She
Lives (In a Time of Her Own)
Bonnie
Lenore Surfus
Our poetic "destiny" was replaced by the discovery of an
aristocracy deeper and older. We were builders.
--Fausto Majistral
If we accept Fausto's confessions as truthful, then we
confirm the epistemological uncertainty of historical
narratives, as we cannot deny the subjective nature of
autobiography. Pynchon employs Fausto's confessions to
create a context from within which readers might examine
the enigmatic V. Pynchon situates the "truth" within the
confessions, which represent an allegedly reliable
historical narrative. But it is not the truth of V. that we
learn from Fausto. Pynchon's situates the confessions
within his fiction, thus illuminating the nature of
history-building, and in this reveals Her-story, the story
of V. and the plot to deny Her historical reality.
Fausto Majistral's understanding of his "destiny" may well
help to corroborate the work of contemporary scholars who
contend that some "builders" have operated with a great
deal of disrespect. Attempting to answer difficult global
questions concerning human nature, a number of contemporary
historians, archaeologists, and scholars from many
disciplines, pool their efforts, hoping to get behind the
subversive plot to suppress information concerning early
civilizations that worshipped female deities. Unlike the
teaching of many of our oldest legends, myths, and
historical lessons, contemporary scholars are excited about
a veritable archaeological revolution . . . [that]
reveal[s] a long period of peace and prosperity when our
social, technological, and cultural evolution moved upward:
many thousand of years when all the basic technologies on
which civilization is built were developed in societies
that were not male dominant, violent, and hierarchic.
(Eisler xvi)
Evidence
of the extent of the "old teaching" is seen in the
classroom. Indeed, many a young student is found defending
skepticism about feminist ideology by opening an essay with
some statement like "Since the beginning of time, man has
dominated woman . . . ." While the instructor once
struggled to explain how very illogical this statement was,
today's instructors have some valid scholarship to support
this claim of logical fallacy. For contemporary records of
history are changing. Riane Eisler's The Chalice and the
Blade, Merlin Stone's
When God Was a Woman,
Marija Gimbutas'
The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe
and Peg Streep's largely pictorial Sanctuaries of the
Goddess all attempt to set the record straight in terms of
early civilization. Based largely upon long-suppressed
archaeological information, these writers are concerned
about revealing the notion that it has not, in fact, been
since "the beginning of time" that male dominance has been
commonplace among "civilized" cultures. Eisler suggests
that there was once what she calls a "partnership model" of
civilization, a model that eventually gave way to a
"dominator model." This theory, which she refers to as the
"Cultural Transformation Theory," is gaining support widely
(Eisler xvii). Eisler explains that
Cultural Transformation Theory . . . proposes that the
original direction in the mainstream of our cultural
evolution was toward partnership but that, following a
period of chaos and almost total cultural disruption, there
occurred a fundamental shift. The greater availability of
data on Western societies (due to the ethnocentric focus of
Western social science) makes it possible to document this
shift in more detail through the analysis of Western
cultural evolution. (Eisler xvii) Her work is not isolated,
however, focusing only upon Western culture. She notes that
this shift in cultural orientation "is roughly paralleled
in other parts of the world." (Eisler xvii)
Eisler,
through her knowledge of contemporary work on how systems
evolve and change (or chaos theory) is able to suggest that
the shift occurred in a relatively small window of time;
small fluctuations in an earlier cultural condition have
had large effects, influencing a later configuration of the
system. She suggests that some of the pre-transformation
characteristics of the agrarian societies of the Neolithic
encouraged "the basis for the development of civilization
dating over thousands of years in to our own time"(Eisler
9). She notes that "almost universally, those places where
the first great breakthroughs in material and social
technology were made had one feature in common: the worship
of the Goddess"(Eisler 9). Eisler says that we might
believe this thesis because of the archaeological evidence
that supports it: "finds of female figurines and other
archeological records attesting to a gynocentric (or
Goddess-based) religion in Neolithic times are so numerous
that just cataloging them would fill several volumes"
(Eisler 9). Other evidence, such as changes in the ways in
which archaeological investigation proceeds, also support
these claims of the early predominance of the Goddess and
her subsequent demise. The very knowledge of these cultures
was, she suggests, somehow threatening. Eisler says that
germinal archaeological and anthropological evidence may
have been squelched because
this new knowledge about the original direction of our
cultural evolution casts such a different light on our
past--and our potential future--that it is so difficult for
us to deal with. And because it represents such a threat to
the prevailing system, there are massive efforts to
suppress it. (Eisler 76)
Yet
it is not hidden.
Scholars are aware of Pynchon's knowledge of the work of
Robert Graves, particularly his book
The White Goddess.
In her book,
Thomas Pynchon,
Professor Judith Chambers notes Pynchon's indebtedness to
Graves, notably in his central concerns: gynocentric
cultures and their repression, and the Goddess, with her
fate at the hands of a patriarchal culture devoted to
destruction, a destruction ironically "built" upon the
manipulation of language (interesting that later this
surfaces in
Vineland,
Sasha noticing that "heartfelt language gets pounded flat")
(Pynchon 81). Chambers elaborates on Graves' contribution
to Pynchon, underscoring this linguistic element of change:
Pynchon uses Graves's concept of the White Goddess--her
ancient matriarchal culture and its "poetic faculty"--to
symbolize the paradoxical, indeterminate nature of truth
and the humanity that attends it, both of which have been
lost to logic, absolutes, and dreams of control. (Chambers
46)
And
while Chambers asserts that "the loss of the poetic faculty
concerns far more than language," they (the "far more",
presumably reality, and language) are intricately bound,
one hardly more real than the other in Pynchon's (or
rather, Fausto's) economy. One cannot "build" without
proper materials: a stone, a page...
The ancient "builders", aware of the materials available,
were mythmakers. Chambers, Graves, and others look to the
worship of Apollo as symbolic of cultural transformation
(Chambers 46). Riane Eisler is among these others. She
notes the Greek
Oresteia
as "one of our most famous and frequently performed Greek
dramas" and goes on to problematize why this is so (Eisler
78). Relevant to the claims of both Chambers and, earlier,
Graves, she notes the trial of Orestes (for the murder of
his mother), where "the god Apollo explains that children
are not related to their mothers," proposing that "the
mother is no parent of that which is called her child."
Upon this decree, Athene springs, full-grown, from the head
of her father (who is, of course, Zeus). Orestes is
thereupon divorced from his crime--the murder of his mother
(Eisler 78).
Eisler questions the motivation that encourages such a
break between mother and child; or rather, she questions
Aeschylus for developing the entire trilogy around such a
theme. Finally, she wonders about a culture that finds such
a drama appropriate for all to see, "all the people of
Athens, including even women and slaves" and why it is
shown "on many important ceremonial occasions" (Eisler 79).
She notes that the traditional scholarly explanation favors
an intention that was to "explain the origins of the
Greek
Areopagus,
or court of homicide." But, she says,
as the British sociologist Joan Rockwell points out, such
an interpretation is nonsensical. It does not even touch
upon the central question of why this case, claimed to be
the very first ever tried by a Greek court of homicide, is
the killing of a mother by her own son. Nor does it address
the central question of how, in what is supposedly a "moral
lesson" in support of state-administered justice, a son
could be acquitted for the premeditated, cold-blooded
revenge murder of his mother--and then on the patently
preposterous ground that he was not related to her. (Eisler
79)
Eisler
traces the trilogy in detail. In short: the first
play,
Agamemnon,
features queen Clytemnestra murdering her husband to avenge
the death of her daughter,
Iphigenia,
who was sent to marry Achilles, but was actually more of a
talisman, a sacrifice to provide fair winds for the fleet.
In the second,
The Libation-bearers,
Orestes murders his mother, Clytemnestra, thereby avenging
the murder/death of his father. In the third, the
Eumenides,
the trial of Orestes takes place at the temple of Apollo at
Delphi. The goddess Athene presides over the jury of select
Athenians, who are ultimately divided. Athene decides
Orestes is to be acquitted "on the grounds that he has not
shed kindred blood" (Eisler 79-80). This is notable as a
cultural shift from matrilinear to patrilinear norms. For
in
Agamemnon
Clytemnestra, as matriarch, is just in punishing the crime.
In the Libation-bearers, the shift is obvious,
mother-murder the central theme (paving the way for the new
male order). And finally, in the
Eumenides,
Eisler notes that "with Athene, as both the direct
descendant of the Goddess and the patron deity of the city
of Athens, declaring for male supremacy, the shift to male
dominance must be accepted by every Athenian" (Eisler 80).
Furthermore, as Rockwell suggests, the work is "a masterful
bit of cultural diplomacy; it is very important in an
institutional shift that a leading figure of the defeated
party is seen to accept the new power" (Eisler 80). And so,
we come to
V.
Perhaps something of the association (with Graves, with
knowledge of the "shift") informs
V.
Perhaps this contributes to the compelling nature of
Pynchon's work altogether. The very loud "hint" of
conspiracy that colors the accusations of contemporary
revisionist practices is most likely what compels us, as
readers, to study, as well as to read Pynchon.
V.
does seem associated with this phenomena, and although
perhaps an elevated form, it does ring of conspiracy
theory, that which makes the likes of Clancy and Grisham so
popular. But the conspiracy Pynchon reveals is far more
comprehensive than those explored by the grocery story
novelists. And Pynchon is rarely formulaic, such as are
many of our popular authors. And the conspiracy he reveals,
while fictional, is historically based. Far more than a
contemporary iteration of the
Oresteia,
V.
is a story of creation. It is a story of both "The Birth of
Venus" and the birth of God, a male God. Thomas Pynchon
seems to utilize findings and claims of contemporary
archaeologists, anthropologists and historians as evidence
of the conspiracy that is revealed (cleverly and even
covertly?) in his novel
V.
In his use of the letter V. (with the notable period) as a
symbol of this long lost woman, and in his use of male
narrators throughout, we can see how contemporary theories
on Goddess-worshipping societies may inform Pynchon's work.
In terms of the symbol "V", we can turn, like Eisler,
Streep, and others to University of California
archaeologist Marija Gimbutas and the chronicles of her
field work, that which became the basis for much
contemporary theories on early civilizations that
worshipped female deities. Gimbutas, whose field work and
subsequent study "catalogs and analyzes hundreds of
archaeological finds" introduces a "recognition of the
collective identity and achievement of the different
cultural groups in Neolithic-Chalcolithic southeastern
Europe" in her "ground-breaking" work
The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe
(Eisler 12). Gimbutas says that early Goddess-worshipping
societies utilized the symbol "V" quite frequently, both in
its rudimentary script and as a symbolic decoration for the
many female figurines they crafted. Gimbutas suggests that
"the V . . . is one of the most frequently encountered
marks on figurines and other cult objects" (Eisler 72).
Eisler says that Gimbutas "hypothesizes that V glyphs may
have been a way of representing the Goddess in her epiphany
of the bird, and that objects so marked were originally
dedicated to her cult" (Eisler 72). Furthermore, Gimbutas
observes that "when later signs are inscribed in rows, . .
. the repetitive clusters of V's . . . may have represented
vows, prayers, or assignments of gifts to the Goddess"
(Eisler 72-3).
The cultural work of Eisler, Gimbutas, and others seeks to
challenge traditional notions of history and early
civilizations. They seem to believe that there may be some
hope for future civilizations, if they can only convince
readers of the possibility of harmony between the genders
and the need to reconceptualize notions of dominance and
submission. Pynchon, on the other hand, seems impressed by
history in terms of a more fatalistic vision of power. For
Pynchon, who demonstrates awareness of earlier, more
life-affirming societal structures, "It is too late"
(Pynchon;
Gravity's Rainbow
3). Examining what contemporary scholars are revealing,
alongside the "facts" contained in historical record,
Pynchon's
V.
is a novel that seems invested with awareness of the great
plot of male historians and archaeologists, the plot to
destroy the Goddess in all of her manifestations. This
becomes the plot to destroy V.
While Stencil engages in a life-long search for V., hoping
to uncover something of his past, something of his
heritage, something good, we read of the perpetual
destruction of Her. Unaware that this is happening, readers
can write of the horrific degradation of women in the novel
as a sign of the times, putting it all down to general
sexist behavior--nothing new, very modern, etc. But like
Stencil, it passes the reader by, so accustomed are we to
this treatment of women in our culture. We too hope to
find, along with Stencil, the answer to his mystery. And we
come to the "confessions" (signifying answers) of Fausto
Majistral.
The anxious reader approaches Fausto's confessions
anticipating revelation; we will discover the mystery of
V., who she is, what she is, where she came from, what
happened to her, etc. But when the confessions are read,
the reader leaves with only a vague impression of truth, as
if the chronicle has left something out, something
necessary, some vital knowledge that will validate the
document as truthful, and verify that we, both the reader
and Stencil, understand. Suspicion lingers. Stencil "would
have liked to go on believing that the death and V. had
been separate for his father," that Sidney Stencil had in
no way participated in the death, and that V. was somehow a
different story altogether, one far less ambiguously
told--it is a vague and overtly subjective chronicle
(Pynchon;
V.
345). Something of the power of V. cuts through this male
narrative, and Stencil remains curiously unsatisfied,
wondering if--possibly doubting that--"his coincidence" had
happened, effectively signifying the end of his search
(Pynchon;
V.
345).
What Stencil encounters is not the end of his search. This
kind of narrative telling would play into the hands of
history, into Fausto's plans, confirming his document as
one that honestly puts forth the procession of events,
events with a strange religiosity about them, a certain
prayerful remembrance of the horrific facts that
contributed to the destruction of a mysterious, now
past-tense "evil" (which erects a new God, able, as he is,
to erase evil with the stroke of a pen). The dismemberment
of the Bad Priest, a seemingly inevitable violence carried
out by the compelling instincts of children who supposedly
know right from wrong, allegedly represents a moment in
time when Fausto recognizes his own indifference to
suffering. For the sake of the document, Fausto wonders
"why did he not stop the children: or lift the beam?"
(Pynchon;
V.
345). Yet ultimately, by his own hand, we read the document
to suggest that his wrongdoing is pardonable, nay, that it
is not even wrong. This "historical" narrative "fact"
raises many questions, and leads to the same kind of
Formally Undecidable Propositions that encouraged Godel's
1931 papers suggesting the perpetual indeterminacy of rigid
systems (Hayles 33). It sets up the same kind of paradox
Hayden White argues when he suggests "that the conviction
that one can make sense of history stands on the same level
of epistemic plausibility as the conviction that it makes
no sense whatsoever" (White in Holton 324). Additionally,
it points to what Robert Holton sees as one of Pynchon's
main concerns: "his radical questioning of power, politics,
historical events, and [the] philosophy of history" (Holton
324). Fausto's hasty self-forgiveness also recalls the
trial of Orestes and the unforgivable pardon, contributing
to the expression of Pynchon's concern for the subjective
nature of historical tracts. For if the Bad Priest is, as
Chambers suggests, and I believe, a manifestation of V.,
then Her "children" murder her and Fausto is an accomplice
in his unwillingness to intercede (and/or in his compulsion
to fabricate the "story"). Yet whereas Orestes is absolved
by the goddess Athene, here Fausto absolves himself. As in
the
Eumenides,
notions of male supremacy are inscribed by those who intend
to rule--men themselves; be they human or ethereal, they
are male in their manifestation. Fausto knows they are
human. He says that: first, he had "no further need of
God," and second, that he had found himself "guilty of
murder: a sin of omission if you will." Fausto III "will
answer to no tribunal but God. And God at this moment is
far away" (Pynchon;
V.
345). In fact, God is his creation, just as are his
"confessions." He "pardons" himself. And so his "guilty"
verdict is not only veiled, but also meaningless.
The God that Fausto has "no further need of" is the same
God he finds himself in service to. Fausto is part of "an
aristocracy" of "builders", builders of history. In writing
his confessions, he helps to erect notions of a God
in-the-making, a God constructed through historical record,
a male God erected by men.
In the beginning of the confessions, we read of Fausto's
belief concerning the nature of history. He explains that
"the facts are history, and only men have histories"
(Pynchon;
V.
305). He writes in a room, described in intricate detail.
Why? Because the room is historically relevant. Why?
Because Fausto is defined relative to the room. He is "an
occupant of the room" (Pynchon;
V.
305). This place in time and space represents the birth of
God. Affecting the tone of a priest recalling the sermon on
the mount, Fausto suggests that the room,
as the physical being-there of a bed or horizontal plane
determines what we call love; as a high place must exist
before God's word can come to a flock and any sort of
religion begin; so must there be a room, sealed against the
present, before we can make any attempt to deal with the
past. (Pynchon;
V.
305)
The
room becomes the place at which Fausto's "truth" is
established. The writing of the confessions represents the
death of the earth Goddess V., and the birth of the male
sky God. This God is of the sky and therefore "far away",
unlike the very near presence of the earth Goddess V.
worshipped in Malta, a place to which everything seems to
turn; a place where the dismemberment of the Bad Priest is
irrelevant; a place where that one, single iteration of the
existence of V. is just a moment and an event in time that
cannot dilute the strength of Her eternal presence.
Fausto's God is a construction, written into existence by
men who can no longer bear their own understanding of the
power of V. The vitality of life, exemplified in the female
deity, is "destroyed" by that which cannot produce anything
animated. Male discovery is limited to the production of
the inanimate, either in the form of a tangible product
like a painting, all the way to the extremity of
death--producing a corpse by the will of his own hand. Both
are inanimate. Profane in the fifties, Botticelli in the
Fifteenth century, and all the Schoenmaker's throughout
time: all work to transform V. into something he can
control, giving him the power of creation, that which was
once Her exclusive domain. Fausto's confessions can then be
read as a true confession--an admission of knowledge
concerning this male jealousy and its manifestations. But
this confession is veiled by the linguistic, explained in
terms of the religion of an allegedly omnipotent male God.
Because only a linguistic construction, this God is a
male-generated fiction, as close to something animated as
he can come. And in the creation of this fiction, he must
destroy the life force generated by V.; today, yesterday,
tomorrow . . . he must k ill. He must colonize and convert.
He must preach to all the nations of the power of his God.
He must displace the life force with his own destructive
fictional God. And so the confessions must be "sincere",
powerful, resembling a heartfelt admission of wrongdoing.
It is the rhetoric of organized religion. It runs
throughout the confessions. Its truth runs throughout time.
But through history it is validated, justified as a
Christian imperative--empire in the name of God--the
colonization of Africa, which is really the truth of
Vheissu--recognition of the truth about male "discovery",
that it can only end in death. And thus the eternal pursuit
of V. And the eternal hatred toward Her, especially toward
her powers of animation.
Fausto II expresses a strange pride in the work of
"building." He writes, "for no apparent reason," of both
the union with Malta and with his male sky gods. This is
the shift Eisler and others note. This is the work of
transformation, from worship of the Goddess and
life-generating symbols, to praise for the male sky gods
that encourage and endorse male power and supremacy. Fausto
II suggests that "History's serpent is one; what matter
where on her body we lie," implying that the narrative
chronology of history is uniformly accepted, and so to
intervene and create a new version can be accomplished
anywhere, anytime. The double meaning of "lie" here
validates this notion, "lie" suggesting either the falsity
of the narrative, or the act of laying upon--raping and
exploiting in the name of male dominance, an idea that
finds expression throughout the novel (Pynchon;
V.
310). Interestingly, along with the bird Goddess,
symbolized by the V sign noted by Gimbutas, representations
of the snake Goddess are prominent among the figurines
found throughout central Europe, adding significance to the
word "lie" in this context. To lay upon (or about)
"history's serpent" is representative of the linguistic
nature of the cultural transformation noted by Eisler,
Stone, Gimbutas, Graves, and others. And Fausto's
confessions are rich with these lies, manipulations of
history and myth that ultimately favor male hegemony. Here,
a recounting of ritual and habit conjoin with suggestions
of a new God or gods to be praised:
. . . in feast and combat and mourning we are Malta, one,
pure and a motley of races at once; no time has passed
since we lived in caves, grappled with fish at the reedy
shore, buried our dead with a song, with red-ochre and
pulled up our dolmens, temples and menhirs and standing
stones to the glory of some indeterminate god or gods, rose
toward the light of andante of singing, lived our lives
through circling centuries of rape, looting, invasion,
still one; one in the dark ravines, one in this
God-favoured plot of sweet Mediterranean earth, one in
whatever temple or sewer or catacomb's darkness is ours, by
fate or historical writhings or still by the will of God.
(Pynchon;
V.
310-11)
Evoking
images and symbols often associated with Goddess worship,
Fausto II prays to his newly-conceived male gods, who are
accommodated by the earlier worshippers, those that were
busy pulling up temples and making way for "the glory of
some indeterminate god or gods . . ." Like the
Oresteia,
which, as sociologist Joan Rockwell has noted, features "a
masterful bit of cultural diplomacy" by depicting "a
leading figure of the defeated party [who] is seen to
accept the new power," Fausto's confessions feature a
similar bit of "cultural diplomacy" (Eisler 80). Not only
do the earlier Goddess-worshipping people work to make way
for the as yet "indeterminate" gods, but they are depicted
as enmeshing themselves into the new order with little
dispute. The gods that Fausto describes are empowered by
association with the once powerful Goddess figure
worshipped in Malta. The associations are clear and simple:
the use of red-ochre was common among Goddess-worshipping
cultures, the color red associated with life -affirmation
as it is thought to represent the blood of both
menstruation and of birth, exclusive domains of the female,
both symbolically linked to the Goddess (Streep 124). The
standing stones, also thought to be associated with Goddess
worship, are evoked here. The most famous--the stones at
Stonehenge--are arranged in an orientation calculated to
coincide with the cycles of the moon, twenty-eight days,
matching the female cycle of menstruation, that which is
necessary if life is to proceed. This general lore is not
surprising, nor is it new. Others note that the placement
of the stones is, although only speculative, suggestive of
the association between Goddess worship and the enormous
structures. Peg Streep, in her Sanctuaries of the Goddess,
says that "the act of building the sacred precinct itself
takes on the form of ritual" and that "the immensity of
human effort reflects the belief underlying rite" (Streep
109). Considering the placement of the stones and their
orientation, the notion of ritual here is noteworthy.
Gimbutas' work reveals much of the Goddess at these sites.
For at Stonehenge, as well as at other sites, many symbols
of the Goddess are inscribed:
chevrons . . , lozenges, . . . triangles, . . . zigzags,
multiple arcs, and cupmarks; all are interpreted as signs
of the Goddess (Streep 109-110).
The
menhirs, "from the Welsh
maen
for "stone" and
hir
for "long", are everywhere in Malta, and they also "dot the
British Isles" (Streep 106).
Based upon her studies of Gimbutas and others, Peg Streep
suggests that these great stones are symbolic of permanence
that, early in human history, came to stand for the eternal
and the divine. Its massiveness could protect the dead and
stand as a bulwark against transience;
[their] seeming imperviousness to the elements made . . .
[them] . . . symbol(s) of the imperishable. (Streep 105)
Streep
adds that an offspring of the earth, of the Goddess' body,
stone took on some of her supernatural aspects, magical and
mysterious. Long after the ancient rites had been
forgotten, the power of the stones remained intact in
folklore and legend; as recently as the early years of this
century, Briton couples hoping to conceive went to the
menhirs for aid. (Streep 105)
As with the red-ochre, Fausto transforms the stones, from
sacred signs of the Goddess into symbols that link
humankind with a notion of submission to a male god or
gods, those that are mentioned throughout the confessions.
These bold strokes are, in their transitional nature,
nearly unseen. Vaguely resembling the old order, they usher
in the new. The latter Fausto comments of Fausto II that
Fausto II was a young man in retreat. It's seen not only in
his fascination for the conceptual--even in the midst of
the ongoing, vast--but somehow boring--destruction of an
island; but also in his relationship with your mother.
(Pynchon;
V.
311)
Interesting that Fausto II's "retreat" coincided with the
"destruction of an island" AND "his relationship with your
mother." The island is, of course, Malta, and the
destruction takes place in the shift from Goddess worship
and life-affirming ritual to "rape, looting, [and]
invasion" (Pynchon;
V.
311). It is the same shift being pursued by contemporary
scholars who are working to uncover the notion that
male-dominated fields of history and archaeology have
distorted the facts in order to suggest and maintain the
cultural belief in and acceptance of male-dominance. It is
the truth of Vheissu, the plan to steal Botticelli's
Venus--indeed,
the dream of making love to Her. It is the exploitation of
the land and the manipulation of a people. It is replacing
the human with the robotic. It is making history a lie. It
is the destruction of all that is life-affirming and
honest. It is the destruction of V., earth Goddess, used
and exploited by men who utilize her very power to persuade
a people to worship the more aggressive, violent,
frightening, male sky God. It began long ago. Its chronicle
is only recently being revealed.
Stencil searches. And what he finds is that all searches
eventually lead to Malta, to V., to knowledge of the
cover-up. Based upon his search, we get our "Stencilized"
rendition of history, a story veiled in mystery, yet
threatening to reveal something of the truth; a story
narrated not in a chronological, orderly fashion,
(including a description of the site of the narrator) but
one that jumps from one century to the next with little
concern for the reader's sense of perception. The style
mirrors the arrow of time that neither points clearly in
one direction or another. It mirrors the concept of space,
infinite yet bound by the imposition of our ability to
erect boundaries. It mirrors "reality" in these respects,
but most decidedly in it's pronounced rejection of
formality. Stencil's narration is haphazard, the syntax
unsure. Until the Epilogue. Finally, in the Epilogue, we
read a prose "Stencilized" in a new way, a prose that seems
informed by some epiphany that we have missed. Stencil has
see n where the story ends. V . . . period. And whether or
not Stencil expresses awareness of the end of an era, the
discovery of a fossil, the introduction to a legend (ala
Dracula and his Renfield/Victoria and Godolphin), or the
overwhelming acknowledgement of the indestructibility of
any "V" in any "period," he must, almost by definition as
part of the "aristocracy of builders," create a prose
rendition of this saga in the only way he knows--in a
"Stencilized" version very similar to historical narrative.
In this manner he cannot, even with a great desire to break
tradition, but cast it as anything other than an
observation, a historical sidebar that readers can only
come to, in this case, as one approaches "a novel." It is a
fiction--despite his enlightenment--just as the history
that attends his revelation. With this grim fact, perhaps
suspiciously even, he leaves the reader with a hint of
ambiguity. Fleeing Malta, he offers no direct rationale for
his sense of horror. In this, Stencil exits the text
without proclamation, leaving the reader to create anything
remotely definitive in terms of meaning as the most he can
possibly do.
WORKS CITED
Chambers, Judith.
Thomas Pynchon.
New York: Twayne Publishers, 1992.
Eisler,
Riane.
The Chalice and the Blade.
San Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1988.
Gimbutas,
Marija.
The Goddesses and Gods of Old
Europe.
Holton,
Robert. "In
the Rathouse of History with Thomas Pynchon: Rereading
V."
---
Pynchon, Thomas.
V.
New York: Harper & Row, 1961.
Pynchon,
Thomas.
Vineland
Stone,
Merlin.
When God Was A Woman.
New York: Barnes and Noble, 1976.
Streep,
Peg.
Sanctuaries of the Goddess.
New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1994