Gravity's Rainbow (Paperback) by Thomas Pynchon - Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

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05/16/07

Bill rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

bookshelves: novels

Read in August, 1992

recommends it for: Everyone

Advice for a first time reader of Gravity's Rainbow:

Gravity's Rainbow is a book you either love or hate, and if you hate it it's probably because you couldn't finish the damn thing. Though by no means impenetrable, the novel is daunting enough to merit a list of tips for those wishing to tackle it for the first time. Below is my advice on how new readers can get over the hump. Trust me, it's a small hump, and the masterpiece that lies on the other side is worth the effort.

...more Advice for a first time reader of Gravity's Rainbow:

Gravity's Rainbow is a book you either love or hate, and if you hate it it's probably because you couldn't finish the damn thing. Though by no means impenetrable, the novel is daunting enough to merit a list of tips for those wishing to tackle it for the first time. Below is my advice on how new readers can get over the hump. Trust me, it's a small hump, and the masterpiece that lies on the other side is worth the effort.

1. Read V first ... Pynchon's V is shorter and more accessible than Gravity's Rainbow, but addresses the same themes in a similar style. If you enjoyed V, you will have built up a reserve of goodwill for Pynchon that will carry you through the initial rough patches of Gravity's Rainbow. This advice was given to me years ago, and I'm glad I took it.

2. Accept that you won't understand everything...Don't be concerned if you can't follow the many digressions or keep track of every minor character that pops up. As with other famously difficult novels, Gravity's Rainbow's real payoff comes in the rereading, so you shouldn't feel obliged to linger over each passage until it makes sense. Pynchon isn't trying to lord it over you by writing a book this dense; it's just his way of giving you your money's worth. Just follow what you can the first time through, which fortunately is a lot.

3. Accentuate the accessible...Gravity's Rainbow's unreadability is over-hyped. Yes, there are many jarring digressions, but threading through them is a fairly conventional detective story. Sure there are lyrical passages that take off for the stratosphere, but they are grace notes in a melody of otherwise breezy narrative prose. So on your first time through, it's enough to follow the main plot (will Slothrop find the mysterious Rocket 00000?) and enjoy Pynchon's jokes, which are laugh-out-loud funny.

4. Don't give up too early...I don't want to say that Gravity's Rainbow gets off to a slow start, but it has a lot of scene-setting to do, and the engine that really drives the book along only gets revved up in part 2. Part 1 is a well-executed minor key portrait of wartime London, but part 2 is where the drugs kick in, so stick with the novel at least that far.(less)

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03/24/07

Conrad rated it:

bookshelves: fiction, masterpieces, owned, pomo

This might be my favorite novel. I read it over the course of around three months, on my fourth attempt, when I was living in Tallinn, Estonia. Something about residence in a very small European country heightens one's sense of the absurd. I would bring it to lunch at the bars where I dined and start crying into my club sandwich when the book was sad and laughing into my kebabs when it was funny (which is nearly always) and there are a lot of bartenders who probably thought I was crazy.

...more This might be my favorite novel. I read it over the course of around three months, on my fourth attempt, when I was living in Tallinn, Estonia. Something about residence in a very small European country heightens one's sense of the absurd. I would bring it to lunch at the bars where I dined and start crying into my club sandwich when the book was sad and laughing into my kebabs when it was funny (which is nearly always) and there are a lot of bartenders who probably thought I was crazy.

The first rule of Gravity's Rainbow is you do not talk about Gravity's Rainbow. Just read it and don't worry about all the things you don't get. You could spend the rest of your life in graduate school of various sorts and not be as smart as Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, so don't sweat it.

There are swaths of this book that I definitely don't get. Pointsman, the psychologist? Didn't get it. Tchitcherine? Didn't get him, as a character, didn't understand why he did what he did, almost ever. But hidden inside all the dross is literature of unparalleled terror and beauty: the chapter in the very middle of the book about Pokler and his daughter, which left me literally bawling in public, the only time I can think of I've ever done that. Oddly, the description of U-boat latrines. The dejected Slothrop wandering Germany in a pig suit. Pirate Prentice's romance. The overgrown adenoid that invades London. The dogs grown intelligent. The sad allusions to Webern's death. The notorious scat sequence that people get all worked up over. The Proverbs for Paranoids interspersed throughout ("You will not touch the Master, but you may tickle his creatures..."). Blicero's carnival of torture, better than anything Gonzalez could devise, and more honest, too.

Gravity's Rainbow is a quick guide to all the ways you could have lived your life but did not; all the injustices you have not had to face; all the ridiculous theories of the afterlife you can't bear to accept. It teaches you how to read itself. It's been copied relentlessly, by Trainspotting and Kurt Cobain and reading it means there's a certain voice that will inhabit your brain forever. It's like going on Samhain vacation from reality with nothing but a crate of bananas and a load of S&M. Caveat emptor.(less)

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02/01/08

Erik rated it:

bookshelves: pynchonhead, sci-phi--philosophy-and-science-fic

Read in October, 1989

GR fits into a sui generis genre of alternative history meets non-fiction meets musical comedy(???). The comical and unbelievable elements are all mixed up with very hard facts about 1945 and the beginning of the post-war world. I'm beginning to get a handle on it even if the many many characters and their interrelationships are still confusing to me. Some basic themes are:

1. a conspiracy theory/ alternative history about the cartels like IG Farben and American corporations reaching ...more GR fits into a sui generis genre of alternative history meets non-fiction meets musical comedy(???). The comical and unbelievable elements are all mixed up with very hard facts about 1945 and the beginning of the post-war world. I'm beginning to get a handle on it even if the many many characters and their interrelationships are still confusing to me. Some basic themes are:

1. a conspiracy theory/ alternative history about the cartels like IG Farben and American corporations reaching ultimate synergy at the end of WWII, and bringing us the modern world and a certain Richard M. Schlubb a.k.a. Nixon.

2. Slothrop, l'homme moyen, as the ultimate test consumer, in fact an actual guinea pig, the Weberian Protestant and his God-driven ethos of chosen versus preterite, re-routinized by the rising bureaucracies/conspiracies. The worshipper becomes our ideal docile consumer-worker. My pet theory is that despite all of the correlating factors mentioned by Pynchon, sexual, chemical, mystical, ancestral, these are all red herrings and the rocket strikes and his erections are both random, but matching by chance, and Slothrop is thus revealed as our ideal future test subject, the totally average oversexed, paranoid American consumer, ready for exploitation like a sacrificial Jesus figure, which in some ways he becomes.

3. A European culture of sex-death and the inorganic deeply rooted in German romanticism, and coming to full flower in the mass extermination of WWII, but in 1945 becoming less and less mystical and more embodied, routinized in the spirit of technology and commerce, as a Weberian might put it,

4. OR maybe it's all a joke! "Beschissen, Freundchen!" April Fools Day fell on Easter Sunday in 1945. No conspiracy, no nothing, just a blind instinctual careening toward death, like the mindless Rocket after Brennschluss. It was 1973 after all and the world had gone to total shit. Not that things got any better in 1980 and 2000! The joke of Gravity's Rainbow has now become the reality we live inside, with protest and conspiracy-paranoia merely factored in as another controlled and conditioned response to total domination, body and soul. On the other hand Paranoia functions in Pynchon as a kind of sinister comfort against the possibility of true chaos, a la the tychism of Henry Adams. None of his conspiracies or the would-be conspirators themselves ever really comes off as that genuine center of control. It’s a myth.

By the way, when I first read this I thought that Pynchon was a smart chap and historian but a bad writer. I now sense the use of language, even the poetry of some well crafted phrases, and the clever circular hopscotch patterning he uses in lieu of plot. There is also some halcyon writing here, as in the story of Franz Poekler. There are certain elements of 60's era "white guilt" and almost an ancestral sin Pynchon is trying to expiate (his family is quite prominent in New England history), elements which date the book and which I find jejeune, like some of the humor. But it's a classic, no doubt about it.

Next stop: Levine and Leverenz Mindful Pleasures, a superb collection of essays on V and GR. I also like Zak Smith's wildly original illustrations.(less)

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08/03/07

Aloysius rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: People with a lot of time on their hands

As I was finishing Gravity's Rainbow (took me 2 months), I started kicking around an question that hadn't necessarily occured to me when I started: Am I really intended to understand everything that's going on in this book? And if approached with the answer of "no," Gravity's Rainbow is an enjoyable experience. I started off slowly in the attempt to take in every word and comprehend everything that was going on, but as I read an reread, I realized that some of this stuff was either abo...more As I was finishing Gravity's Rainbow (took me 2 months), I started kicking around an question that hadn't necessarily occured to me when I started: Am I really intended to understand everything that's going on in this book? And if approached with the answer of "no," Gravity's Rainbow is an enjoyable experience. I started off slowly in the attempt to take in every word and comprehend everything that was going on, but as I read an reread, I realized that some of this stuff was either above my head or completely incomprehensible without a study guide or a graduate course and I should simply try to extract from the experience what I could rather than try to understand it in its entirety.

Unlike other high-brow writers such as Joyce or Nabokov, Pynchon uses a low-brow, toilet humor that lends him an immediacy and accessibility not found in Ulysses or Lolita/Ada (okay, it's arguable, but when Nabokov and Joyce make jokes...um, face it people, they're not really that funny) and the periods of lucidity and of tangible plot within Pynchon's work are intriguing. He writes with a genuine love of language and can weave a spell-binding web with poetic, descriptive lines that draws a reader in, although at times, the text is incredibly difficult (sometimes painful) to wade through.

In particular, I found the story of Pokler (one of hundreds of characters) caught my attention, for the questions it raised. Although it may only occupy 30 pages of the book, I felt an emotional attachment to this German scientist that I wasn't able to form with any of the others in the book. Basically, Pokler is an important figure in the development of the V2 rocket for the Germans, but he's not necessarily the most willing or happy of workers. His wife and daughter are in a concentration camp somewhere and his superiors hold this against him like a carrot at the end of a stick. Each year for a few days, his daughter is sent to visit him, and then taken away unexpected without the benefit of a goodbye. Of course, each year, he's not certain as to whether it is the same girl or even his daughter at all, but he pretends that she is simply because he needs that connection to survive, to keep himself sane. The story is an unsettling examination of familial relationships and the idea of identity, and its worth reading the book if only for this small section.

Of course, the rest of the novel had its moments, but none so poignant for me as that of Pokler's work on the rocket and his relationship with his daughter. There are times when a reader has to wade through examinations of corporate conspiracy ("They" being a main, unidentified force throughout) and descriptions of the science behind rocket feul, and at these times Gravity's Rainbow is completely overwhelming. But then again, perhaps Pynchon's point is to make you feel as lost in the novel as people do in modern life. Certain things don't make much sense; but hey, when you look out at the complexities of the world, is the society we live in any different?(less)

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06/14/07

Danica rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

Read in March, 2004

recommended to Danica by: Brad Neely
recommends it for: anyone who can read

i will put the review i wrote of this after reading it, that has been lying unused in my journal since then, in here, when i'm not supposed to be working out.

and here it is!!!!! i just got back from running, ha ha... perfect... this is dated summer 2004:

"As a reborn lover of books, there has been an ongoing rediscovery of "literature" and it's implications in my life recently. A precocious student early-on, I was hungry for knowledge and read everyth...more i will put the review i wrote of this after reading it, that has been lying unused in my journal since then, in here, when i'm not supposed to be working out.

and here it is!!!!! i just got back from running, ha ha... perfect... this is dated summer 2004:

"As a reborn lover of books, there has been an ongoing rediscovery of "literature" and it's implications in my life recently. A precocious student early-on, I was hungry for knowledge and read everything I could get my hands on. I have read the high-school caonon of novels and stories--sought out Fitzgerald at Kafka at the age of 12 and wowed English teachers with my deconstructions of the Bronte's and Joyce. However, although subculture was present in other aspects of my life-most notably music-for some reason I found it difficult find the intersection where the past met the future of writing.
Enter Infinite Jest. I began noticing it, massive and orange, on the shelves of friends who I looked up to most. Upon research, I discovered D.F. Wallace to be the reigning "kid genius" of popular fiction and also that none of my acquaintances had finished the book. So, I decided to finish it. It was a dizzying novel-spectacular in its breadth-highly entertaining at times and sometimes just as intensely boring. But I got through it. And I was hungry for more. A co-worker of mine told me if I wanted another big, challenging book, I should read Gravity's Rainbow. I was somewhat familiar with Pynchon at this point because of The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, and some short stories. I understood him to be a man who enjoyed confusing readers who might not be engaged enough. He enjoyed complex plots and mystifying explanations. He enjoyed the underworld and silliness. He created the unending probability of the certain impossible actually happening and absurdly named characters who actually expected it.
In The Crying of Lot 49 as well as, say, Infinite Jest, I had encountered in various passages a cockiness I was wary of. It consisted of a self-awareness with a kinship to the purposeful zaniness of things but left something lacking. I was struck by this decorative zaniness because it bore not real significance on the plot or inherent mood of the story. So far, none of Pynchon's nonsense songs had worked their magic on me. In David Foster Wallace, I forgave it by the end of the book because all of the pieces ended up fitting together, and anyone who even slightly enjoys post-modernism likes to be fucked with. That's what entertainment is all about. Still, a few months later, I wonder how much of Infinite Jest I have forgotten and whether it really matters. Do I really need to know about the extensive catalogue of tattoos of the halfway-house inmates?
For the first time, with Gravity's Rainbow, I was thoroughly delighted by these little games. More importantly, I feel that they served as a foundation for the gorgeously dark, terrifying, and whimsical world that Pynchon's characters inhabit.
The book revolves around the misadventures of Tyrone Slothrop, a United States soldier in England at the end of WWII. Inexplicably, and presumably because of a connection between his amorous conquests and the pattern of bombs falling on London, he is kidnapped and his identity is erased. He spends the remainder of the novel trying to solve the mystery of the rocket that he is connected to and searching for his freedom. He encounters spies, merchants, warriors, and magicians as he wanders the wastes of post-war Europe through the spring of 1945.
This book, to me, was all about identity. Slothrop's identity is stolen and becomes a commodity and a legend. He is inextricably connected to the tests that programmed him to interact in the way that he does with the opposite sex and, therefore, the war. The book, though whimsical, is a tragedy. Slothrop disappears in the end-unable to assert himself over the machine that has made him who he is. Of course this is a novel only-a fake conspiracy theory for the enjoyment of the authro and readers. But to me it rang true because I often question how big of a role the individual does have in society, war-torn or not. It is easy to feel a certain joyful emptiness when I am surrounded by strangers on a subway train hurling through the dark. There is another less joyful loss of identity I feel upon financial problems, or dealing with red tape of any kind for that matter. This is more of a feeling of dread of the future being nothing but owing something to someone else, of being a number, of not having a voice or face because I am less powerful than most people. I would like to hope that power is something that doesn't overlook the intelligent or self-motivated, and that each person has the right to self-determination. Slothrop, though, didn't. Or rather, his rights changed so much that the only option for him to remain in control of himself was to disappear completely.
Is a man really a man without an audience? Once he falls off the face of the earth, goes into the wild, does nothing of "importance", does he exist or is he just another animal? This is assuming that man and animal are separate to begin with, an assumption I choose to make. Men left on desert islands have told their stories, but what if Robinson Crusoe hadn't refound civilization?
It is a simple thing to think about. Really, the story of Slothrop is the story of anyone. We humans tend to bumble through our lives, sometimes blandly and innocently unaware that anything is wrong, other times struggling to piece things together. However, I feel that this book affected me so much because the lush cacophany that Pynchon surrounds Slothrop with is none of the tried-on wackiness of other post-modern fiction but rather a symbolic representation of the world as it is. I do not expect to be fighting Pavlovian octopi or sneaking around parties disguised as a pig any time in the near future, but the fact that Slothrop did shows that each human is up against the same odds. In one way this tale is all about the excesses and frivolities of a world where people have enough money or corruption to manipulate the lives of other mortals. In another sense it is about the indiviual as the person inside the body: the unexplained journey and then the disappearance at the end. For the purposes of the story slothrop may have died when he vanished, but it doesn't really matter. In giving up navigation of the powers that be, we will also die. The story will end. It may seem natural, but it is really a choice to fight, to disguise oneself, to not stop.
Pynchon succeeded in telling the story of the individual without sacrificing the absurdity that marks the vagueness of what being a human actually is. Fitzgerald may have told me, when I was 12, that we don't get what we want (and I believed for a long time after that, that tragedy was the most I could hope for in my own narrative... at least it would be interesting). I had been trying to suppress any goofiness for so long and had been looking for the remote picturesquenss of melancholy in such a way that, when I encountered the wildness of Gravity's Rainbow, I rejoiced. I saw that in art and life the unexplainable, the low, the poor and destitute and directionless,the empty ones with looming dark futures are most likely to win, or stay on the map at least, if they succumb to the amazing and question-filled moments, as Slothrop would, to a party of strangers where someone might have the answer. (less)

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10/17/07

Edward Kelly rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

Read in January, 1995

Gravity's Rainbow is first and foremost funny. I cannot imagine speaking about any of Pynchon's fiction and not laughing. Somehow he is always talked about in such a serious tone.
If you are not laughing at the bawdy humor, the slapstick, and the corny...
If you are not laughing giddily at the way the stories connect inside the novel as well as to the historical context outside the novel...
If you do not like send ups...
If you cringe at gallows humor and sexual perversity.....more Gravity's Rainbow is first and foremost funny. I cannot imagine speaking about any of Pynchon's fiction and not laughing. Somehow he is always talked about in such a serious tone.
If you are not laughing at the bawdy humor, the slapstick, and the corny...
If you are not laughing giddily at the way the stories connect inside the novel as well as to the historical context outside the novel...
If you do not like send ups...
If you cringe at gallows humor and sexual perversity...
If your mind doesn't crave the complexity of an encyclopedic novel...
If absurdity does not bring you closer to a primordial truth that incites laughter at man's history...
Yes there is a plot. You may not find it but it is there. I would not read this book if you are struggling mightily with it. Do not believe people who say how hard, difficult, and painful it was, that they really didn't get most of it but "it was worth it". There are a ton of references and the book is more fun if you actually are able to tie in a bunch of the metaphors, references, historical contexts and character appearences and disapperences. I cannot imagine the point of reading the book if you couldn't, what a bore it must be. I think it is insulting that so many people believe that it is taboo to even talk about the book as a story,-a wildl, f-ing funny story at that. Yes some of us read Pynchon for enjoyment, not because it makes us stronger or better or fuller. (Pudding anyone?) I read Pynchon for the plot. I remember the small passages on pg.29 that are tied back in on pg500 without having to consult a third text. I delight in the connections and how often they break open the plot or a bigger meaning. I certainly miss some but I get a ton.(Can you plot out GR according to the Londen Times in 1944-45 and the Christian Advent season? Yes. But do you have to know this to figure out what Pynchon is up to? No.I wouldn't even bother, it will not get you closer to understanding. He sprinkles the novel with references that can bring you there if you are capable.) If I didn't I would give this book away. Pynchon pretty much debunks the Super Pynchon Theory in the introduction to Slow Learner. He talks about people's perception of him as being a brilliant mind who knows a ton about the subjects he riffs on. He admits that his knowledge of entropy(a major metaphorical theme for him)amounts to a typical dictionary definition entry.( not ot say that he is not extrordinarily well-read but don't be surprised if he doesn't know that much about Middle Dutch poetry but instead knows it in a more referential manner just as you do) Of course, his brilliance is his ability to take an idea and run it through his own mind, to say something about man, history and the nature of maening. And this is the kind of reader he is after. If when you read passages you find that his reference has sent you off thinking on your own and you realize you keep reading the same paragraph over and over transfixed by its briliance while each time it sparks a new tangent of thought until finally you wake up and feel that you have just flown around the globe...
If you read GR and feel that you need to talk about Pynchon in a half-apologetic, fully-reverential tone instead of laughing at the Hansel and Gretel in the oven of an SS officer then you really did not get it and should try again with a a little more levity. Perhaps you can borrow Gottfried's wedding dress to wear while you read it.
If you read GR and feel that it was devoid of a plot and was not chock full of brilliant observation on the plight of man/history, our encounters with meaning and many other metaphysical questions then the overall complexity of the structure went over your head and you should not try again.
If you read it and hated the pace and style of the prose then well, you are probably right.(less)

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05/18/07

Jordan rated it:

bookshelves: literature

Read in September, 2007

It took me the better part of seven months, going 10 to 20 pages at a clip and excluding all other novel-reading, but I have finished. And while I'm proud of my focus and tenacity, I'm not entirely sure it was worth it.
I'm not going to bash something that obviously means a lot to so many people. It just didn't mean much to me.
I have long contended that genius isn't just having a brilliant thought, but communicating that thought to others. If this work conveyed some amazingly deep ...more

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06/19/07

Daniel rated it:

(review of isbn 0140188592)

Read in June, 2003

recommends it for: people who ain't afraid of no dang post-modernism

It's hard to sit down and write about the plot of a Pynchon novel, since each one is about everything that a human being ever thinks about. The, uh, jumping-off point of this novel is that during WW2, Brittish Intelligence realizes that a map of German V-2 rocket strike sites in London exactly matches a map of American G.I. Tyrone Slothrop's sexual conquests. But that's only an issue for maybe 25 or 50 pages of a 760-page book. "Gravity's Rainbow" deals with war, with how much contr...more It's hard to sit down and write about the plot of a Pynchon novel, since each one is about everything that a human being ever thinks about. The, uh, jumping-off point of this novel is that during WW2, Brittish Intelligence realizes that a map of German V-2 rocket strike sites in London exactly matches a map of American G.I. Tyrone Slothrop's sexual conquests. But that's only an issue for maybe 25 or 50 pages of a 760-page book. "Gravity's Rainbow" deals with war, with how much control you have over your own life, with what it means to be the citizen of a country, and with colonialism. I don't think Pynchon is a big fan of colonialism.

Any monkey at a typewriter can write a novel that uses the atomic bomb as a metaphor for human hubris, or the inexorable and terrible march of progress, or ... well, it's a metaphor for lots of things. Pynchon uses instead the V-2 rocket as a metaphor for everything all at once. He likes it ... well, he likes it because it's way more obscure, but also because at the time it was uniquely supersonic, so you hear it *after* it kills you. That raises a lot of interesting questions about how much people take for granted, and how little control we can actually exert on our lives. Pynchon also plays with what that phenomenon does to our notion of linear time. Here's a good excerpt:

---------------
"'Temporal bandwidth' is the width of your present, your *now*. It is the familiar 'delta-t' considered as a dependent variable. The more you dwell in the past and in the future, the thicker your bandwidth, the more solid your persona. But the narrower your sense of Now, the more tenuous you are. It may get to where you're having trouble remembering what you were doing five minutes ago, or even - as Slothrop now - what you're doing *here*, at the base of this colossal curved embankment...
"Uh," he turns slackmouth to Narrish, "what are we..."
"What are we what?"
"What?"
"You said, 'What are we...,' then you stopped."
"Oh. Gee, that was a funny thing to say."
---------------

This is a hard book to read, but well worth the effort. One of my favorites.(less)

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04/19/07

Ed rated it:

(review of isbn 0140188592)

bookshelves: most-bestest

Read in January, 2007

recommends it for: The Harder Corer Reader

I finished this book in an airport. I was just 2 pages away when we landed and I had to walk right out to the smoker's plaza, plop down and finish it finally. It took me a total of 4 months to read this book. I didn't pick it up every day, but I also didn't clutter myself by starting anything else. I was anxious to finally be through it. In the last pages there's a kind of absurdist, surrealist account of a nightclub owner known by the nickname "The Adenoid" because of his nasal speech...more I finished this book in an airport. I was just 2 pages away when we landed and I had to walk right out to the smoker's plaza, plop down and finish it finally. It took me a total of 4 months to read this book. I didn't pick it up every day, but I also didn't clutter myself by starting anything else. I was anxious to finally be through it. In the last pages there's a kind of absurdist, surrealist account of a nightclub owner known by the nickname "The Adenoid" because of his nasal speech impediment (i.e. Harmonica becomes Harbodica)...don't worry, I'm not giving anything away here...So I read this section on "The Adenoid" (which, by the way, I have absolutely no idea how it relates to the greater "story" of the novel, if you can call it that, but by page 700 of this book, you've long given up on things like putting the "pieces" "together") and I knew that "The Adenoid" was ringing a bell somewhere, but it was a far-off bell, somewhere in a dark place, shrouded by fog, and I simply pressed on to the end, where yes indeed the plot (there IS a plot, you know) does come circling back in on itself etc. And while I sat there at Kansai airport, on the ground, surrounded by the roar of big metal tubes shooting into the air and by noisy Japanese buisnessmen on their cellphones shouting away as they stuffed Seven Stars between their lips, I contemplated the truly incredible execution of such a well concieved web, one so elaborate and finely woven that most of its detail escapes even the careful reader.

It wasn't till I was already on the train home that, flipping through the book I caught sight of "The Adenoid" in one of the earliest sections, and began reading this section again. Things from the ending came into a metaphysical kind of focus that I can't explain, and even more inexplicably, I turned back to the very first page and began the novel again...this time seeing a kind of infinite richness of continuity...only on the second time around could I follow the disjointed timeline (there really is one, you know)...I could place Prentice's banana breakfast as the day Slothrop goes to view the rocket crash only to see Prentice come pick up a tube of documents, the same tube that Katje sends before she escapes Blicero and Germany...on and on and on, dispersed throughout the great length of the novel like rocket fragments scattered in an airburst... Like I say, the novel is so finely woven that even a second reading can't catch it all, but I could tell how rewarding it would be to take the whole massive mess on again, straight away...how many other 700+ page novels can claim that? This is truly one of the most awe-inspiring pieces of fiction I've ever encountered. Don't be daunted. Dive in. It's worth it.(less)

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12/24/08

Mike rated it:

When I was getting a PhD in English, I refused to read Pynchon because I thought the last thing the world needed was another book by a modernist author who trying to be more difficult than Joyce.

Then I picked up Vineland out of a bargain bin, and realized it was probably the funniest thing I had ever read. I followed it with Gravity's Rainbow, which is even funnier. Pynchon is an incredible comic writer.

In grad school, lots of people were scared of Gravity's Rainbow b...more

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06/09/08

Matthew rated it:

Read in August, 2008

When I was at the Mets game last week, the crowd started doing the wave during the seventh inning, and everyone watched anxiously as it went from one end of Shea Stadium to the other and then cheered when it finally got to the end. This went on for most of the inning, growing in strength and crowd enthusiasm. Finally, the guy in front of me stood up and pointed at the field and shouted, "Oh my God! In the midst of our wave, there's a game being played!" That's kind of what I thought ab...more

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02/20/08

Kyle rated it:

(review of isbn 0140106618)

bookshelves: unfinished

Read in February, 2008

I'm about 200 pages shy of the end of this dirge, but I'm compelled to give my review now.

I know history is rarely kind to harsh criticisms about super nebulous or "difficult" authors , but dig this --

This book is horrible. After reading 'The Crying of Lot 49', 'Slow Learner' and now this, I'm convinced that Thomas Pynchon is a hack, and the reason we don't hear from him is because he has nothing to say and knows that if we gave him a microphone and fifteen minu...more

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08/17/07

Jasen Johns rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

bookshelves: fiction

Read in October, 2000

recommends it for: paragons of perversity

Rather than award Pynchon the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the board of that prestigious award opted to declare no winner. The three person jury for the fiction category favored Pynchon, but the fourteen member Pulitzer Prize board overruled their determination, deeming what critics would later recognize as Pynchon's magnum opus to be "unreadable," "turgid," "overwritten," and "obscene."

Gravity's Rainbow endures as a challenging work of li...more Rather than award Pynchon the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the board of that prestigious award opted to declare no winner. The three person jury for the fiction category favored Pynchon, but the fourteen member Pulitzer Prize board overruled their determination, deeming what critics would later recognize as Pynchon's magnum opus to be "unreadable," "turgid," "overwritten," and "obscene."

Gravity's Rainbow endures as a challenging work of literature, and one I've re-read in its entirety twice, but revisited in parts like a Southern Baptist grabbing for verse. And like the Bible, this book is a mess, a chaotic codex of characters, fractured timeline, and scenes held together only by readers' faith that there's a central narrative. Unlike the Bible, Gravity's Rainbow lacks the excuse of multiple authors, mistranslation, deliberately distorted transmission, and accidental or intentional omission. In this doorstop of a novel the mess is by design, but a Christian might contend the same about the good Book-with-a-capital-B.

Why keep returning to this work? Well, Pynchon can really crank out lyrical prose and vivid imagery, so I'll weakly answer that beauty for beauty's sake is enough. A stronger argument might be Pynchon captures a very messy world where his numerous protagonists play their best despite lacking a script or director, and, in this, they are very sympathetic characters to readers in the latter 20th Century and beyond. These are characters living through the horrific failed utopia of warmongering, irrational despots. They live in a vacuum without order. Fear drives them to eke out what life they can find. And the V-2 rockets, describing parabolic arcs of work against and with gravity, could land on their heads at any second.

As a final and personal note, I read Gravity's Rainbow at a very low point in my life after exiting university. A dotcom job in Portland, Oregon had evaporated, and I'd decided to return home to the south. There was no manifest destiny for me, just my mom's house in Dacula, an isolated and far-flung suburb of Atlanta. I lived there for three months before finding another dotcom job and moving out to the even more hellish suburb of Alpharetta. I picked up Pynchon because I wanted to read a few Pulitzer Prize winning fiction titles, but then discovered in the lateral way the World Wide Web works that there was a ghost winner of the prize for 1974. Intrigued, or maybe feeling empathy as one holding the mistaken, disaffected belief I was denied a prize of sorts as well at that point in life, I picked Pynchon up. What I believe he was trying to do in the novel resonated with me and still does.

Shortly after Gravity's Rainbow, I finally and belatedly read a requirement for Michael O'Rourke's University of Idaho Epistemology class. Mr. O'Rourke is a wise, bright and gentle soul for guiding his students to "The View from Nowhere" by Thomas Nagel. I'll say it's a happy accident I read Nagel's book after Gravity's Rainbow, and prescribe you do the same.

(less)

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09/11/07

Dena rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

I had a professor who threw a copy of this book at me and said he only knew 4 other people that had ever read it. Two weeks later (when I should have been studying for finals and writing papers)I threw it back at him and told him that he now knew 5. Ticked me off, tho, that he seemed to have so missed the point of the book! It is a wonder anti-war statement and also a comment on how war is a masculine undertaking. Be warned! It's stream-of-consciousness writing. Just read it and don't try ...more

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10/19/07

will rated it:

(review of isbn 0140188592)

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: The neurotic, the homesless, the underpaid and out-of-work

I still get tremors of terror and nausea when I look at this book; I can't bring myself to open it. But I know it was good.

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07/21/08

Phillip rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

bookshelves: fiction, sci-fi

i read this in my 20's and after finishing against the day earlier this year (which i LOVED), i thought it was time to go back and give it another shot. i was overwhelmed by the book the first time i read it.

before i go any furthere, i just want to say that pynchon makes me glad to be a reader. i was in a lull with books when i read against the day, and it really kind of reclaimed my faith in fiction. that's the highest compliment i could give a book, i think.

now that i'...more i read this in my 20's and after finishing against the day earlier this year (which i LOVED), i thought it was time to go back and give it another shot. i was overwhelmed by the book the first time i read it.

before i go any furthere, i just want to say that pynchon makes me glad to be a reader. i was in a lull with books when i read against the day, and it really kind of reclaimed my faith in fiction. that's the highest compliment i could give a book, i think.

now that i've read a few of his books, i'm much more familiar with his style and ways of establishing exposition. it feels more comfortable this time around, but make no mistake: this is a rocky journey. the humor and classic pychonesque situations and scenarios are popping up in spades. it's the kind of novel where you can perceive clearly what is going on from moment to moment, but it's difficult putting it all together to experience the whole. also, i'm not quite half way through the book and i know he usually waits until you're at least that far into one of his books before the narrative strands weave together into a clearer picture.

more than half way through now. so glad i chose to re-read this one. it's amazing to me how deep pynchon's literary imagination goes. he's like a volcano, erputing constantly and just shelling us with images and interlocking pieces of an enormous puzzle.

just finished this wonderful and dazzling book. it almost feels like you need to turn around and read it again, quickly, before too much time has passed. pynchon gives you so much information - his literary brilliance moves through the pages like a flood...it's hard to keep all the pieces of the puzzle in order.

but from start to finish, gravity's rainbow is one of the most unusual books ever to deal with the second world war, and it does so in wholly irreverent and original ways. many of the central characters come and go, as they do in most of pynchon's work, but they stay with you throughout the long journey. you worry for them, applaud them, are amazed by their humility and humanity. an excellent book, but not an easy read in any sense of the word.

i originally gave this book four stars, but after reading it a second time, i give it five. it's an unforgettable novel that i'm sure will stay with me for some time.(less)

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05/28/08

Drew rated it:

Read in August, 2008

"...as once again the floor is a giant lift propelling you with no warning toward your ceiling— replaying now as the walls are blown outward, bricks and mortar showering down, your sudden paralysis as death comes to wrap and stun I don't know guv I must've blacked out when I come to she was gone it was burning all around me head was full of smoke... and the sight of your blood spurting from the flaccid stub of artery, the snowy roofslates fallen across half your bed, the cinema kiss never...more "...as once again the floor is a giant lift propelling you with no warning toward your ceiling— replaying now as the walls are blown outward, bricks and mortar showering down, your sudden paralysis as death comes to wrap and stun I don't know guv I must've blacked out when I come to she was gone it was burning all around me head was full of smoke... and the sight of your blood spurting from the flaccid stub of artery, the snowy roofslates fallen across half your bed, the cinema kiss never completed, you were pinned and stared at a crumpled cigarette pack for two hours in pain, you could hear them crying from the rows either side but couldn't move... the sudden light filling up the room, the awful silence, brighter than any morning through blankets turned to gauze no shadows at all, only unutterable two o'clock dawn...and..."

It took two and a half months, where there were weeks I couldn't read more than twenty pages and days where I read nearly a hundred, but I finally completed Gravity's Rainbow. It's pretty tight, to say the least. Bananas for breakfast, lunch, brunch, and dinner.
Slapstick scenes of top scientists running around with a bucket stuck on their foot and the main "hero" wearing a pig costume for the brunt of the final part of the novel functioning as cute comedic detours. Sex, a fair amount of it, in every way, shape or form (in the butt, Bob.) Even Mickey Rooney shows up to say howdy.

Pynchon isn't interested in giving answers to the many questions he raises, which should come as no surprise to anyone who had read "The Crying of Lot 49." But his writing, which admittedly is tediously verbose at times, also conjures up images worthy of being mounted on canvas and placed in the Getty. By the last passage, I felt like I was strapped to a V-2 and falling to the soil, which is a feeling that no other piece of art has ever made me feel, so holla at cha boy, Pynchon.

There should be a reason you're reading this gargantuan work, because it's lengthy and packed so deeply that it's almost impossible to consume this in a short time. More importantly, you're going to want to reflect on everything you absorb, whether at a purely aesthetic level (because sentence for sentence, I don't think I have read anything better) or a philosophical level (because theme for theme, I don't think I have read any fiction denser.) There's so much to this book, making it the ideal desert island novel (even though you'd probably die of skin cancer before you finished it a third time), and it's tough to cover everything Pynchon is trying to jam in your gullet: the post-WWII world on its descent into oblivion, transnationalism fucking everyone but the big corporations, and how a young British scamp scraps his way out of the gutter. Well, not all of those are true, but it would take a great deal of time to elucidate what "Gravity's Rainbow" is about, and really, I've only read it once, so what do I know, besides that they are in love, fuck the war.

Look, it doesn't really matter what I rate this book, because at times I couldn't put it down (even to watch "Gilmore Girls") and sometimes, I would rather play video game golf (really, no lie.) You could spend two and a half months reading this, or in the same amount of time, run through the entire Babysitters Club collection (watch out, she's got diabetes.) But as a giant talking stone deity once said, "the choice is yours, and yours alone."

Love,
Drew R.

p.s. This isn't unreadable, so "man up," or something. (less)

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02/03/08

sahiga rated it:

(review of isbn 0140106618)

Read in August, 2008

before:
I REALLY WANT TO READ THIS BOOK! I've been dying to read it for YEARS actually...but alas, I keep procrastinating.

after:
Terrible yet amazing. I can tell that he was "so fucked up" when he wrote this. (Longer review to come.)

the longer review (I couldn't wait so here it is):
The first, oh, 2/3 of this book sort of turned me off. It was like beyond the Zero randomGermanCityName allthisrandomWorldWarTwoRocketSchwarzkommandogeratshit letsthro...more

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12/15/07

Danny rated it:

Read in November, 2008

recommends it for: people with time and will power

I absolutely love this book, and hate it at the same time. Paragraph by paragraph, it's some of the best prose I think I've ever read in my life. As a whole, story-wise, it's... well, it's difficult. I think digressive or parenthetical would be good descriptive words. It's on the Joycean side to say the least.

I think the reputation for Gravity's Rainbow being "unreadable" comes mostly from the overall story and plot rather than the prose itself. It's just not structured the...more

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10/25/07

Dale rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

Read in April, 2008

It's been said that there's a strong link between James Joyce's Ulysses and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow - they're both post-modern, they're both simultaneously maligned and misunderstood and regarded by some as genius and others as garbage. Apparently Gravity's Rainbow is to the second half of the 20th century what Ulysses is to the first half. I read Ulysses back in July of 2007 and I just finished Gravity's Rainbow, which means in the span of nine months I've been from one end of diff...more It's been said that there's a strong link between James Joyce's Ulysses and Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow - they're both post-modern, they're both simultaneously maligned and misunderstood and regarded by some as genius and others as garbage. Apparently Gravity's Rainbow is to the second half of the 20th century what Ulysses is to the first half. I read Ulysses back in July of 2007 and I just finished Gravity's Rainbow, which means in the span of nine months I've been from one end of difficult, provocative modern literature to the other, kind of like a gestation period, giving birth ultimately to ...

See, this is what Gravity's Rainbow does to my head, making me see overt symbolism and numerology in EVERYTHING. Which is interesting, to say the least. I have this vague definition in my head of "art" which goes as follows: something that lots of people admire and which I don't necessarily get. And I'm ok with that. A lot of times when I expose myself to art I think of it as such literally; I'm not processing it, I'm just putting myself in front of it and seeing what effect it has on me, generally assuming said effect will be good (or at least benign). So Gravity's Rainbow falls into that category. It's a work of art. I don't necessarily get it (although I did just read the Wikipedia article on it and was gratified to see that there was nothing in there that made me go "whoops I totally missed that" so at least I perceived the broad strokes, if not every single little nuance. I would go out and get the Cliffs Notes for the book like I did for Ulysses except that none exist! Cliffs people, what's up with that? Sorry, end of ranting digression.). I'm glad I read it.

I'm breaking my own rule here by giving 3 stars to a "classic" but I'm trying to be true to the subjectiveness of my response. I didn't love the book, and I can only imagine lots of people (who aren't stuck on buses and trains all the time) might give up on it because it's so insanely packed with characters (400 or so) and technical jargon and wild fantasy sequences and unreliable narrators and all those other great elements of post-modernist lit. Gravity's Rainbow is not going on my all-time faves shelf and I probably won't ever re-read it, but I liked it - it made me think, it made me work, it even sometimes made me laugh, and I appreciate all of that.

Incidentally, I am now totally going to go buy some new Dungeons & Dragons novels with no guilt about rotting my brain, having fortified the gray matter with this exercise.(less)

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