Prising some Character and Emotion out of Pynchon's Books

[Michael Bailey]

>
> 2)  V.
> a) characters - author as character (just to get it out of the way);
> Benny, Stencil, Paola, Rachel
>    i) Pig and Sphere and Schoenmaker and Eigenvalue
>    ii) as a token that I'm aware just how non-rigorous this is, only
> one sentence on V. herself
> b) reader as character: my emotions while reading (just to introduce
> that and back off it hurriedly)
> c) the emotions that one might suppose the book is trying to evoke
>

I like reading a Pynchon book, 'cause he writes well.  Some things
stick in your mind: I remember well a fellow worker in one of the
various office settings where I've labored talking about another
fellow worker she was looking forward to talking to on break: I want
to get a load of Diane (or words to that effect).  Just a
straightforward admission: I like to see, hear, watch this person in
action.  Same deal with the Pynch, for me.

Benny is a schlemihl.  New term to me when I read the book; but the
implication was clear, and fed into a word I already knew: "schnook",
as in, "the poor schnook, ya gotta love him"
So being born in a Hoovertown and doing mostly roadwork (Papa  Legba,
the opener of roads?) up and down the Atlantic Seaboard, we know he
had parents but the only sign of them is when he visits his mom's
house and makes a meal for himself - "she'd know he'd been there" (or
words to that effect)
So he's somebody funny stuff happens to, but that "schlemihl" makes
him somebody  you laugh with, not at - mostly...and maybe there's a
"there but for the grace of God" element too.  The major McGuffin that
I continually react to is that he's chosen civilian life, however
regretfully of martial camaraderie.  As a teen when I read this, I was
aware of the "tracking system" in schools where they had different
reading groups (one girl in 1st grade had her own reading group, the
Pickles) and how it would feel to not be in one of the "better" ones -
maybe some parental guidance on that and so forth, but I took it to
heart.  Benny has a feeling of self-worth - God knows how he managed
to keep it but he never loses it - and he doggedly blunders thru life,
stubbing toes, cutting himself shaving, chasing mindless pleasures;
but in the end it is he who puts life and society to the test, not
vice versa.
His dream (at least I remember it as his dream) about the guy with the
golden screw in his navel is all about self-acceptance, as I see it.

Stencil grows on you.  He has all the reflexive reflective
consciousness Benny lacks.  Using  Stencil's focus as a counterpoint
to Benny's id-driven life, he supplies the sense of  history that can
build a civilian perspective.  For him, maybe he's awoken from
history's nightmare, but he turns back to look in it for traces of his
father and what it all meant.  However muddled he is, his perspective
is what Benny needs, or, rather, maybe, what there needs to be in the
world for Benny to run across so he can become more than part of an
"ignorant arm[y that] clash[es] by night.

Paola as the first of Pynchon's teen queens...she's this breath of
fresh air, the way guys want to treat her is a Rorschach or even some
more rigorous test...

Rachel, is a dream come true.  Her notion of Benny's "boy's road" is
actually fairly accurate, and her acceptance of him is a wonderment
like that which I experience when I see young people of whatever
persuasion or age get together...meeting up with Rachel is one of the
perks in the civilian world of Benny...

Pig, Schoenmaker, Eigenvalue, ah well, I run with the scraps of
description we get and I build these guys out of impressions I already
have.  Pig on the Harley in the alley, maybe it's just me being
over-susceptible, but that's a picture that stays in my mind.

Sphere - I was just getting interested in jazz, bebop, Charlie Parker
and so forth when I read V., and it seemed fitting that he would get
to give the moral of the story: keep cool but care.  He's seen driving
his sports car and having human troubles and meeting people at parties
(lots of parties in V.) and thinking about computers, even writing a
little song about it.

V., well, I have a probably unfounded notion that V is velocity or
vector, and as an object moves it creates a v-shaped wake, and similar
fuzzy thoughts; but V. herself being sought by Stencil and found in a
number of (holy moly, OBVIOUSLY DIFFERENT) women shows something about
how you can create a  category and fill it whether it "means anything"
or "is right" and if that works for you it isn't a terribly bad thing,
but it may be the unsought experiences that you can't categorize which
reveal the essence of life, and these will come to you whether you
live without a plan like Benny or are seeking something you're not
even sure of yourself like Stencil.

My emotions as I read the book were self-congratulation on reading a
critically-acclaimed work (please don't take that away from me, Mr
Wood!), humor and amazement, an ongoing filling-in of blanks of my
knowledge of New York, the fifties, street life, bloody episodes in
history, and appreciation of language language language...

The emotions I would want to be seen bringing away from reading V.
would be a "taking to heart" of "keep cool but care", shock and horror
at genocide, a general though reluctant tendency toward demobilization
into civilian life, a sort of bemused wonderment at the modern world
and also a faith that as I - a schlemihl in my own right, as Benny's
shenanigans have proven by their resonance - blunder through this
world, there will be boners that will lead me to gainful employment,
women with the potential to love, faithful friends like Pig, madcap
capers to savor the memory of, and people with very different needs
(like Stencil) whom I might help, and in helping, possibly learn
something even if I don't admit it.

-- 
"My God, I am fully in favor of a little leeway or the damnable jig is
up! " - Hapworth Glass