It’s a book I should have added to my “Books I will only read if I break both of my legs” list instead. While I had started reading ‘V.’ with what I thought was a relatively open mind and accepted that I wasn’t going to absorb every theme or nuance, I hadn’t prepared myself enough for the total absence of plot or structure or just anything I could meaningfully grasp on to.Īlthough ‘V.’ is Pynchon’s debut novel, it may not be the best one to start with. ‘V.’ is not a book to read whilst commuting with two or three train changes. My mistake was in failing to follow Step 3 which is “Sit down to read it”. ‘V’ doesn’t have a clear beginning or middle and I concluded around the 250 page mark that the second half of the book would be equally incomprehensible too.Īfter I put ‘V.’ aside, I discovered an excellent WikiHow article with some wise instructions about ‘ How to Read a Thomas Pynchon Novel‘. However, while ‘Cloud Atlas’ has a difficult structure, it is at least a visible one in that there are six stories which are resolved in reverse chronological order. On that level, I can admire it… from a safe distance.” My feelings about ‘V.’ are very similar. Both are densely written, kaleidoscopic novels. In my blog review of ‘Cloud Atlas’, I said “The positive thing I can say … is that it is an imaginative, ambitious, sprawling tapestry of a novel which shows off Mitchell’s talent for writing in several different styles. I quite liked the chapters about Profane but I got completely lost reading the chapters about Stencil. His story is gradually intertwined with that of Stencil who is on a quest for the mysterious ‘V.’ whose identity remains a mystery. Profane has been discharged from the Navy in the 1950s and spends a lot of time with a bunch of other characters known as the Whole Sick Crew. I persevered for another 100 pages or so before accepting that I wasn’t going to finish it.Įssentially, there are two main characters, Benny Profane and Herbert Stencil. I was fine for the first 150 pages and then I hit a wall. It turned out to be pretty much the same. I had wondered if reading ‘V.’ would be similar to my experience of reading ‘ Cloud Atlas‘ by David Mitchell which I failed to finish a couple of years ago. Moreover, although I’ve read a lot of enjoyable and thought-provoking books in the past few months, it’s been a while since I’ve read something that has properly challenged me. It’s likely to have been a combination of recently seeing a trailer for the film adaptation of ‘Inherent Vice’ and coming across an old article in The Guardian by Ian Rankin about Pynchon as well as the weird and wonderful cover design of this Vintage Books edition. I can’t really explain what made me pick up ‘V.’ by Thomas Pynchon from the library shelf three weeks ago.
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