V--2nd, half-way

[Robin Landseadel]

I'm taking the page count of my copy -- the Harper Perennial Modern  
Classics edition -- and dividing by two. Unfortunately for the  
logistical aspects of this group read, there are at least three  
different "V."s I'm aware of, the original, the mass market and mine.  
Doubtless there are others. Splitting 533 in two actually gives you  
266.5, so I'm punting and providing the whole page.

The next page, 267 in the HPMC, is, if anything, even more flavoured  
with sounds, sights and smells from Gravity's Rainbow. The arrow tip  
of the "V" points directly to a book that hasn't even been written yet.

		Mondaugen shrugged. The lieutenant lit a whale-oil lamp
	and they set out for the turret. As they ascended a sloping hall-
	way, the great villa was filled with a single, deafening pulse of
	laughter. Mondaugen became numb, the lantern went smash
	behind him. He turned to see Weissmann standing among little
	blue flames and shiny fragments of glass.

		"The strand wolf," was all Weissmann could manage.

		In his room Mondaugen had brandy, but Weissmann's face
	remained the color of cigar smoke. He wouldn't talk. He got
	drunk and presently fell asleep in a chair.

		Mondaugen worked on the code into the early morning, get-
	ting, as usual, nowhere. He kept dozing off and being brought
	awake by brief chuckling sounds from the loudspeaker. They
	sounded to Mondaugen, half in dream, like that other chilling
	laugh, and made him reluctant to go back to sleep. But he contin-
	ued to, fitfully.

		Somewhere out in the house (though he may have dreamed 	
	that too) a chorus had begun singing a Dies Irae in plainsong. It
	got so loud it woke Mondaugen. Irritated, he lurched to the door
	and went out to tell them to keep quiet.

		Once past the storage rooms, he found the adjoining corri-
	dors brilliantly lit. On the whitewashed floor he saw a trail of
	blood-spatters, still wet. Intrigued, he followed. The blood led
	him perhaps fifty yards through drapes and around corners to
	what may have been a human form, lying covered with a piece of
	old canvas sail, blocking further passage. Beyond it the floor of
	the corridor gleamed white and bloodless.

		Mondaugen broke into a sprint, jumped neatly over what-
	ever it was and continued on at a jogging pace. Eventuajiy he
	found himself at the head of a portrait gallery he and Hedwig
	Vogelsang had once danced down. His head still reeled with her
	cologne. Halfway along, illuminated by a nearby sconce, he saw
	Foppl, dressed in his old private-soldier's uniform and standing
	on tiptoe to kiss one of the portraits. When he'd gone, Mon-

Mondaugen [on the next page in my copy] sees that the name on the  
brass plate below the portrait is von Trotha.

Godolphin seems very much like Brigadier Pudding in this scene,  
another obvious pairing between the books.

On Oct 18, 2010, at 7:48 AM, rich wrote:

> All the Big Pynchon Novels in some way have something happening dead
> center -- that is to say, at the exact mid-way point of the novel's
> page count. In the case of "V.", my edition -- the Harper Perennial
> Modern Classics edition -- there is a page count of 533, the half way
> point should be somewhere in the general vicinity of page 266.
> _______
>
> but the original novel was 492 pgs making pg. 246 the middle, no?
> unless 266 corresponds w/ 246 exactly. just saying...
>
> rich
>
> On