"V." by Thomas Pynchon    So, being a post-modern writer, Pynchon is understandably inaccessible and unfriendly. Accordingly, his work is filled with non-linear storylines, unannounced (and often unwarranted) perspective shifts, and filled to the brim with obfuscations and vagaries. V. is neither his most recent book, nor his most critically acclaimed-cum-commercially successful. But to me it does stand as the best example of Pynchon’s unique style and exemplary of his Academic’s sense of history and the agoraphobic’s obsessive attention to minuscule fact and detail.     The plot of the book itself follows the trail of the titular V; a mysterious woman shrouded in casual mystery. V. centers around two major characters, Stencil, a wanderer-adventurer in the British Foreign Office, and Profane, a self-titled schlemiel of the first order. Within these two characters’ lives a Gordian knot of flashbacks and anti-humanist diatribes are contained. The story quickly shifts from German South Africa to Florence to the Sewers of NYC.     Despite the perceived heavy-handed intellectual and elitist bent in Pynchon’s work, I actually feel he’s quite accessible to the casual reader – each locale carries it’s own vernacular and history, with the reader learning just as much about the location as the characters. But I cannot say you won’t be often confused, I cannot say that. You will, quite often in fact.