6/1/2023 0 Comments V. by Thomas Pynchon![]() ![]() ![]() At one point, in a mock heroic miniaturization of the dragon-slayer myth, Pynchon has him hired on to hunt alligators in the New York sewer system. Benny Profane, though he has no talents whatsoever to speak of, is the main character associated with this arc, who bounces from job to job and from lover to lover in an endless sequence of hilarious episodes. There are thus two narrative arcs: the main picture panels-as it were-associated with the attempts of one Herbert Stencil to fathom the mystery of the woman named V, while the other is composed of the random and chaotic motions of a group of artists and beatniks who call themselves the Whole Sick Crew. (Van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece of about 1430 is a classic example). Thus, the book is meant to be symbolically “unfolded” and opened up in a manner similar to the way the wings of a Medieval triptych-also hinged–are opened to reveal a series of panels, each chronicling one or another Biblical iconotype. ![]() is not so much a novel as a series of short novels held together by hinges: the book is composed of 17 chapters (or 16 + an epilogue), seven of which are short novels having to do with the mysterious woman known as “V” while the other chapters function as jointures-like Heidegger’s jointures in his Contributions to Philosophy-which hinge the other seven together. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |