Thomas Pynchon – V

Having got to page 50 of V by Thomas Pynchon, I was ready to give up. However, I had bought the book because it had popped up in a search to do with an historical topic I was investigating but why I couldn’t remember. A quick flick through the book reminded me it was for the section on South Africa, soon after World War 1. I dutifully ploughed on and having worked my way through that chapter, felt I’d read too much of the book to put it aside so skim read the rest, regularly asking myself what it was that caused it to be highly regarded.

As far as I’m concerned, the book didn’t really go anywhere although the main characters did a lot of travelling. It was an opportunity for Pynchon to show off his knowlegde of different countries and significant historical events. The chapter on Southern AFrica dealt with the 1922 Herero rebellion linking back to the 1904-7 rebellion the Germans ruthlessly squashed in what was then German South West Africa, today Namibia. It was graphic, although not gratuitous as I thought many other chapters in the book were.

I therefore turned to what others thought about Pynchon’s writing – only to discover there is a fan site which has entries which cover every page of his books … and there’s an introduction for new readers … what does it say about a book or writer if the books need that much explaining? And they’re not school set-works!

The most recent review of V, I thought reflected some of my views on the book. I could also see where the other two reviewers were coming from.

My abiding memory of V and of Pynchon as a writer will be an author who is incredibly adept at taking an incident and weaving a web around it almost like a stream of consciousness. In doing so, he keeps old characters moving on while intrroducing new ones in a fluid manner – and he had the odd quote or two which struck a cord. It’s rather incredible to think this was his debut novel…

It was an epic read – however, I prefer our TSL epic reads.