiple identities taking up his father's mission to find V. V wanders time and space (presumably though- its never clear) showing up in 19th century British Egypt, as a rat in a New York City sewer, and (in a very difficult chapter) as a "bad preist" mangled by children in the ruins of World War II. Pynchon's strokes are most broad in sub-stories regarding a German colony in South Africa and later in another chapter surrounding an impaled ballerina that entrances V.

The connections are not often clear but the indictments of colonialism and war ring true. V is a challenging must-read postwar American whirlwind that remains consistent in its aggressively cubist tone.