Book description
The first novel from the great, incomparable Thomas Pynchon.
The quest for V. sweeps us through sixty years and a panorama of Alexandria, Paris, Malta, Florence, Africa and New York. But who, where or what is V.? Bawdy, sometimes sad and frequently hilarious, V. as become a modern classic.
'The…
Why read it?
2 authors picked V. as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This novel has been with me all my life. I encountered it when I was fifteen (it was on the shelf where I was babysitting) and have continued to return to it.
Last year, I began reading it again because I was in Valetta, Malta, one of the many nouns that begin with the letter V in this inscrutable story. In Valetta, I was able to track down the street where Benny Profane, the novel’s sometime protagonist and eternal “schlemiel,” searches for mysterious characters. Strait Street’s walls still bear faded signage from old bars like ghosts of Pynchon’s past (he…
From Abby's list on weird groups of people.
First Pynchon. Favorite Pynchon. Opens up on Christmas Eve, 1955 with our hero Benny Profane hanging out in the Sailor’s Grave, a navy bar in Norfolk, where all of the “barmaids” are called Beatrice, including the owner, who posits “that just as small children call all females mother, so sailors, in their way equally helpless, should call barmaids Beatrice.” She tests this theory by putting rubber nipples on the end of the taps and having sailors chug from them during Suck Hour. And this is just the start of Pynchon flexing his hilarious and bizarre imagination in this picaresque…
From Michael's list on bars where I'd like to get a drink.
If you love V....
These Blue Mountains
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
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