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.
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/
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
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