Pynchon's Endings

Abstract

We don't know much about Thomas Pynchon. We don't know how he writes. We don't know what he has in mind. We do know that he studied science as well as English at Cornell, that he worked for Boeing before starting to write full time, that physicists and mathematicians have verified the accuracy of his complex scientific allusions, and that he has written three novels. more we learn about modern physics, the better we understand Pynchon's novels-not only thematically but structurally as well. I would like to focus on the structures. I will not attempt to explain them or reduce them by application of scientific theory. I will simply start with the assumption that Pynchon has a thorough understanding of and feel for both physics and literature. And with this assumption in mind, I will examine, as empirically as possible, the endings of his three novels. My conclusions, I hope, will lead beyond Pynchon's novels to a broader understanding of modern and post-modern fiction. Where we going? asks Benny Profane in the beginning of V. The way we're heading, says Pig Bodine. Move your ass (8).1 And we never know where we're heading except that it's the way we're going. We follow the capricious string of Benny's yo-yo as he shuttles back and forth from Times Square to Grand Central Station, from Rachel Owlglass to Paola Maijstral, as he hunts blind albino alligators in the New York sewers and finally travels to Malta. We follow the wild trajectories of Benny's many acquaintances among the whole sick crew. And we follow Herbert Stencil as he searches after Victoria Wren, Vera Meroving, Veronica Manganese-or V., a woman whose name and shape are continually transformed. But in the end the pattern becomes clear. For we discover that the novel has been governed by an omniscient narrator through a series of simple flashbacks, complex rear projections, and-principally-the intercutting of intricate plot lines. And he ties up all the loose ends in the epilogue, where he tells us what Stencil started out to search for but would never find-the secret of his father's death.