Book Review: V. is complex enough for fans of Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, yet modern enough for followers of David Foster Wallace. Thomas Pynchon seems to know everything, been everywhere, and is able to write about it in infinite detail. Such a novel needs to and can be read on two levels. First, just go with the flow, enjoy the energetic descriptions on every page, the many manic characters, and hold on tight. Second, explore every page, Googling like mad, following up on every thread that Pynchon has frayed and left behind, as if reading Ulysses or Infinite Jest. V. cries out for an annotated version, needing copious footnotes, end notes, or notes of any kind. I may question how much knowing about the "Trumpeter of Krakow" adds to the story, but I most certainly and firmly can't say it doesn't. At it's core it's the story of a schlemiel, the animate against the inanimate, and an inifinite number of characters that manage to be both impossibly bizarre but also (one eventually realizes) human. There are so many sidelines, tangents, digressions and detours that there's no way the reader will remember, much less connect, the infinite literary molecules that comprise this novel, without reading it at least three times and taking the proverbially copious notes. Pynchon threw everything he had into this first novel, as if he might never get another chance. Most definitely not for everyone. My suggestion is to just take it as it comes and read it for the first take only, live in the present, read it as the words are before you, understand the paragraph you're reading, and then move on without too many glances backward. I've already re-read this book, since I had to read almost every paragraph twice to grasp it. I think this is only appropriate for a writer who's content to have his brilliant first novel known as "the book with the nose job" (here Pynchon ventures into horror). As weighty and serious as this book is, Pynchon doesn't take it too seriously himself and neither should you, as seen in lines such as this mention of Benny venturing into a bar called "The Sailor's Grave": "realizing he had one foot in the Grave anyway ...", or this conversation: "Don't you know that life is the most precious possession you have?" "Why?" "Because without it, you'd be dead." And there is the always elusive and endlessly mysterious V., wondering "what is she?", as we encounter Victoria, Veronica, Vheissu, Vesuvius, the V-1 and V-2, Valletta, Vaugirard, Viola, and other red herrings. There are many things incredible about V. It's unbelievable that this is a first novel, and that it was published in 1963 before American history such as Kennedy's death, Watergate, or 9/11. This seems more like a book that could only have been written after those events. I'm not too proud to admit that this book has levels I missed, depths I couldn't reach, etc. This is one of those books like Finnegan's Wake or House of Leaves, that it's fair to ask about reading it: Why would you do that to yourself? But having read it, I'm glad I did and would again. [4★]
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