V.

Three are the protagonists of this strange and fantastical adventure: Herbert Stencil, who is searching for something he believes he has lost; Benny Profane, who, having never had anything to lose, has never searched for anything; and V., an enigmatic woman who could be a young woman deflowered in Cairo, a German dancer in southwest Africa, or a lesbian in Paris. But why is Stencil so determined to investigate V.'s true identity? The answer perhaps lies as much in Stencil's persistent idea that "behind V., and in V., there is much more than anything we have ever dreamed of" as in this reflection by Pynchon himself: "What open thighs are to the libertine, what the flight of migratory birds is to the ornithologist, what pliers are to the tailor, that is what the letter V is to young Stencil."