And so but then ...... what is V.?

Is she a woman, a place, an idea, something that lurks in the shadows, in sewer systems, in history? Is V. a rat, a temptress, an island where dreams and colors coexist? Is V. the thing you spend your entire life looking for?

Thomas Pynchon's first novel, V., is about a quest of sorts, and about two men who find themselves in the middle of it. The first man, Benny Profane, a self-professed human yo-yo, has been bouncing around the country since his discharge from the Navy. No purpose. No real direction. Profane finds himself in New York City, 1956, and after a brief stint hunting alligators with a shotgun underneath the city, he becomes entangled with a group of bohemian young people who call themselves The Whole Sick Crew. The second man, Herbert Stencil, world adventurer and amateur spy, has also briefly settled into the comforts of The Crew. But only momentarily, for Stencil is on a mission. Ever since discovering his dead father's journal - and a specific line within: "There is more behind and inside V. than any of us had suspected. Not who, but what: what is she. God grant that I may never be called upon to write the answer, either here or in any official report." - Stencil has become obsessed with finding V.

So, that's the first narrative: Profane, Stencil, others, drinking, mythologizing, trying to figure everything out. Trysts with plastic surgeons, dentists with secrets, basically a fantastic sounding New York from a golden age of history. Pynchon then weaves a second narrative through it. This narrative spans an entire generation of time, from the late 1800s to the book's present, and is loosely woven together by Stencil's imagination, documents, and apparent clues as to the whereabouts, or whatabouts, of this elusive V. We travel to Egypt, Malta, the coast of Africa, get lost in dense plots of murder and intrigue, confessions, fever dreams. And as the book progresses, the two narratives inch closer and closer together, until finally, they meet, at the "V" point, so to speak.

This book is brilliant. TIME had a particular line from their review that's been resonating in my brain all day: "In this sort of book, there is no total to arrive at. Nothing makes any waking sense. But it makes a powerful, deeply disturbing dream sense ... What does it mean? Who, finally, is V.? Few books haunt the waking or the sleeping mind, but this is one. Who, indeed?"

And I think I'll leave it at that.