Ed's review

Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
by Thomas Pynchon

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<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/395283.Gravity_s_Rainbow?utm_medium=api&amp;utm_source=blog_review" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174415677m/395283.jpg" /></a> <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/395283.Gravity_s_Rainbow?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">Gravity's Rainbow</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/235.Thomas_Pynchon">Thomas Pynchon</a><br/><br/>
  <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/804603?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review"><h3>My review</h3></a>
  rating: 5 of 5 stars<br/>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. 
<br/>
<br/>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.
  <br/><br/><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/34047?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_review">View all my reviews.</a>

Ed's review
rating:

bookshelves: most-bestest
recommended for: The Harder Corer Reader
status: Read in January, 2007

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, som...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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message 1: by Ben

03/17/2008 08:20AM

Oh wow. This review makes me want to reread this thing. Maybe my second trip through will help me understand it better.