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/lit/ - Literature

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2862963 No.2862963 [Reply] [Original]

Alright, /lit/, I just read V. by Thomas Pynchon and I don't think I totally got it. Here are a few of my thoughts/questions. spoilers ahead, obviously.

1. What exactly does V. represent? I noticed that she replaced her animate body parts with inanimate ones, and that this was a theme throughout the book (Evan Godolphin did this, the automata as dancers, etc.). But what does it mean?

2. How does Benny Profane relate to the central plot at all? This was my main point of confusion. Stencil thinks he's possessed by V., but other than that I don't understand his connection.

>> No.2862974
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2862974

>What exactly does V. represent
>central plot

you're doing it wrong.

>> No.2862978

>>2862974
I get that, I just got the impression from the book that there's some relation. Am I wrong?

>> No.2862992

posting this analysis that I must have posted at least 5 times already

http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Unabashedly-Bookish-The-BN/Pynchon-and-the-Empty-Symbol/ba-p/
529566?nobounce

to be more specific to your question, consider

>modern people are left going through the motions with hollow, meaningless simulacrums, simulating the interaction that their ancestors experienced for real.

>> No.2863027

>>2862992

Thanks for the link. I enjoyed that review.

This book is killer

>> No.2863064

I thought that Stencil gave meaning to little things to fill a void, similar to Profane's wandering, they were both lost.

Inanimate objects are meaningless unless we give them meaning and use. Pynchon, to me, writes about the confusion of meaning and the absurdity of meaning.

V. herself ended up ended up being an inanimate object to Stencil he was chasing a meaning that he cannot understand or connect because meaning is given and implied, it is not just there. Does this make sense? I was planning on reading it again just to really support this idea.

>> No.2863078

more than anything to me, i love Pynchon's one after another entertaining and random moments. one minute this intensely interesting bar situation, the next guys are playing cards for condoms.
when I read Pynchon I like to pretend that after every part i really love i reach over and elbow him and that he laughs

>> No.2863086

>>2863078
I like to think of Pynchon's work as a underground comic book from the 60s and 70s. I even imagine all the characters in some kind of weird underground style similar to R.Crumb.