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

Silo

This is a dark show that I'm reluctant to watch. Slow burn with reveals along the way. Lots of padding and important small details you have to pay attention to, which sometimes I don't because I'm looking at my phone. The TV competes with the phone. Either I'm playing chess, or another game, or surfing for news about my favorite soccer team NYCFC. They're supposed to sign some new players and can register them tomorrow, but the team usually doesn't do things in a timely way, they're messy. The first few episodes of the 10 episode first season are about the sherif and his wife, played by Rashid Jones . Then there's like a buffer action episode where the generator almost goes kaput. Then it becomes Longmire, a woman sheriff who doesn't know the protocols and rules, and doesn't care, she just wants truth and answers. Everyone lives in the Silo, it's huge and mysterious and you can't have relics, things from the past, that might clue you i...

Introduction

Robert B. Palmer's introduction to his translation of Walter F. Otto's Dionysus: Myth and Cult (p. ix-xi) Gods of Hellas, gods of Hellas, Can ye listen in your silence? Can your mystic voices tell us Where ye hide? In floating islands, With a wind that evermore Keeps you out of sight of shore? Pan, Pan is dead. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING The Dead Pan W H E N Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote these lines which sound so pessimistic and so limited to any lover of the beauty and truth of Greek mythology, she had in mind a famous passage out of Plutarch's De Oraculorum defectu {Mor. 419 A-E) in which it was reported on good authority that Pan had died. But let Plutarch tell the story (Philip is speaking): As for death among such beings [i.e., deities], I have heard the words of a man who was not a fool nor an impostor. The father of...

Motley Kamuka

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