VV(18): "V. in love"

[Dave Monroe]

"V. in love" (V., Ch. 14, p. 393)

There certainly is one--a "V" in "love," that is.  But beyond the 
romance-novel title, note also ongoing associations of V. with the Roman 
(after the Greek Aphrodite) Goddess of Love, Venus: the letter, "V," for 
starters; the Botticelli Birth of Venus which "hangs on the Western wall" of 
the Uffizi in Ch. 7; Vera Meroving's artificial eye in Ch. 9, the 
gold-flecked green craqueleur of which (p. 237) recalls both the seafoam 
(per Terrance et al.) and the "glassy-eyed lady" (p. 178) in the 
aforementioned painting; the etymology of "venery" as in V. as Stencil's 
"beast" thereof (pp. 63, 412); and so forth ...

And from Hanjo Berressem, Pynchon's Poetics: Interfacing Theory and Text 
(Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1993), Part Two, "Textual Analyses," Ch. 4, "V.: 
V. in Love," pp. 53-81 ...

"The replacement of the human by the machine and the effects of 
mechanization on what used to be called love are exemplified most concisely 
by the fate of Melanie L'Heuremaudit in a chapter that brings together most 
of the book's leitmotifs.  In chapter 14, entitled 'V. in love,' Pynchon 
stages the disruption of Freudian psychoanalysis and posits ... its 
inapplicability to a 'new scene.'" (p. 57)

Berressem's chapter here, by the way, was apparently "slightly altered" from 
its original publication as "V. in love: From the 'Other Scene' to the 'New 
Scene,'" Pynchon Notes 18-19 (1986), pp. 5-28 ...
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