I’ve given up on trying to follow the plot of Pynchon’s novels. I accept that there is one, but I lack the sustained attention and investigative prowess to suss it out with any great accuracy. Instead, I treat them as a series of loosely connected scenes and images to be enjoyed in sequence. They are more like roller coasters than novels, vehicles for visceral reaction with a theme one senses more than deeply grasps.
V. has some good images. Benny Profane (allegedly the protagonist, in fact appearing in probably less than 10% of the novel) hunting alligators in the New York sewer system. The tragic result of an innovative but faulty form of plastic surgery utilizing inorganic materials. Flares of mid-fifties bohemian bedlam and bacchanalia.
The book’s throughline concerns its other supposed protagonist, Herbert Stencil, who is on a lifelong quest to uncover the identity of a mysterious woman in his father’s wartime journal, an elusive figure known only as V. Through conversations and archives, Stencil dives back into moments of crisis over the last several hundred years, during which we catch glimpses of V, who appears to manifest in multiple forms. There’s more, but my recollections are impressionistic and I’d be hard-pressed to give an actual summary of the story beyond that.
Maybe I’m not smart enough to read these books. But I do enjoy them for what they are.