V is a postmodern novel published in 1963 by Thomas Pynchon that follows Benny Profane — a former Navy sailor, now living in the Bohemian scene in New York — and Herbert Stencil — a pseudo (?) detective trying to track down the mysterious “V.”
The novel juxtaposes contemporary scenes following Profane and Stencil with historical scenes in which “V” appears in her/its many forms (Victoria Wren, Vera Meroving, Vheissu, Veronica Manganese). In the contemporary scenes, we tend to see Profane interacting with various members of the Whole Sick Crew, a band of New York City bohemians who tend to focus on trivial works and acts and whose energy is ultimately wasted, producing nothing of consequence. Stencil, on the other hand, obsesses over the concept of “V” as some unifying force or cause that can explain the seemingly random nature of historical events.
The historical passages all incorporate some manifestation of V in some way — e.g. Vera Meroving stays at Foppl’s alongside Kurt Mondaugen, who serves as the focal character during the scene set in the early 1900s German Southwest Africa. Likewise, the “Bad Priest” (Veronica Manganese) is disassembled by children in the bombing of Malta. Across these historical scenes, V becomes increasingly artificial. In the earliest scenes, featuring Victoria Wren in 1899 Florence, V (as Victoria) is still wholly biological, human. When she appears as Vera Meroving, she has a clockwork eye. When she appears as Veronica Managese, she has evolved (devolved?) further into androidism, with many of her biological features replaced by metalwork and gemstones.
The novel is ultimately open-ended. There’s no answer, no takeaway to arrive it. It juxtaposes dreamlike scenes against one another and asks the reader to interpret them. One of the predominant themes of the novel, though is the contrasting of Benny’s (and the Whole Sick Crew’s) acceptance of aimlessness and lack of meaning against Stencil’s fanatical search for meaning. Pynchon seems to suggest that neither is “correct,” but this is also very much an oversimplification of what’s happening in the book.