22nd out of 1,196 books
—
7,571 voters
Gravity's Rainbow
Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity’s Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the twentieth century as Joyce’s Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.
Gravity's Rainbow shared the 1974 Natio...more
Gravity's Rainbow shared the 1974 Natio...more
Paperback, Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, 776 pages
Published
October 31st 2006
by Penguin Books
(first published 1973)
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Oct 07, 2012
s.penkevich
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Paranoids, Preterits and Pornographers
‘What is the real nature of control?’
From the first sentence of Pynchon’s National Book Award winning novel, Gravity’s Rainbow, the Reader is transplanted into a threatening world where death strikes first, the cause second. It is a world of frightening realism and comic absurdity, all fueled through drug induced hallucinations, paranoid ramblings, and psychological investigations that is not all that unlike our own reality once you remove yourself to view it from afar as if it were some painti...more
From the first sentence of Pynchon’s National Book Award winning novel, Gravity’s Rainbow, the Reader is transplanted into a threatening world where death strikes first, the cause second. It is a world of frightening realism and comic absurdity, all fueled through drug induced hallucinations, paranoid ramblings, and psychological investigations that is not all that unlike our own reality once you remove yourself to view it from afar as if it were some painti...more
Oct 01, 2012
Paquita Maria Sanchez
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
literature,
favorites
It took three months, but I finally pinned this sucker down to the count of ten. Three months is kinda perfect if you think about it, though. That's my typical honeymoon period in most relationships, the enthusiastic "I can still more than tolerate you" part, so great timing, yeah? Sure, I cheated on him on about 15 separate occasions in that time-frame, but hell, nobody's perfect. The library card in my wallet is like a condom just begging to be used.
So yeah, I can now say I've "read" this book...more
So yeah, I can now say I've "read" this book...more
May 16, 2007
Bill
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Everyone
Shelves:
novels
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 ... Pyn...more
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 ... Pyn...more
Jun 15, 2012
Jenn(ifer)
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
degenerates
Recommended to Jenn(ifer) by:
the literati
First off, a song: this was supposedly influenced by Gravity's Raibow. HA!
This one's for you Slothrop & Bodine (I had no idea that there actually were zoot suit riots! Everything I've learned, I've learned from reading books. Crappy public school education...)
Where to begin?!
Regarding the creation of this novel, it has been said, “ Pynchon sequestered himself in a room, writing the novel out by hand, filling sheet after sheet of graph paper with the precise script of an Engineer. Perched at...more
Gather ‘round, everyone, and hear the tale of why the reasoning (not the rejection itself, mind you) behind the rejection of this novel for the Pulitzer Prize of ’74 fucking pisses me off.
Their reason? Obscenity. I would hope that they at least wrote an essay justifying their decision that went beyond an insipid mix of morally outraged blatherings and oblique mentions of coprophilia (he ate what? Poop? Oh, we cannot stand for this we simply must not accept this and god forbid we even think for a...more
Their reason? Obscenity. I would hope that they at least wrote an essay justifying their decision that went beyond an insipid mix of morally outraged blatherings and oblique mentions of coprophilia (he ate what? Poop? Oh, we cannot stand for this we simply must not accept this and god forbid we even think for a...more
Prologue
"A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now."
Genesis
In the beginning was the earth, and above the earth was the sky.
The earth consisted of land and water. The sky consisted of air, the moon, the sun and the stars in the heavens.
The land consisted of rock. Water was everywhere, but still precious.
The sky was light by day and dark by night. By day, the light came from the sun and sometimes the moon. At night, a lesser light came fro...more
"A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now."
Genesis
In the beginning was the earth, and above the earth was the sky.
The earth consisted of land and water. The sky consisted of air, the moon, the sun and the stars in the heavens.
The land consisted of rock. Water was everywhere, but still precious.
The sky was light by day and dark by night. By day, the light came from the sun and sometimes the moon. At night, a lesser light came fro...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...more
The first...more
I think reading and reviewing this book requires taking on some extra baggage because it...well, I don't actually need to explain why or else Gravity’s Rainbow wouldn't have this baggage in the first place. It's Gravity's Rainbow, and that makes me feel like I need to read it, preferably without thinking too much about why exactly I feel this way. But at the same time I feel like I should avoid it so I don't look like a damn hairdo, which I'm told is British slang for someone who “tries too hard...more
-----------------------------------------------------
Ian Graye wrote this wonderful pastiche and fictional letter, from Nabokov to Pynchon. So authentic is the voice and style I pasted it here thinking it was genuine: Ian's spectacular review can be read in full here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
-----------------------------------------------------
[Letter from Vlad the Impaler of Butterflies - April, 1973]
Dear Tom,
Vera and I very much appreciated your gift of a signed first edition o...more
Ian Graye wrote this wonderful pastiche and fictional letter, from Nabokov to Pynchon. So authentic is the voice and style I pasted it here thinking it was genuine: Ian's spectacular review can be read in full here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
-----------------------------------------------------
[Letter from Vlad the Impaler of Butterflies - April, 1973]
Dear Tom,
Vera and I very much appreciated your gift of a signed first edition o...more
It took me a couple of tries to make it through Pynchon's Great Thing; the first time I began it eagerly enough, only to smash headfirst into an impenetrable wall of thick, viscous prose that so entangled and bewildered me that—after some seventy-odd pages—I said Enough! and moved on. However, the book nibbled away at my mind, and about three weeks later I gave it another try. Determined this time to see it through, I hit the ground running to match pace with A screaming comes across the sky...;...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. I still have my battered copy, bought in high school and having accompanied me all these years:

Some basic themes are:
1. a conspiracy theory/ alternati...more

Some basic themes are:
1. a conspiracy theory/ alternati...more
Edit, 14 Sep. 2012: So. I've been thinking and talking about this book literally all year now while my Pynchonian love has been growing exponentially. Four stars it is for this maddening, wonderful, frustrating and surprising masterpiece of American literature because it has done nothing but endear itself to me the more I dwell on it. I'm leaving my review as I wrote it in January because I'm fucking lazy, okay? the vast majority of it is still true.
□ □ □ □ □
Holy crap, y'all. This book. This boo...more
□ □ □ □ □
Holy crap, y'all. This book. This boo...more
A hose of prose -- relentless, uncompromising, uber-detailed, purposefully disorienting, godlike, puerile, silly, song-filled, wonky, wise, sexy, stupefying, audacious, ambitious to the point of OCD ADHD ickiness -- hooked to a thick rectangular pulp-based nozzle interface intended to excoriate at full-blast the reader's face off forever. "Central" thematic conflict is fate v. free will -- Pavlovian-type behaviorism v. something more than reaction to stimuli, in this case, arousal in advance of...more
Mar 27, 2012
J. Ergo
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Shelves:
favorites,
adventure,
apocalyptic,
consciousness,
conspiracy,
culture,
esoterica,
humor,
fiction,
metaphysics,
occult,
politics,
science-math,
supernatural,
transgressive,
erotic,
historical,
to-re-read,
religion,
novel,
mystery,
metastruction,
horror,
fantasy,
crime,
reviewed
***THIS IS SO A WORK IN PROGRESS: ENJOY/GIGGLE/HUFF IF YOU MUST***
***THE WHOLE REVIEW IS ONLY AVAILABLE UNDER MY WRITINGS BECAUSE (SEE DIRECTLY BELOW)
***ALSO, THIS IS WHAT THE KIDS CALL TLTR (I think), WHICH MEANS IT'S REALLY, REALLY LONG***
***AND . . . IT PROBABLY HAS SPOILERS, BUT I CAN NO LONGER SEE STRAIGHT SO YER JUST GONNA HAVE TO TAKE YER CHANCES***
***. . . OR NOT***
Tom
Don’t think too hard, Eddie, you might sprain something.
Dane
You are so goddamn smart. ‘Cept you ain’t. I get you, smart...more
***THE WHOLE REVIEW IS ONLY AVAILABLE UNDER MY WRITINGS BECAUSE (SEE DIRECTLY BELOW)
***ALSO, THIS IS WHAT THE KIDS CALL TLTR (I think), WHICH MEANS IT'S REALLY, REALLY LONG***
***AND . . . IT PROBABLY HAS SPOILERS, BUT I CAN NO LONGER SEE STRAIGHT SO YER JUST GONNA HAVE TO TAKE YER CHANCES***
***. . . OR NOT***
Tom
Don’t think too hard, Eddie, you might sprain something.
Dane
You are so goddamn smart. ‘Cept you ain’t. I get you, smart...more
Jul 10, 2012
Rob
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
time-all-time-100,
2010,
surreal,
alternate-history,
project,
important,
100-howell-favorites
It is difficult to say for certain if the five-star review will withstand a second reading--but we won't know that until I subject myself to it that second time. Fortunately for me, it has gone back to its "last in line" position for at least a little while.
First, the obvious stuff: this is the kind of novel that makes "Top N" lists of all kinds (formal and less so) and is widely regarded as a masterpiece among postmodern masterpieces. It's transgressive in a number of different ways--fucking wi...more
First, the obvious stuff: this is the kind of novel that makes "Top N" lists of all kinds (formal and less so) and is widely regarded as a masterpiece among postmodern masterpieces. It's transgressive in a number of different ways--fucking wi...more
Oct 23, 2007
Aloysius
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
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 above my head...more
Gravity's Rainbow is a full-bore freakout. It's a book you have to bring your "A" game to as a reader. The stew of themes, ideas and valences it percolates in is dense and strange, and at times the book seems to literally emit radioactive vapors of its own. Like with V. the book feels more like it's about the resonances between ideas, (History! Paranoia! Free Will! Scatology! Drugs! Pavlov! Plastics!) and that the characters, (along with the reader) are just sort of sucked along for the ride in...more
I should get around to writing a review for this book but maybe a rereading is in order first, I mean I don't even know where I could start, the fact that it's complex as all hell, and that at times while reading it I wanted to give up but couldn't because Thomas Pynchon's writing at once is so visceral, and beautifil even when Pynchon describes an out of control orgy, that it's a book that not only did I get lost in what was going on, trying to keep in range of the bigger elements, I found mys...more
Selections From My Mental Commentary Upon Reading Gravity's Rainbow
Difficult my ass, I know who Werner Van Braun is.......... What a fantastic name........ Errrrr...............Maybe I need to reed that again......... Third time's a charm!.......... Shit........... Okay, who/what/when/where/why/how the fuck is going on?............... Okay, I think I get what's going on here........... Never mind.............. This whole thing is absolute rubbish............... Did Dane Cook's boner write that p...more
Difficult my ass, I know who Werner Van Braun is.......... What a fantastic name........ Errrrr...............Maybe I need to reed that again......... Third time's a charm!.......... Shit........... Okay, who/what/when/where/why/how the fuck is going on?............... Okay, I think I get what's going on here........... Never mind.............. This whole thing is absolute rubbish............... Did Dane Cook's boner write that p...more
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 minutes he'd be found out.
90% of the people who pick up this novel won't finish it, and 90% of those who do won't like it. But 100%...more
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 minutes he'd be found out.
90% of the people who pick up this novel won't finish it, and 90% of those who do won't like it. But 100%...more
Apr 29, 2008
Danica
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
anyone who can read
Recommended to Danica by:
Brad Neely
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...more
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...more
Jul 06, 2012
Steve
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Recommended to Steve by:
A brainy but sadistic Goodreads group
An Approach for Simulating Text Consistent With Gravity’s Rainbow
Technical Report issued 6 July 2012 by the Simulation Lab Originating Text-based Handiwork (SLOTH)
While the exact algorithm used by Pynchon (1973) to produce Gravity’s Rainbow (henceforth GR) was never documented, we contend that the method proposed in this paper is, on average, in a repeated sampling context, observationally equivalent. As is true of any simulation, there is a deterministic component and a random component. Simu...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 cr...more
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 cr...more
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 meaning to you,...more
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 meaning to you,...more
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 to ana...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 further, 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 book...more
before i go any further, 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 book...more
Aug 17, 2007
Jasen Johns
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
paragons of perversity
Shelves:
fiction
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...more
Gravity's Rainbow endures as a challenging work of literature, and one I've re-read in its entirety twice...more
Jun 19, 2007
Daniel
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
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 control you have o...more
Dec 08, 2007
will
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
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.
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 because of all the physics....more
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 because of all the physics....more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Note to Those With The Penguin Deluxe Edition | 2 | 17 | Jun 14, 2013 04:44pm | |
| The Non-Conformis...: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon | 33 | 46 | Jun 09, 2013 03:41pm | |
| Literature and Marriage | 8 | 76 | Dec 22, 2012 01:53pm | |
| Brain Pain: * Questions, Resources, and General Banter - Gravity's Rainbow | 53 | 119 | Oct 08, 2012 12:37am | |
| Brain Pain: Discussion - Week Eight - Gravity's Rainbow - Part Four, pp. 816 - 902 (688 - 776) | 8 | 32 | Sep 06, 2012 10:59am | |
| Brain Pain: Discussion - Week Nine - Gravity's Rainbow - Conclusions/Book as a whole | 6 | 39 | Aug 19, 2012 03:05pm |
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American writer based in New York City, noted for his dense and complex works of fiction. Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon spent two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known today: V. (1963...more
More about Thomas Pynchon...
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“They're in love. Fuck the war.”
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