Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone reading this has a wonderful Christmas this year, filled with loving family, food, and gift-giving. Christmas is such a fun time! Picking out things to give to your loved ones that you know they will enjoy is a great gift in and of itself; Plus being shown so much generosity from family and friends in return! Christmas is a holiday that generates so much love and excitement, it's no wonder it's the happiest season of all!!

It's always so much harder to find any time to read when there's a full house, so I have hardly even picked up a book! I finished the second book in the Discworld series earlier this week and started the third, Equal Rites, on my kindle, but I ended up just drifting out of it and into V.. So far, it has not disappointed. It's very different than Against the Day in that sentences are much more...complex and varied. It makes for a beautiful reading. I even wrote a couple passages down in my quote book (look on "The Avid Reader" tab on top of the blog if you haven't already!!) because they were so nice. Of course, his strange sentence structures (and general writing style) of V. are at times confusing, but that seems to come with Pynchon.

The novel began with the introduction of Profane, a likeable and fat man who has left the Navy and comes to find a group where he belongs, The Whole Sick Crew. There is also Rachel, with whom Profane is in love, and her roommates and friends. In the first two chapters, these characters roam around doing so much nothing in the way only Pynchon's characters can! Then, in the third chapter, things get interesting (and the confusion starts, too!) with Stencil, who finds in his deceased father's journal an enigmatic allusion to a woman referred to as "V.", whom he ventures out in a journey to find. In this chapter of the novel, suddenly a whole another group is introduced, and I am unclear even now as to whether it was a flashback or occurring in the same 1960s as Profane's storyline. This group is made up of two men that seem to be pimps and their charges, a Victoria and her younger sister. This section is stylistically impressive. Pynchon follows this group through the eyes of random, detached bystanders, such as waiters, burglars, and train conductors. That means that the motives of the pimp Porpentine and his friend Mr. Goodfellow aren't quite clear, except for some political talk in overheard conversations.

There is one motif I think is worth slight mention, and it's the clash of inanimate objects and animate, living people. There are the repeated images of a person being made out machine parts, with beautiful imagery attached to these passages. There is also Profane's declaration that he and "things" do not live well together. There are characters who are so lazy and inactive they might as well be furniture, including Stencil himself, who is searching for V. partly in order to remain awake, alive, active.

Well, this post ended up longer than I expected, as always. I hope this blog is finding its way to the screens of fellow bibliophiles!! Have you read Pynchon? Comment if you have, or if you want to, or even if you never would and why!