V-2nd - 2: Part II - questions, comments?

[kelber at mindspring.com]

It does seem that V. draws from some of Pynchon's early stories, most notably Under the Rose, but also Mortality and Mercy in Vienna, Entropy and maybe, in terms of his first dealings with racism, The Secret Integration.  Even if his starting point was a bunch of his stories, though, the book never feels like a bunch of disconnected stories gratuitously lumped together into a novel.  He's done a damn good job of carrying themes and imagery (mirrors and clocks!) through the book, even as the narratorial tone changes.

Compare this feat with a book like Cloud Atlas: A Novel, by David Mitchell (which I know a number of frequenters of this list have read), which, IMO, fails to connect the disparate stories.

Laura
(trying to catch up)

-----Original Message-----
>From: David Payne <dpayne1912 at hotmail.com>


>Do you think that the alternating narrators is a conscious echo of some other work, like Bleakhouse, or do you think that this just the result of mashing a couple of short stories together into a novel, the setting up of the twin tales up as two stems on a V running toward each other?