V《V》 英文版.docVIP

V.《V》 ? Thomas Pynchon was born in 1937 and attended Cornell University, where he published his first story, Mortality and Mercy in Vienna, in Epoch. Soon after leaving Cornell, he published three short stories - Under the Rose, in Noble Savage #3; Entropy, in The Kenyan Review; and Low-Lands, in New World Writing #16 - which earned him an immediate reputation among the narrow but intense circle of short-story readers. His novel V. won the Faulkner Prize as the best first novel of 1963. A second novel, The Crying of Lot 49, was published in 1966. Since then he has published The Secret Investigation in The Saturday Evening Post, and an essay on Los Angeles in The New York Times Magazine. In these few published works, Pynchon has earned a widespread and even fanatic acclaim, and remains a uniquely forceful figure on the American literary horizon: Pynchon surely ranks as the most intelligent, most audacious and most accomplished American novelist writing today. - The Nation Chapter One In which Benny Profane, a schlemihl and human yo-yo, gets to an apocheir ? Christmas Eve, 1955, Benny Profane, wearing black levis, suede jacket, sneakers and big cowboy hat, happened to pass through Norfolk, Virginia. Given to sentimental impulses, he thought hed look in on the Sailors Grave, his old tin cans tavern on East Main Street. He got there by way of the Arcade, at the East Main end of which sat an old street singer with a guitar and an empty Sterno can for donations. Out in the street a chief yeoman was trying to urinate in the gas tank of a 54 Packard Patrician and five or six seamen apprentice were standing around giving encouragement. The old man was singing, in a fine, firm baritone: ? Every night is Christmas Eve on old East Main, Sailors and their sweethearts all agree. Neon signs of red and green Shine upon the friendly scene, Welcoming you in from off the sea. Santas bag is filled with all your dreams come true: Nickel beer