Hey there, everyone! It's the last day of 2011, and I am so happy I can spend some time of today writing on my blog. I'm going to try to make this a shorter post than the last, but Lord knows I can keep on going forever about what I'm reading. In fact, I have so much to say about V. that I don't know where to start!
For one thing, if anyone has read and enjoyed Don DeLillo's White Noise, I would recommend this novel. I can't really say why, but it keeps reminding of it, both in the writing style and in some of the issues discussed. For example, inanimate objects are one of the focal points of V.; there are many references to the mass production of objects--all kinds of objects--and this resonates with the emphasis of the Supermarket, symbolic for all inanimate goods, as a sort of religious haven for the characters in White Noise.
Another thing I wanted to talk about is how enjoyable it is to read this novel after having read Against the Day. Though I would recommend to someone starting Pynchon to read V. first, it's cool to see kernels of what is to be discussed in much greater detail in his later novel. I wish I could remember more of Gravity's Rainbow so that I could see the connections there, too, but someday in the future I will try that again!
So one of these "kernels" is Pynchon's interest in duality. As mentioned in probably every post on ATD, duality was EVERYWHERE in that mass of a novel. In being in two places at the same time, in living two lives at the same time, the Iceland spar that splits people into two...it continues on and on. Duality in V. is a little more subtle but definitely there. For example, there is the concept of father and son; is the son supposed to be the "doppelganger" of the father? In V., the names Stencil and Godolphin each refer to both a father and son, since the novel jumps back and forth between the two generations. There is also a girl in the novel named Esther, who is dating a plastic surgeon that ruminates often on the duality of the human identity: there is the soul, which is the true person, the perfect idea of who one really is, and then there is the body, the imperfect representation that can be manipulated to represent the true, inner person.
Another kernel that is very small deals with a relatively unimportant character in V. who is involved with studying the electromagnetic field. Had I not read ATD, I would probably not have thought twice about that, but this points to his interest in the electromagnetic field of earth, which will become such a bigger element later.
Now, I think I have said enough, but I have one more thing. On the tab "The Avid Reader" (found at the top of my blog) there's a little blurb on my quote book. I say there that I have stopped using it very much, which makes me sad; many of the books I've read recently have had passages I probably should have saved, but for whatever reason I've been lazy about it. This novel, however, has propelled me to continue my quote writing. I think I will post a few of them for whoever is interested. Otherwise...Happy New Year, everyone! I hope 2012 is filled with joy, prosperity, peace, and fun for all. I hope my family and my readers know how much I appreciated everything they have done for me this year. And I hope I continue to find and read great books so that I may share with you all! (Also...I'm not very witty, and the fact that I have to explain this only proves it, but E.V. = Eve in my title post!)
"It takes, unhappily, no more than a desk and writing supplies to turn any room into a confessional. This may have nothing to do with the acts we have committed, or the humors we do go in and out of. It may be only the room- a cube- having no persuasive powers of its own. The room simply is. To occupy it, and find a metaphor there for memory, is our own fault."
-V., 333
"He wanted to take the girl by her fingers, lead her to someplace out of the wind. Anyplace warm, pivot her back on those poor ball-bearing heels and show her his name was Sfacim after all. It was a desire he got, on and off, to be cruel and feel at the same time sorrow so big it filled him, leaked out of his eyes and the holes in his shoes to make one big pool of human sorrow on the street, which had everything spilled on it from beer to blood, but very little compassion."
-V., 149
"Since I was born (said he) I've seen fathers die, brothers go away, little kids cry...
'What was that airborne boy's problem,' Profane asked her the first time she translated it for him. 'Who hasn't seen that. It happens for other reasons besides war. Why blame war. I was born in a Hooverville before the war'
'That's it,' Paola said. 'Je suis né. Being born. That's all you have to do.'"
V., 24
"You felt she'd done a thousand secret things to her eyes. They needed to no haze of cigarette smoke to look at you out of sexy and fathomless, but carried their own along with them. New York must have been for her a city of smoke, its streets the courtyards of limbo, its bodies like wraiths. Smoke seemed to be in her voice, in her movements; making her all the more substantial, more there, as if words, glances, small lewdnesses could only become baffled and brought to rest like smoke in her long hair; remain there useless till she released them, accidentally and unknowingly, with a toss of her head."
-V. 47
"To Profane, alone in the street, it would always seem maybe he was looking for something to make the fact of his own disassembly plausible as that of any machine. It was always at this point that the fear started: here that it would turn to a nightmare. Because now, if he kept going down that street, not only his ass but also his arms, legs, sponge brain and clock of a heart must be left behind to litter the pavement, be scattered among manhole covers."
-V., 35
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