The Story Archive

V.

Thomas Pynchon · 1963 CE · Novel · Modern / American · Contemporary

Benny Profane, a discharged sailor, yo-yos around New York with a company of drifters who call themselves the Whole Sick Crew, while Herbert Stencil ransacks his dead father's papers for a woman recorded only as V. The search reaches back into Cairo in 1898, Florence, the German suppression of the Herero and a besieged Malta, and the woman it turns up is differently made each time. A first novel that assembled the twentieth century out of espionage files and set the pattern for everything after it.

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Attributes

Genre
SatireHistoricalMystery
Theme
Identity & SelfIsolation & AlienationWar & ViolenceColonialismMemory & Time
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
WandererEverymanShapeshifter
Plot structure
Nonlinear / FracturedEpisodicLabyrinth Plot
Symbol / motif
The CityThe MachineThe Web
Conflict
vs Societyvs Self
Mode / tone
IronicSatiricalAbsurdist
Culture / tradition
Modern / American

Closest analogues