V: on hold

The real world has me in its claws but I promise not to let this become a habit. Granted, a mole can't do much against the eagle attached to the claws except become a very unpleasant meal. All this really proves is that this metaphor has limits. The real world has me surrounded but the Law of Cowboy Films says that the fewer the men, the craftier they have to be to survive. In this case, I intend to go down in a blaze of words and few inappropriate pranks.

For instance, is it safe to put a goldfish in a bowl in the fridge for long enough for someone to find it?

I haven't abandoned words in this stake-out - that would be just ridiculous. At the moment, all I really have brain real estate for is crosswords. Yep. You, stop sniggering. Quit - lay off - end - halt - cease - terminate - desist from snickering - simpering - sneering - laughing.

Really, I rarely finish a crossword without cheating: using dictionaries, thesauruses, and an app that allows you to match words and reveal blocks. But I can live with this because I get bored when I reach an impasse and rules are flexible.

Before my two-week hiatus from blogging, I was still ploughing my way through V and 1Q84. Ok, don't look at me like that - that's not exactly true because the latter has been kicked under my bed, behind my hairdryer. I had reached the point where one character's married girlfriend is pregnant and the other is recovering (in uncomfortable detail) from a night of debauchery she doesn't remember. I stepped on it as I got up out of bed and slipped.

V is on my Kindle, which is less slippery. However, it does not have a solution to being distracted. Every time I pick it up to read it, I have to flip back to find something I recognise. The novel is made up of stories that branch off from the main story. These branches usually handstand back in time, pulling certain characters with it. The point being that you have to pay attention otherwise you may find yourself unwittingly a soldier without a past on Namibia's Skeleton Coast.

The chapter set in Namibia is gruelling, as is another set close by, in an estate that houses one continuous party a la The Great Gatsby. Not only do events depict the brutal violations of human rights that were colonialism, but the protagonists experience a flux of emotions, from bravery to insipidness, activism to self-preservation, care to the need for care.

The main story is set in post-World War II America and follows an ex-naval officer. Although Wikipedia says he was discharged, I remember vividly that he went AWOL, although perhaps this insert is the reverse of my loss of memory. He is part of the Whole Sick Crew, an incestuous bunch of naval officers and some women. He describes himself as the most popular man among the women but also the most virginal, even though he and Rachel have something destructive going on.

Now we reach My Point - congratulations, pick up 50 000 Air Miles when next you visit your local bookshop.

V reminds me of Cloud Atlas, but only in the sense that Mercury and Jupiter orbit the same star. Cloud Atlas depicts several stories set in several genres, with no main narrative except that forced on it by the movie. Instead, it is the themes that bind them - themes that range from esoteric (producers of the movie) to literary and semiotic (me).

Having said this, certain elements recur, just as they occur in other novels written by the same author. Mostly, these elements are characters. They recur as actual characters, or just references or blurry pasts.

In V, the stories are more interbred, with a single protagonist, and more consistent voice and genre. I am twisting myself into contradictions now, which is fitting, because the author also experiments with genre, particularly historical drama. His prose is consistently highbrow, even when he is slinging slang between the Sick Crew and rival gangs.

Am I recommending fans of Cloud Atlas to read V? a) I can't because I haven't finished and who knows what asteroid could be hiding in the last few pages. b) These are two different but similar books, and it depends on whether you enjoyed the games the first played with genre (different) or that they played games with genre (similar).

Don't quote me on it. My opinion can only be trustworthy once I have finished the book and I haven't. I also cannot promise to finish anytime soon, since isolated synonyms and antonyms comprise the sum total of my attention right now, as I figurre out how to twist myself to bite the claws that hold me, or crawl out of the frontier cottage I am crouched in, in the hopes that my attackers will wait there until their toes chafe.

V & 1Q84

They have more in common than isolated consonants from the second half of the alphabet (that would be V and Q for those to lazy to glance at the heading and work it out). This is not beginning well. Which is another thing these books have in common. More accurately, they (the beginnings of these two books - and even this post) are awkward.

I felt the introduction should end awkwardly, too. Yes, I did that on purpose. Not because I had no idea where to go from there.

We will get back to the awkwardness shortly, don't worry. I want to tell you about something else they have in common, which is the real reason for this post of paragraphs that end like cliffs. Me.

As you should know (you religious reader of this irreverent blog), I am reading 1Q84, but in tiny portions like baby quiches and cucumber fingers stolen from trays carried by waiters around the room. After more weeks than I have limbs, I have only just reached page 209. Of 1 300 and something. And three parts. In between I have been reading 'sorbet' reads: frivolous, with happy(ish) endings and only light intellectualism.

So why then I should read V by Thomas Pynchon is a mystery. You know those competitions where marketers ask us to test the new flavour of chips or yoghurt or fizzy drink, and name it - which is so dubious because, if they can't figure it out, there has to be an experimental and perhaps accidental mouthful of preservatives and flavourants in there? This is that kind of mystery.

Let's retrace our steps back to the awkward introduction (not because we've lost our way. No. Definitely not).

Ulysses. Yet another thing these books have in common. If Terry Pratchett is prince of light reads, Murakami is prince of opaque Literature. James Joyce is king. The plot of a Murakami novel cannot be summarised without sounding like a Philip K Dick plot (which is really the snail trail of his brainwaves on acid).

You don't believe me? The first protagonist is a gym trainer slash assassin, who murders wife-beating politicians with a tiny ice pick. The second protagonist is a language tutor who discards his ethics to rewrite a short story so that the author can win a prize. She is a dyslexic, potentially emotionally disturbed young woman, who cannot use punctuation in speech. She also believes in 'Little People'.

Oh and there is some kind of space-time warp where events impose themselves in hindsight like a waiter with a tray of baby quiches into your conversation.

V is a colleague of said waiter, except he apologises and then explains what is on the tray under your nose. In other words, the characters and even the narrator steer you toward a premeditated snail trail of thought. The narrator outlines the potential paths you can follow and the exits you can choose, should you choose to follow and exit.

Despite the comparative doggedness of V's themes, the language of the first limbs-worth of chapters reminded me of Joyce. Sentences end abruptly, words leapfrog each other and dialogue is sometimes invisible.

The book begins by following a drifter who is AWOL from the navy. His name is Profane. He drifts for a while, building roads, until drifting back to his former cabinmates, all of whom are um choice characters. The moral epitome of the sort of person who doesn't read. Including the women. The language and even the characters quickly become your calendar - the setting for the memory of these days and weeks.

Despite this, I was irritated by how little of the chapters I understood. Until the chapter in which Profane signed up to hunt and cull alligators in the sewers. Here I finally understood Profane - divorced from most of the cabinmates I judge so pretentiously.

Confession (don't get excited; this is only a mushroom of a confession): My Kindle copy of V is not exactly legal. By which I mean it is entirely illegal. I rarely read free books unless they are loaded on my library card (if you happen to find it) or loaned from a friend. And by rarely, I mean never. I am setting a precedent for when I am an author and need income to pay for food.

As you don't know, because you never do such things, pirated copies are often of bad quality. This may explain the missing articles, prepositions and conunctions. And the misspellings of 'it' and 'and'. The BA student will loftily proclaim that this is a practical metaphor for the death of the author. But no. My guess is that either this is an edited but unproofread manuscript or an OCRed version of the Kindle version.

Perhaps the alligators never waddle through the original version.

Now, this is awkward.

Another confession (a toddler of a mushroom): The two books have less in common than I have suggested. Not only because my copy of 1Q84 is legal. V plays with language and ideas, but you can still read it for hours on end without remembering you haven't had a cup of coffee yet.

1Q84 is why you need coffee.

From these last two posts, you might think I do not like 1Q84. I do. (Confession: I am not sure whether I do or don't.) But, true to form, it is opaque, even opaquely opaque.

PS. This conclusion is intentionally awkward.