V. book cover

V. is the debut novel of Thomas Pynchon published in 1963, concerning the journey of discharged U.S. Navy sailor Benny Profane through a decadent group of artists in 1956, along with the attempt of an aging traveller named Herbert Stencil to locate the mysterious woman he knows only as V. Image File history File links V. book cover This image is of a book cover, and the copyright for it is most likely owned by the publisher of the book. ... Image File history File links V. book cover This image is of a book cover, and the copyright for it is most likely owned by the publisher of the book. ... DeFoes Robinson Crusoe, Newspaper edition published in 1719 A novel (from French nouvelle, new) is an extended fictional narrative in prose. ... Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. ... 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will take you to calendar). ... The United States Navy (USN) is the branch of the United States armed forces responsible for naval operations. ... Decadence was the name given, first by hostile critics, and then triumphantly adopted by some writers themselves, to a number of late nineteenth century fin de siècle writers associated with Symbolism or the Aesthetic movement. ... 1956 (MCMLVI) was a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

The novel more-or-less alternates between chapters devoted to a 1956 plot centered on Benny and a generation-spanning plot centered on Stencil and V. herself (or various approximations to her). The Benny chapters constitute a single story, relatively light on plot, set in 1956 (with a few minor flashbacks). Each of the Stencil/V. chapters is set at a different point in time, and it is only after reading two or three of them that one is liable to see Stencil, V., and to a lesser extent Stencil's British spy/diplomat father as the thread holding these together. The two stories increasingly come together in the last chapters (the intersecting lines forming a "V", as it were), as Stencil hires Benny to travel with him to Malta. As a result, a reader who comes to the book unaware of this structure is typically about halfway through the book before having an inkling of what these chapters are doing in a single novel.

The Stencil chapters are:

chapter three
In which Stencil, a quick-change artist, does eight impersonations

This chapter, set among the British community in Egypt toward the end of the 19th century, consists of an introduction and a series of eight relatively short sections, each of them from the point of view of a different person. The eight sections come together to tell a story of murder and intrigue, intersecting the life of a young woman, Victoria Wren, the first incarnation of V. The title is a hint as to how this chapter is to be understood: Stencil imagines each of the eight viewpoints as he reconstructs — we do not know on how much knowledge and how much conjecture — this episode. This chapter is a reworking of Pynchon's short story "Under the Rose", which was first published in 1961 and is collected in Slow Learner (1984). In the Slow Learner introduction, Pynchon admits he took the details of the setting ("right down the names of the diplomatic corps") from Karl Baedeker's 1899 travel guide for Egypt. Stencil's reconstruction follows the same basic conflict as "Under the Rose", but it gives the non-European characters much more personality.

chapter five
In which Stencil nearly goes West with an alligator 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Slow Learner is the 1984 published collection of six early short stories by the American novelist Thomas Pynchon. ... 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) is a leap year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Karl Baedeker Karl Baedeker (not Baedecker) (3 November 1801 – 4 October 1859) was a publisher whose company set the standard for authoritative guidebooks for tourists. ... 1899 was a common year starting on Sunday (see link for calendar). ...

Only marginally part of the Stencil/V. material, this chapter follows Benny and others, as Benny has a job hunting alligators in the sewers under Manhattan. It figures in the Stencil/V. story in that there is a rat named "Veronica" who figures in a subplot about a mad priest - Father Linus Fairing, S.J. - some decades back, living in the sewers and preaching to the rats; we hear from him in the form of his diary. Stencil himself makes a brief appearance toward the end of the chapter.

chapter seven
She hangs on the western wall Manhattan Borough,highlighted in yellow, lies between the East River and the Hudson River. ... The Society of Jesus (Societas Iesu/Jesu (S.J.) in Latin) is a Christian religious order of the Roman Catholic Church in direct service to the Pope. ...

In Florence in 1899, Victoria appears again, briefly, but so does the placename "Vheissu", which may or may not stand for Vesuvius, Venezuela, or even (one character jokes) Venus.

chapter nine
Mondaugen's story Founded 59 BC as Florentia Region Tuscany Mayor Leonardo Domenici (Democratici di Sinistra) Area  - City Proper  102 km² Population  - City (2004)  - Metropolitan  - Density (city proper) 356,000 almost 500,000 3,453/km² Time zone CET, UTC+1 Latitude Longitude 43°47 N 11°15 E www. ... Mount Vesuvius (Italian: Monte Vesuvio) is a volcano east of Naples, Italy, located at 40°49′N 14°26′ E. It is the only active volcano on the European mainland, although it is not currently erupting. ... (*min temperature refers to cloud tops only) Atmospheric characteristics Atmospheric pressure 9. ...

Kurt Mondaugen, who will appear again in Gravity's Rainbow, is the central character in a story set in South-West Africa (now Namibia) partly during a siege in 1922 at which one Vera Meroving is present, but most notably in 1904, during the Herero Wars, when South-West Africa was a German colony; Pynchon clearly sees the German treatment of the Herero at that time as prefiguring the Holocaust of the Jews in the Nazi era (a correspondence he would come to reject in Gravity's Rainbow). At the same time, this part of the novel is a haunting indictment of Western colonialism and racism.

chapter eleven
Confessions of Fausto Maijstral Gravitys Rainbow book cover. ... German troops in combat with the Herero in a painting by Richard Knötel The Herero Wars were a series of colonial wars between German forces and the Herero tribe of southwestern Africa. ... In politics and in history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a geographically-distant state (or city, in ancient times). ... A group of Herero women. ... Concentration camp inmates during the Holocaust The Holocaust was Nazi Germanys systematic genocide (ethnic cleansing) of various ethnic, religious, national, and secular groups during World War II. Early elements include the Kristallnacht pogrom and the T-4 Euthanasia Program established by Hitler that killed some 200,000 people. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Nazism. ... Gravitys Rainbow book cover. ... World map of colonialism at the end of the Second World War in 1945. ... An African-American man drinks out of the colored only water fountain at a racially segregated streetcar terminal in the United States in 1939. ...

Fausto Maijstral, Maltese underground resistance fighter during World War II writes a long letter to his daughter Paola, who figures in the Benny Profane story; the letter comes into Stencil's hands. The letter includes copious quotations from his Fausto's diary. Besides the place name Valletta, V. figures in the story as an old - or possibly not-so-old - woman crushed by a beam of a fallen building while children play around her.

chapter fourteen
V. in love A resistance movement is a group dedicated to fighting an invader in an occupied country. ... Combatants Allied Powers Axis Powers Commanders {{{commander1}}} {{{commander2}}} Strength {{{strength1}}} {{{strength2}}} Casualties 17 million military deaths 7 million military deaths World War II, also known as the Second World War, was a mid-20th century conflict that engulfed much of the globe and is accepted as the largest and deadliest... Port of Valletta Valletta, population 7048 (official estimate for 2000), is the capital city of Malta - The city is located at 35°5416 North, 14°3132 East (35. ...

In this chapter V. - if V. it is - is entranced with a young ballerina, Mélanie l'Heuremaudit. The story centers around a riotous ballet performance, almost certainly modeled in part on the premiere of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. The performance centers on a virgin sacrifice by impalement. The young ballerina fails to wear her protective equipment, and actually dies by impalement in the course of the performance; everyone assumes her death throes simply to be an uncharacteristically emotional performance.

chapter sixteen
Valletta Igor Fyodorovitch Stravinsky (Russian: ) (June 17, 1882 – April 6, 1971) was a Russian-French-American composer of modern classical music. ... The Rite of Spring is a ballet with music by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. ...

As the British Navy mass on Malta in the early stages of the Suez Crisis, Stencil arrives with Benny in tow, searching for Fausto Maijstral. (As always, Kilroy was here first, and Pynchon proposes a novel origin for the face: that Kilroy was originally part of a schematic for a band-pass filter.)

Killroy schematic Part of a band pass filter according to the narration of V. by Thomas Pynchon. ... The Royal Navy is the navy of the United Kingdom. ... Combatants Israel, France, United Kingdom Egypt Commanders Moshe Dayan (CoS of the IDF) General Sir Charles Keightley (C-in-C), Vice-Admiral Pierre Barjot (Deputy) Gamal Abdel Nasser Strength 45,000 British, 34,000 French, 175,000 Israeli 300,000 Egyptians Casualties 200 Israelis, 107 British, 43 French dead or... Typical KILROY WAS HERE graffito Kilroy was here is an American popular culture expression, often seen in graffiti. ... A schematic of the Washington Metro. ... The frequency axis of this symbolic diagram would be logarithmically scaled. ...

References to V. in other works

The title of the American post-hardcore band Thrice's album Vheissu, released in October 2005, refers to Pynchon's book V. Post-hardcore; this specific genre was created by others as a sourse to relaese the emotion that builds inside, making the music intimate and touching to listeners. ... Thrice Thrice is an American, experimental post-hardcore band formed in Irvine, California in 1997. ... Vheissu is the fourth studio album by Thrice. ...

The main character in the comic-book V for Vendetta reads Pynchon's V. Cover art for V for Vendetta V for Vendetta is a graphic novel written by Alan Moore and illustrated mostly by David Lloyd, set in a dystopian future Britain where a mysterious anarchist works to destroy the fascist government and profoundly affects the people he encounters. ...