On Finishing V.

I could say that Thomas Pynchon’s V. is about two men—Benny Profane and Herbert Stencil. I could say that V. is in part the story of Profane yo-yoing from one bar/party/group of friends to the next in 1950s New York. I could say that V. is also in part the story of Stencil searching for a mysterious woman, a woman he knows only from his late father’s documents, interviews, and inference. All Stencil knows concretely of her is her initial. 

I could say V. is about this stuff and more and another reader would attack me saying it ain’t that at all. The surface story is entertaining enough—a weird detective story and a romp with a schlemiel through sewers hunting alligators, through midnight drunks and shitty apartments. But that’s the surface.

V. is really a narrative representation of history. On Profane’s end of things, the reader gets a voyeuristic peek at a particular time and a particular place from the average down-on-his-luck guy’s point of view. Through Stencil’s story, a cyclical representation of history emerges, in which the enigmatic V. is not a single woman, but a multitude of women (all of their names start with the same vexing letter, of course). There’s Veronica, a rat turned nun by a priest that’s exiled himself to the city sewers. There’s Victoria, caught up in revolution and intrigue. And so on. I don’t want to give it all away.

The interesting thing about Stencil’s story isn’t just the recurrence of the V. figure, but the fact that each reincarnation seems to coincide with some major historical event. Thus, V. becomes not only Stencil’s holy grail figure, but the feminine representation of history itself—always moving forward in time yet persistent in many themes.

It is difficult to find a satisfactory meeting ground between these two stories. At first it seems as though they have nothing to do with each other. Profane and Stencil are completely separated in plot and personality, though they perhaps run parallel to one another in a subtle way. By the novel’s close, however, the two stories collide in Malta when Profane accompanies Stencil through time and space to the culmination of the V. mystery.

One of the best novels I have ever read.