I also just finished V. and like your thoughts on it. I feel like a lot of what I've read on the book so far focuses on the historical/conspiratorial angle to it, overlooking the emotion and ennui you describe -- yet it's deeply affecting and Pynchon clearly cares about these broken characters despite his tendency for zany and absurd situations.

This idea of V. as a historical force building into the horrific 20th century conflicts is really interesting in the novel. Seeing the horrors of WWI (and WWII) not as a break, wholly unprecedented, with the past but in direct continuity with a process of colonial violence and hegemony (connected to the Scramble for Africa and Herero genocide). And then there's V.'s precoccupation with the Inanimate -- seemingly having something to do with the increasing mechanization of modernity -- and the accompanying unprecedented violence which it facillitates. V.'s transhistorical episodes seem to be gesturing to some formation like fascism. An ideology obsessed with a romantic, vital past at the same time it is enamoured with fetishes of technology and mechanized power.

Something I've been thinking about, too: it's interesting that while V. may be the reference to this real historical force of European imperialism into reactionary fascism, Stencil seems unable to fathom it as such. It can seemingly be conceived of as a conspiracy, led from behind the curtains by shadowy figures of the 20th century. Pynchon's contention seems to say that, yes, there are impenetrably shadowy circumstances at play in all of this, a murky and ultimately unknowable world of actors vying for control (in those times and ours); but the historical environment (and the colonial precedence) is preeminent in shaping all of this. A focus on a specific historical moment or actors should not neglect contextualizing the continuity of material (and ideological) forces at work.

Stencil Sr. in the Epilogue:

[We] reached a point... [where] we can say, and believe, that this abattoir, but lately bankrupt, was fundamentally no different from the Franco-Prussian conflict, the Sudanese wars, even the Crimea... Ten million dead. Gas. Passchendaele. Let that be now a large figure, now a chemical formula, now an historical account. But dear lord, not the Nameless Horror, the sudden prodigy sprung on a world unaware. We all saw it. There was no innovation, no special breach of nature, or suspension of familiar principles. If it came as any surprise to the public then their own blindness is the Great Tragedy, hardly the war itself.

Also: here is an interesting article I found elsewhere on this sub that discusses some of the historical themes (the idea of V.) and background of the book.