V. by Thomas Pynchon

Cover to the European edition

I was so blown away by Inherent Vice, that I have to read V. now. This book came out in 1963. It was his first novel, and I think goes well with Gravity's Rainbow. I plan to read both this summer.

Wikipedia summarizes the novel thus: It describes the exploits of a discharged U.S. Navy sailor named Benny Profane, his reconnection in New York with a group of pseudo-bohemian artists and hangers-on known as the Whole Sick Crew, and the quest of an aging traveler named Herbert Stencil to identify and locate the mysterious entity he knows only as "V."

Pynchon Wiki has a section of supportive notes for the novel.

Reading group guide from Publisher.

Reddit reading group.

New Yorker

Mack Hayden

7 known photos of Thomas Pynchon.

Pynchon is heady, hard to follow dreamscapes of various existential, historical self journeys alive to culture: military to jazz, opera to debauchery. It’s got a whiff of Ulysses, and a million other books the reader can imagine into these interactions and imaginations, like imaginary riffs. As unique as a jazz solo by a musician with a distinct voice.

One layer is the sacred and the profane. I honestly never really understood the distinction, I think everything is sacred, nothing profane. But in chapter 4 Shoenmaker's desire to become a doctor to help rebuild Godolphin's face feels sacred. I'm confused because Halidom is a character, and the word means something held sacred, but he seems to be the opponent to Shoenmaker.

I asked Reddit about the sacred and profane in Buddhism, but I don't think it holds up.

Pynchon described a character as an anarchist, and I've been studying that by reading Wikipedia pages, and posts on Reddit. This one is about how to be an anarchist and a Buddhist.

The stone forests of Queens refers to all the cemetery in Queens. There are a few.

Pynchon is hard to read because you're always looking things up. Then once I'm on the computer, I follow things for a while. At times I struggled to read V.

The Uffizi is an art museum in Florence Italy. It contains the Birth of Venus. I actually had a poster of that on my wall not too long ago before it fell down.

Links:

THE SACRED, THE PROFANE, AND THE CRYING OF LOT 49

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspare_Tagliacozzi. In the rhinoplasty chapter, he's mentioned.

https://biblioklept.org/2021/04/05/father-fairings-sewer-rat-parish-thomas-pynchon/

Quote I liked from book

I got to 222 of 547 before I had to return the book.

And then I got it back and finished it 11/4/22.

Tyrosemiophile: collector of cheese labels.

Chapter 15 discussion:

"Stencil's response to Rachel's note - "mene, mene, tekel, upharsin," - translates to "numbered, numbered, weighed, divided" and is the message found on the palace wall of the king of Babylon signifying that God had numbered the king's days, weighed him and found him wanting and would divide his kingdom."

Chapter 16 discussion

Manet and Degas

Brilliant video explaining the exhibit. Go to the Met and see the exhibit! It's really quite special. In the last gallery the painting this sketch is based off of, of the execution of a Mexican president. The painting has been cut into sections, and the surviving Degas has reassembled them. NY Times review

The case for Harris

Motley Kamuka Blog endorses Kamala Harris. In general, Trump just wants to lower taxes on the rich, and do nothing, sell whatever influence he can to line his pockets. Apparently the emoluments clause in the constitution has no teeth. Harris has a set of ideas about policy that are fairly middle of the road. In most countries she's would be seen as a centrist. Spin about her radical agendas are exaggerated. I'm not sure how he got past " grab them by the pussy ", but he did and here we are. Women: Obviously the idea of giving women pregnancy tests at the borders of the state, and then if they come back and don't have a baby, they go to jail, isn't really what most women want. Pick Harris. I understand if you think abortion is murder, maybe you've been told that by the Catholic church, which has the same ideal of Buddhism that you don't kill--so follow your religion for yourself. Not everyone is Christian or Buddhist or even has a religion. Women are ...

AOC

Dark Brandon meet Dark Alex. I see her advising the republicans to stick to their guns and never compromise. They don’t want to do anything, only obstruct. So they don’t actually need to be unified. Chaos isn’t organized. This is fine. Read all about it from Heather Cox Richardson , a historian who covers current events. "As their policies threatened to lose voters by concentrating wealth upward and hollowing out the middle class, Republicans increasingly warned that minority voters wanted socialism and were destroying the nation to get it. Trump rode that narrative to power, and now tearing down the current government is the idea that drives the Republican base." While we're at it, here's another funny photo from the Onion: And then: I listened to the Times podcast about George Santos . He basically lied about, I don't know, 80% of his resume, and has a mysterious $700k in his "corporation" which has no clients. So he's a Russian or Chinese plant, o...

Motley Kamuka

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