VV(11): V-Structure

[Dave Monroe]

"the ultimate shape of his V-structure" (V., Ch. 8, Sec. iv, p. 226)

Because Kai reminded me, and because all's quiet on the Chapter Nine front, 
from Alec McHoul and David Wills, Writing Pynchon: Strategies in Fictional 
Analysis (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1990), Chpater 6, "V," pp. 163-85 ...

"Herbert Stencil (the copy, the trace, the one who signifies V. and so 
is--in another sense--the signifier): V. is his own hunted object.  Just 
like the search for truth, the absent 'real', the 'beyond talk', the 'beyond 
signification' that signification points to.  There is no point--except THE 
point, the full-stop which always follows V.  Mercilessly and with great 
typographical pains, that stop is almost always there--following, shadowing. 
  Beyond V., there is the stop, the closure, the end (as both finality and 
goal).  But that can never be reached--for we never penetrate beyond the 
limits of signification.  Stencil is doomed to copy, to trace, to 
ceaselessly iterate the signifier 'V'.  For beyond the repetition of that 
signifier there is no real closure.  The point of it all is a/to stop.  And 
to stop is the most difficult thing because for Stencil that can never 
happen until the limits of the signifier are somehow magically 
transgressed." (164)

[la belle point sans merci?]

"The stories are always multiple.  There is no 'how it was/is'.  Rumour, 
text, dossier, signification and counter-signification circulate, play 
across each other as (can we say) the(?) text.  For there is no longer any 
'the text'--only multiple repetitions of V., of 'V.', of V. and of ..." 
(165)

"V. promises confluence, a coming together, an identity, a point where there 
is sameness.  But if we move up the V, there is only divergence, absence of 
identity, absence of character.  So all the 'characters' are caught in the 
yo-yoing up and down the V between identity and absence ..." (165)

"Not an end, an initial." (168)

"For as long as V is absent, there is no absolute priority." (170)

"The writing of V is a deconstruction of both the teleological system which 
informs Profane's gripe with the inanimate and that which informs Stencil's 
search for V.  Teleology becomes not so much a matter of the end as it does 
a mater of the origin, of the initial.  As if to problematise the notion of 
an origin untouched by the differences which now comprise its history ..." 
(171-3)

[and, as kai has already posted,]

"A a stencil allows for repitition, reproduction if you insist.  But, as we 
have insisted, it is within that same structure that difference occurs.  
Stencilisation, which describes the construction of V., allows for a variety 
of relationships between pieces of the text." (181)

So thanks again, Kai ...


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