Readers are implicated in this impossible quest, involuntarily placed in the position of code-breakers. If “V” were found, it would be necessary to lose it again and to reinitiate the search. Stencil needs to search for the inaccessible in order to separate himself from the inanimateness of objecthood, in order to avoid freezing into a thingly state: “He tried not to think, therefore, about any end to the search. All of the “characters” in the novel are threatened by the lifeless world of things. Human beings, conversely, are themselves often functional and machinelike: e.g., Benny Profane’s jaunts resemble the idiotic up-and-down movements of a yo-yo Rachel’s words are described as “inanimate-words couldn’t really talk back at”, etc. The inanimate objects that populate Pynchon’s narrative often resemble human beings, such as the beer tap that is shaped in the form of a “foam rubber breast”. They fear their stasis, their contagious inanimateness. Both Profane and Stencil are terrified of the world of objects. The search for “V.” is the only thing that distinguishes him from a thing: “His random movements before the war had given way to a great single movement from inertness to–if not vitality, then at least activity”. If “V.” were found, Stencil would become indistinguishable from an inanimate object. For this reason, “V.” must never be found. To put an end to the process of reading would be to lose one’s human spontaneity. As his name implies, Stencil can only trace the outlines of that which he seeks his search is, to a certain extent, a fruitless yearning for truth. Reading is here a process without progress and without terminus: Stencil never succeeds in identifying the initial’s referent. Stencil is a reader, broadly understood: He attempts to interpret the meaning of an initial. The plot concerns Stencil, the son of a now-deceased British foreign officer, who, accompanied by eponymous “schlemihl” Benny Profane, half-heartedly searches for the elusive “V.”–who might be a woman, a thing, a concept, a sewer rat, or nothing at all. (1963) is about the act of reading itself and the possibility or impossibility of self-reading.
Like most meta-fictional narratives, Thomas Pynchon’s first novel, V.
–Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and EvilĪll readers undergo a voyage to discover hidden meanings–a voyage which is also a passage of self-discovery. ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE FACTS ON FILE COMPANION TO THE AMERICAN NOVELĪn Analysis of V. IF YOU ARE AT LEAST TWENTY-EIGHT (28) YEARS OF AGE, CLICK THE IMAGE ABOVE TO READ MY NOVEL WATCH OUT: THE FINAL VERSION!
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