Goodreads | Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

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Danica rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

04/29/08

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 everything I could get my h...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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Edward rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

10/17/07

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...
If your mind ...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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Aloysius rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

10/23/07

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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Jasen rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

08/17/07

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 literature...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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Erik rated it:

06/22/08

bookshelves: 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 the Americans reaching ultimate corpora...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 the Americans reaching ultimate corporate 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 1974 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.

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....less

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Bill rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

05/16/07

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.

1...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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Ed rated it:

(review of isbn 0140188592)

05/08/07

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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Dale rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

04/18/08

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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Erin rated it:

(review of isbn 0224009605)

09/25/07

Read in February, 2008

"It was one of those great iron afternoons in London: the yellow sun being teased apart by a thousand chimneys breathing, fawning upward without shame. This smoke is more than the day's breath, more than dark strength--it is an imperial presence that lives and moves" (Pynchon, 1973, p. 26).

"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted ... secretly, it was dictated instead by the needs of technology ... by a ...more "It was one of those great iron afternoons in London: the yellow sun being teased apart by a thousand chimneys breathing, fawning upward without shame. This smoke is more than the day's breath, more than dark strength--it is an imperial presence that lives and moves" (Pynchon, 1973, p. 26).

"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted ... secretly, it was dictated instead by the needs of technology ... by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying, "Money be damned, the very life of [insert name of Nation] is at stake," but meaning, most likely, dawn is nearly here, I need my night's blood, my funding, funding, ahh more, more.... The real crises were crises of allocation and priority, not among firms--it was only staged to look that way--but among the different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by the ruling elite ..." (p. 521).

"The rest of us, not chosen for enlightenment, left on the outside of Earth, at the mercy of a Gravity we have only begun to learn how to detect and measure, must go on blundering inside our front-brain faith in Kute Korrespondences, hoping that for each psi-synthetic taken from Earth's soul there is a molecule, secular, more or less ordinary and named, over here--kicking endlessly among the plastic trivia, finding in each a Deeper Significance and trying to string them together like terms of a power series hoping to zero in on the tremendous and secret Function whose name, like the permuted names of God, cannot be spoken ..." (p. 590).

"In Africa, Asia, Amerindia, Oceania, Europe came and established its order of Analysis and Death. What it could not use, it killed or altered. In time the death-colonies grew strong enough to break away. But the impulse to empire, the mission to propagate death, the structure of it, kept on. Now we are in the last phase. American Death has come to occupy Europe. It has learned empire from its old metropolis. But now we have only the structure left us, none of the great rainbow plumes, no fittings of gold, no epic marches over alkali seas. The savages of other continents, corrupted but still resisting in the name of life, have gone on despite everything ... while Death and Europe are separate as ever, their love still unconsummated." (p. 723)....less

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Daniel rated it:

(review of isbn 0140188592)

06/19/07

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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Conrad rated it:

08/10/07

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.

The f...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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grant rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

05/09/07

Read in February, 2007

Though I think Pynchon wastes a lot of everyone’s time with some sloppy digressions that don’t lead anywhere, mostly, he has a point and sticks to it, and mostly, the main narrative of Slothrup’s dithering knight errantry, succeeds in being gripping. In the end I enjoyed GR, even though I’d estimate that there are 150 pages of filler in this book, made up of dated pop culture references, mildly amusing songs, dead end characters, and anecdotes that aren’t good enough to warrant deep an...more Though I think Pynchon wastes a lot of everyone’s time with some sloppy digressions that don’t lead anywhere, mostly, he has a point and sticks to it, and mostly, the main narrative of Slothrup’s dithering knight errantry, succeeds in being gripping. In the end I enjoyed GR, even though I’d estimate that there are 150 pages of filler in this book, made up of dated pop culture references, mildly amusing songs, dead end characters, and anecdotes that aren’t good enough to warrant deep analysis, however historically accurate.

The whole lets describe sex a la Henry Miller thing, may have rattled cages and shaken up the man in ’71, but it feels self indulgent now. I understand we live in horrible, depraved world, where horrible depraved things happen, but Pynchon appears to get a masochistic thrill of rubbing our faces in it (Kajte ‘gift’ to Brigadeer Pudding and Slothrup and Bianca’s introduction/relationship spring to mind). What purpose do these depraved anecdotes serve?

What I am interested in, and why I think most people would bother to read a book as meandering and Important as GR, is to divine the meaning, some irreducible Point, about the nature of the world.

Towards the end it seems like P lets his guard down when he says, “human consciousness, that poor cripple, that deformed and doomed thing,”839 leads us blindly in a world where, “generation after generation of men in love with pain and passivity serve out their time in the Zone …desperately addicted to the comforts others sells them, however useless, ugly or shallow, willing to have life defined for them by men whose only talent is for death.” (872 in a crappy bantam paperback editions) it is difficult to see where exactly the hope lies, and some amount of hope, I would argue, is needed in all great works of art.

I would summarize P’s perspective in GR as: People are deluded, nasty creatures whose morals and behaviors are easily conditioned and manipulated. And then you die. I understand that in GR, nothing is as it seems. Maybe that's the point...war causes disconnect. It turns us on our heads and makes us question meaning and purpose.
...less

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Jesse rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

03/31/08

Read in March, 2008

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

Even better the second time, Gravity's Rainbow deserves every superlative accolade that has been thrown its way. The paragon of postmodernism with a protagonist who dissolves and scatters in different directions and a villian who becomes a run of the mill business man, this novel is believable while being completly unreal. The characters all have silly names like Scorpia Mossmoon, and Saure Bummer, and the action vears from boardroom politics to coprophagia and yet the writing is infused with an...more Even better the second time, Gravity's Rainbow deserves every superlative accolade that has been thrown its way. The paragon of postmodernism with a protagonist who dissolves and scatters in different directions and a villian who becomes a run of the mill business man, this novel is believable while being completly unreal. The characters all have silly names like Scorpia Mossmoon, and Saure Bummer, and the action vears from boardroom politics to coprophagia and yet the writing is infused with an encyclopedic knowledge of subjects ranging from The Kabbalah to comic books. The central plot involves V2 rockets and different characters connections with these rockets. In the end the rockets come to represent death, which is fitting as all the characters seem to be fatally facsinated with the V2's. But it is not the plot that really makes this novel special (if anything the plot is the weak point), it is Pynchon's ability to intricately intertwine themes. These themes run through character names, Chapter structure, sentence-level (as well as extended) metaphors, and scene location. We find the mandala in the shape of the Herero village and also in the sctucture of the four sections of the novel. We find Tarot cards used to hint at Weissman/Blicero's future as well as the number of chapters in section 1 (21, the number of cards in a Tarot deck). The examples go on and on. Many of these would be lost on the common reader, but an investment in Weisenburger's Companion will make this novel infinitely more enjoyable. This book definitely is not for everyone, but if you enjoy a challenge and love beautiful, original writing then Gravity's Rainbow is for you. There is also a good deal of humor you just have to be willing to go along for the ride and not resist the narrator changes, the analepsis and, the (at times) seemingly pointless ramblings. Here again The Companion comes in handy. In summation, the novel is alot like its title, multifaceted beautiful, yet under a strain. The high that comes with reading the novel always has the invisible cloud of gravity hanging over it, you know in the end you'll be brought back down. Now everybody....less

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jacqs is currently reading it

05/24/08

bookshelves: currently-reading

Occasionally I enjoy this book, with its own bizarre rhythm that takes some getting used to. It helps not to absorb the digressions. I have been able to let the overworked, irrelevant descriptions flow through me without comprehension, and when an essential plot point appears briefly in the mess, somehow I catch it. I flag those points with a stickie. Those moments are the gratifying ones, when out of the mess appears some sense and cohesion. It's like being whipped repeatedly and then bein...more Occasionally I enjoy this book, with its own bizarre rhythm that takes some getting used to. It helps not to absorb the digressions. I have been able to let the overworked, irrelevant descriptions flow through me without comprehension, and when an essential plot point appears briefly in the mess, somehow I catch it. I flag those points with a stickie. Those moments are the gratifying ones, when out of the mess appears some sense and cohesion. It's like being whipped repeatedly and then being overjoyed when you get some gauze pads and lotion. It also reminds me of Magic Eye drawings, where mostly it's chaotic nonsense but if you take a long view, you can see a pattern. The only point in doing so is for the practice of it, or the novel experience of it. Like a sport, just for the challenge and the rhythm. It also makes me think of wrapping yourself in a wool blanket that is Thomas Pynchon's mind and personality. If you don't like his personality, if the blanket is scratchy and ugly, then the book is just irritating.

Overall I'd describe the energy of the book as 20th century "male," being about war-time and erections and industrial noise. Most people who like it seem to be male. If there is any femininity in the book, I have not found it yet. The female characters tend to be sex objects, or some object from the perspective of a male character. In fact, considering how one man wonders if his daughter is the same person year to year, a daughter who is sent to him by the military, it seems like the whole book fragments woman-energy. "Are women even real?" they seem to wonder. When will my girlfriend leave me? wonders Roger Mexico constantly. In war time, is there any family or community cohesion or any real partnership? (No.) I'd say Pynchon feels profoundly alienated from his female side, and probably from love. In that context, the book is an interesting description of male alienation from the female, and the ways that society can so completely objectify humans into being experimental subjects.
...less

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Carlos rated it:

(review of isbn 0140283382)

09/04/07

Read in January, 2004

Perhaps I arrived too late.

In this current age of quick jump cuts, video collaging, episodic storytelling, collective narrative and the re-emergence of the serial and novella due in part to the internet, I realize that reading Gravity's Rainbow in the 21st century makes the wondrous jump cuts, literary collaging, episodic and serial storytelling and self-contained collective narrative seem. . . like nothing I haven't seen more than a few times already.

Having said that, some of my favorit...more

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Brendan rated it:

06/14/07

Read in June, 2005

I feel this book deserves a lengthier review.

There's so much going on that it seems insane but there's is also an underlying order (based on the Tarot and the parabolic arc of a rocket's trajectory) that's revelatory upon second reading.

I've heard that it is essentially unedited, which seems probably unwise, as I think there's much that could be trimmed. But geez what editor is gonna wanna tackle this?

Its greatest successes I think are in the descriptions of pre-war Berlin and the c...more

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Shane rated it:

04/29/08

I'm long winded with reviews, so I'll probably write more later. I have mixed feelings about this book having read it two times. The first time I read it simply as an EVENT; something to say I did and get off my back so I could enjoy Pynchon's other works, or works that were inspired by it or inspired it. The first time I read it, I had no clue what was going on 95% of the time.

The second time, I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was less difficult because I felt like I learned how to read it. You ...more

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