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A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's Novel
Adding some 20 percent to the original content, this is a completely updated edition of Steven Weisenburger's indispensable guide to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. Weisenburger takes the reader page by page, often line by line, through the welter of historical references, scientific data, cultural fragments, anthropological research, jokes, and puns around which Pynch...more
Paperback, 440 pages
Published
November 1st 2006
by University of Georgia Press
(first published August 30th 1988)
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a really wonderful sourcebook, on par with Ulysses Annotated and a good bit better than Elegant Complexity. loses a star due to muddled mathematical exposition (to be expected, sigh). i was irritated by the absence of cites in a great many annotations; it is explained at the end that uncited notes reference the Times of 1944--1945, but this remains unsatisfying. whence, for instance, explanation of "crystal ship" as iv drug use? i never gathered that from the first Doors album. anyway,...more
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So goddamn useful. Your first trip through GR is supposed to be a hellacious slog so maybe it's cheating to give readers a road map, but I tell you, I never would have figured out the beginning of the book or the Kirghiz light or the hellacious "For DeMille, Fur Henchmen can't be rowing!" joke if not for this guide.
True story: I called Professor Weisenburger once on the phone because I said I wanted to interview him about a book he wrote. When he found out that I wanted to...more
True story: I called Professor Weisenburger once on the phone because I said I wanted to interview him about a book he wrote. When he found out that I wanted to...more
Jodi Lu
rated it
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review of another edition
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review of another edition
Recommends it for:
the intimidated, thorough reader. or historian.
This book was probably the only reason I finished Gravity's Rainbow (with my general feeble resolve) when so many others have failed. Reading the corresponding section in this after each chapter in GR helped formulate everything and reveal the deeper, more cryptic (and certainly historical) merits of the text that one might miss while they romp through interesting characters and complex (this is a kind, vague word choice as it's very easy to lose yourself throughout, which is sometimes fine but ...more
GR companion is a valuable resource for those who have already read GR once or twice. I wouldn't use it the first time through. There are good points about the timescheme of GR and details like April Fool's Day falling on Easter Sunday in 1945, which implies the whole book may be a joke, like Melville's Confidence Man--the work that GR most resembles. The detail work on Pynchon;s sources is of course excellent, but I am not learning as much as I expected about the characters. What would have hel...more
Indispensabile come supporto alla lettura del mostro... un piccolo neo: GR companion si limita a fornire dettagli sulle fonti e sugli eterogenei riferimenti extratestuali di Pynchon, mancando completamente ogni spunto esegetico per penetrare -anche solo superficialmente- alcuni dei misteriosi strati semantici del testo... Dommage (ovvero /que sorte!/), la soma dell'interpretazione rimane interamente sulle spalle del lettore.
What I do is read each Episode synopsis before reading each episode in GR, then refer to Weisenberger's notes as I go. Helps a ton to just get questions of who/what/where out of the way so I can enjoy what Pynchon's actually writing in a more immediate, less lost way. Even now, on my 3rd read of GR, this is not a book I'd want to be without, despite its own litany of mistakes and overstrainings....Heck, there's a Pynchon wiki for getting at those.
For readers who do not get Pynchon’s references to the The I Ching, to Tarot, to mythology, films, comic books, operas, novels, scientific concepts and historic events at the end of World War Two, Weisenburger has put together this book that supplies information about IG Farben, King Kong, Hop Harrigan, Malcolm X and the V-2 rocket. In addition, Weisenburger discusses the structure of the novel in his introduction, and supplies a short plot summary of each of the sections in the book.
Very interesting, but difficult to use as a "companion." You can't read it alongside GR, not only because they're about eight pounds each but because the companion is so comprehensive that you'd almost literally be confined to reading one sentence (in GR) at a time and then consulting the companion for meanings/references/etc. But it's also difficult to read one entire section of GR followed by the corresponding section of the companion, because with Pynchon's dense, wordy, long and ...more
A great companion to have while reading the text of GR. You learn so much more and gain alot with this handy book. It made reading GR actually fun :)
Hard to say whether I liked it or not... extremely useful, though, if you're writing a paper.
en excellent companion to the novel. i recommend reading it right alongside it.
300 pages of third-party annotations for a 750 page book. Needed more annotations.
Pretty much essential if you want to tackle this particular novel.
A very useful companion.
Probably wouldn't have finished it (and definitely wouldn't have appreciated it as much) without Weisenburger's help. You were a fanastic Sherpa for Mt. Pynchon Weisenburger.
For anyone wanting to enjoy Thomas Pynchon's masterpiece, GRavity's Rainbow, you may need a map to understand the great number of obscure references to many topics: the Brothers Grimm, rocket technology, occultism, war profiteering, plastics, etc. I have read GR three times and can attest to the usefulness of this book. It will be a key to one of the most wondrous reading experiences available.
This book was an endless help in reading Gravity's Rainbow. However, I would save it for a re-reading of the book. Just plow through Gravity's Rainbow and THEN come back to this book for a reference.
I've read Gravity's Rainbow twice now - once without this guide, and once with. The first time was a mind rape, the second was actually fun. If you ever plan on taking the journey, consider this your seat belt, and for the love of a nonexistent God, please use it.
I found it useful. Skipped around through it after having gone thru GR a good half-dozen or more times.
Reading through it now, without GR to refer to. An interesting way to read a novel, through its references. It's a hell of a lot of scholarly work.
Reading through it now, without GR to refer to. An interesting way to read a novel, through its references. It's a hell of a lot of scholarly work.
In my opinion, you absolutely need this in order to read "Gravity's Rainbow." With it, "Gravity's Rainbow" is one of my all-time favorite books.
eh this has a lot of indispensable stuff hidden with a lot of useless stuff. worth your money, and very useful, overall
Because there's bound to be stuff you missed, and Weisenburger's exegesis is pretty entertaining in its own right.
I don't think I would have understood half of Gravity's Rainbow without this book.
more confusing than the novel, if that's possible. god, i need ritalin.
Because I am not Thomas Pynchon, I needed this.
A must-have if you're reading Gravity's Rainbow
Elaine
marked it as to-read
About the genocide of the Herero's
Sarah
added it
blows. my. mind.
YOU NEED THIS.
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Steven Weisenburger works in American literary and cultural history, especially the cultural history of race, from 1800 forward. His research and teaching interests include United States history and fictions, narrative theory, African American literature, and the cultural history of racism and white supremacy in the United States, but he has also published and taught extensively on contemporary f...more
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