Erik's review of Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon

Erik's review

rating:

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

status: 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 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, mysti...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 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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message 1: by deleted member

02/02/2008 11:07AM

Erik:

Is GR really as difficult/incomprehensible as some say? If so, any tips on how to approach this one?

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message 2: by Erik

02/04/2008 08:48AM

Hi Diana,

I like your recent choices BTW. GR is sort of like Ulysses in that the time scheme lends a lot of coherence to the drama. I would say if you can handle Proustian sentences, Pynchon's "purple prose" presents no difficulty. There is also an essay I read that helped me years ago when I first read it called "Gravity's Encyclopedia" by Edward Mendelson. It was in an anthology of other good critical essays about Pynchon.

Might help.

Erik

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message 3: by deleted member

02/04/2008 01:12PM

Proust is turning out to be useful in all kinds of ways ;-)

Thanks for the input, Erik! I'll try to find that anthology.

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message 4: by Erik

02/05/2008 08:38AM

I read Proust years ago, when I was too immature to understand it. My favorite passage is where Swann realizes what he has gone through with Odette, "and she wasn't even my type!"

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message 5: by deleted member

02/05/2008 11:09AM

What makes it even worse is that he knew it when he met her. What a goof.

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Erik's review of Gravity's Rainbow

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