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‘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
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
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 comp ...more
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 atop t ...more
I've been putting off reviewing this forever, because it's my all-time favorite book. I feel like trying to explain books and music that you love is like trying to review yourself as a person. I mean, I wouldn't rate myself 5 stars (maybe like 3, which I guess means I value myself the same as Life of Pi apparently), but think about your own favorite book and how you would describe it to random people on the internet, and hopefully you understand what I mean.
This book contains what I believe to ...more
This book contains what I believe to ...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 myse
...more
Currently re-reading, May 2012!
...
Old review:
In 1974, the three-member Pulitzer Prize jury on fiction supported Gravity's Rainbow for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. However, the other eleven members of the board overturned this decision, branding the book "unreadable, turgid, overwritten and obscene".
A brilliant mess of a novel, as perhaps suggested by the wikipedia quote above, Gravity's Rainbow saw Pynchon pushing his convoluted narrative tools as far as they'd go. The book seems to be about ...more
...
Old review:
In 1974, the three-member Pulitzer Prize jury on fiction supported Gravity's Rainbow for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. However, the other eleven members of the board overturned this decision, branding the book "unreadable, turgid, overwritten and obscene".
A brilliant mess of a novel, as perhaps suggested by the wikipedia quote above, Gravity's Rainbow saw Pynchon pushing his convoluted narrative tools as far as they'd go. The book seems to be about ...more
Ken Jeong (Voice Over): What happens when three UC Santa Cruz literature Ph.D. students drop acid a week before their Hooding ceremony? A Gravity's Rainbow fan film gets made, somehow.
Fade in opening credits music (You Dropped a Bomb on Me):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17lkdq...
(VO cont'd): Just when your appetite was making a comeback from the damage caused by “Two Girls and Cup,” along comes this Emetic of an epic. Hide your sisters, your children, your dogs, and don't even think about ban ...more
Fade in opening credits music (You Dropped a Bomb on Me):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17lkdq...
(VO cont'd): Just when your appetite was making a comeback from the damage caused by “Two Girls and Cup,” along comes this Emetic of an epic. Hide your sisters, your children, your dogs, and don't even think about ban ...more
My fave. No one turns me into a drooling fanboy quite like Tom P.
Apr 13, 2012
Chris
marked it as unfinished
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
to-conquer-at-some-point
Jun 24, 2024
Jeff Jackson
is currently reading it
Feb 10, 2012
Traveller
marked it as temporarily-stalled
Mar 30, 2012
Vishal V
marked it as to-read
Apr 03, 2011
Ogreatcalamity
marked it as to-read
Apr 24, 2012
Apostolia
marked it as to-read
