PYNCHON, Thomas. V. London: Jonathan Cape. 1963.
8vo. Original black cloth lettered in silver to the spine, in the neatly price-clipped dustwrapper designed by Leigh Hunt; pp. 492, [2]; pink top-stain faded, light bump to lower outer corner of rear panel, wrapper with a little wear to extremities and very light tidemark to lower edge; a sharp near fine copy in like wrapper.
An attractive first UK edition, first printing of Pynchon's richly inventive debut novel.
Pynchon’s first novel follows Benny Profane, a discharged U.S. Navy sailor, as he drifts among the bohemian artists of the “Whole Sick Crew” in postwar New York. Meanwhile, Herbert Stencil pursues the elusive woman known only as “V.” her existence reconstructed from fragments in his father’s journals. Spanning six decades, multiple continents, combining comedy, sadness and much else, the novel’s extraordinary energy and invention announced Pynchon as a fresh voice and major force in postwar American fiction.
SKU: 2123726