EDIT: I give up again. 'V' is a travesty of juvenile puns, unconvincing dialogue, and (my own pet peeve) characters with impossibly trite names. Seriously, what gives? EDIT: I decided to try reading it again.have you ever had the feeling that an author is simply trying to bludgeon you over the head with abstruseness? have you ever read one of those books that all of the "serious readers" swear is an infallible masterpiece, despite its meat-fisted appropriation of the stylistic innovations of Eliot, Pound, Joyce, Woolf, et al.? If you haven't, then read 'V'. (seriously, though, 'V' is a great book. i just read it too soon after my Ezra Pound phase, and it sort of rang hollow and derivative. i'm sure i'll love it when i read it again in a few years.) ( )

It's a fun and interesting book BUT DON'T READ IT, read Gravity's Rainbow which has a similar structures, themes, and characters but is much more developed and hilarious. Only people obsessed with Pynchon should read this. ( )

Can I give this book seven or eight stars? An incredible book by itself, this work is remarkable when one remembers it is Pynchon's first novel.

Funny, disturbing, dense, absurd, horrific, casual. There are some sentences and paragraphs that only a dozen writers in the world are capable of matching.

Throughout reading I found myself drawing connections to Bolano's 'The Savage Detectives': The Whole Sick Crew vs. The Visceral Realists, V. vs. Cesárea Tinajero, and so on. I wonder if Bolano read Pynchon? ( )

"il se peut que Maijstral, le Maltais, soit destiné à vivre au seuil de la conscience, à n'exister que comme un morceau de chair à peine animée, un automate." Il faut se préparer à lire plusieurs livres en un seul en abordant cette somme baroque, glorieuse, décadente, qui invite mille personnages et leur histoire, brasse les siècle, balaye les océans. Jubilatoire, documenté à la limite de l'extrême, désinvolte, tourbillonnant. ( )

I've the deep convinction that this book is completely nonsense.
Still, it's beautiful to read... ( )