Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Penguin Classics (1995), Paperback, 768 pages
Description
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.
Media reviews
There’s a dirty secret tucked away in Thomas Pynchon’s novels, and it’s this: beyond all the postmodernism and paranoia, the anarchism and socialism, the investigations into global power, the forays into labor politics and feminism and critical race theory, the rocket science, the
Show More
fourth-dimensional mathematics, the philatelic conspiracies, the ’60s radicalism and everything else that has spawned 70 or 80 monographs, probably twice as many dissertations, and hundreds if not thousands of scholarly essays, his novels are full of cheesy love stories. Show Less
Those who have read Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow know that those 700+ pages add up to more than just a novel; it’s an experience. The hundreds of characters are difficult to follow, the plot is nonsensical, sex is graphically depicted, drugs are smoked out of a kazoo and a poor light
Show More
bulb goes through many humiliating experiences. But the brilliance of Gravity’s Rainbow is not in spite of its oddness but because of it. Show Less
Like one of his main characters, Pynchon in this book seems almost to be "in love, in sexual love, with his own death." His imagination--for all its glorious power and intelligence--is as limited in its way as Céline's or Jonathan Swift's. His novel is in this sense a work of paranoid genius, a
Show More
magnificent necropolis that will take its place amidst the grand detritus of our culture. Its teetering structure is greater by far than the many surrounding literary shacks and hovels. But we must look to other writers for food and warmth. Show Less
As of course is all this jammed input — a parlous challenge to the reader's perseverance. But then however much the latter may have been strained, one must pay tribute to Pynchon's plastic imagination, his stunning creative energy, and here and there the transcendent prose: "It was one of those
Show More
great iron afternoons in London: the yellow sun being teased apart by a thousand chimneys breathing, fawning upward without shame" — all marvelously descriptive of the world in which we live and are sure to die. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member nog
The most important work of fiction in my library.
Somewhere I have this amazingly convoluted chart of characters, military commands, corporations, and other entities, with scads of connecting arrows and whatnot to keep everything in some sort of perspective. I think I put that together on my fourth
Seriously, stay calm as you approach reading this book. Daunting as the size is, you will be rewarded if you hang in there, and get some help on the references that you don't understand. Hey, I was lost on all that "elect" and "preterite" stuff the first time around! Take a deep breath and dive in. The book has a lot to say about...well...everything.
I'll give up my copy of Gravity's Rainbow when they pry it from my dead fist!
Somewhere I have this amazingly convoluted chart of characters, military commands, corporations, and other entities, with scads of connecting arrows and whatnot to keep everything in some sort of perspective. I think I put that together on my fourth
Show More
read-through of the book, and it's about 4 square feet in size. As a dude who makes his living writing software, I've considered putting the whole kit and kaboodle into some mammoth HTML document hyperlinked all over the place. But I'm basically too lazy to do that, and anyway, why not stop by the PynchonWiki instead?Seriously, stay calm as you approach reading this book. Daunting as the size is, you will be rewarded if you hang in there, and get some help on the references that you don't understand. Hey, I was lost on all that "elect" and "preterite" stuff the first time around! Take a deep breath and dive in. The book has a lot to say about...well...everything.
I'll give up my copy of Gravity's Rainbow when they pry it from my dead fist!
Show Less
LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini
My copy has a blurb on the back that's all "Vonnegut. Heller. Barth. And now . . . THOMAS PYNCHON." Which is a little bit silly, because the resemblances to those books that were also popular in the sixties are, shall we say, a bit superficial. Vonnegut and Heller--WWII absurdism--two planes.
To me, it feels more like a cross between "Ulysses" and psychedelic seventies conspiracy fiction, like the "Illuminatus" trilogy. Like, he does with imagery what Joyce does with language, and what (as I was just saying on another one of these book threads) Thomas Mann does with ideas in "The Magic Mountain"--smears 'em around, makes 'em into a palimpsest (ewww, "pinworm preserves" just came back to me). Some of the sexual-superhero stuff has aged a bit badly, but I love that sort of post-apocalyptic dancing-bear minigenre, especially when displaced into the past (see the second half of "The Tin Drum"), and it makes the sex encounters a little less self-conscious and self-congratulatory than in, say "Naked Lunch", or if Pynchon had set the book in 1971. But only a little, and while we've all been over that cultural-Tourettes aspect of the Sixties that just had to happen, honestly, I challenge any of you to name me one whip- or shit-based sex scene that still seems vital in 2009.
I like Roger Mexico and Jessica and I'm glad they came back before the end. In fact, Slothrop is the lamest of all the major characters and I would have liked to see him pop in as a caricature the way Texas Major Marvy does, and maybe make Pirate Prentice or Tchitcherine or Der Springer or Enzian the protagonist, or try to strike a balance between four or five of them, with machinations. I guess that "America: We fight harder and fuck longer" stuff just bores me (but of course, getting yer dudgeon up about that is sort of the Canadian disease). And actually, since writing the above (in a Facebook comment, shamelessly copied and pasted for this review), I have seen Slothrop disappear again in the last section, read Pynchon's cristalline rendering of his decoalescence, and 'scool--he's no two-fisted maverick, but neither is he a caricature, or a tragedy--he's got aspects of 'em all. Ascend into myth in your rocketman hat, Tyrone, and let me hear about someone else's encounters with everwilling Eurocunt, and we're cool.
One thing I've seen elsewhere but which Pynchon really overboards on is what I'm gonna call "serial autoecholalia": halfway through a book, a word appears, and it's unusual or being used in a notable way, and then all of a sudden you're deluged with it because the author is all "hey! this word exists!" and just as you''re like "fuck off with "that Pointsman" and "that Baltimore" and that this and that that out of Slothrop's mouth, you get into "preterite", and dude, using grammatical terms for evocation is just--you have to be nine Shakespeares; and that gives way to a flirtation with "usw.", and then there's something else, and on the last page you get one more "preterite" just to twist the knife. Compulsive! Annoying!
But hey, rocket, rainbow, freaky shit, Peenemunde, the Kirghiz Light, this book has texture, and the World War II angle is kind of rad--it's like, the world is already falling apart, so you're cool with the text falling apart, and the anachronisms are cute rather than offputting (funny how there was a tradition, however attenuated, of bohemianism and zoot suits and shit for the more lettered elements Sixties/Seventies counterculture to fall back on, but then Philistinism wins at a crawl and modern man has to put up with the long tail of that "the world began with rock 'n' roll" shit.
Here is something lovely:
"She's still with you, though, harder to see these days, nearly invisible as a glass of gray lemonade in a twilit room . . . still she is there, cool and acid and sweet, waiting to be swallowed down to touch your deepest cells, to work among your saddest dreams."
And:
"When something real is about to happen to you, you go toward it with a transparent surface parallel to your own front that hums and bisects both your ears, making eyes very alert. The light bends toward chalky blue. Your skin aches. At last: something real."
And, "The object of life is to make sure you die a weird death. To make sure that however it finds you, it will find you under very weird circumstances." Heady stuff. In summation, Gravity's Rainbow reminds me of lots of other books I like and am enjoying it very much.
Show More
Barth--American maximalism--I think that's only one.To me, it feels more like a cross between "Ulysses" and psychedelic seventies conspiracy fiction, like the "Illuminatus" trilogy. Like, he does with imagery what Joyce does with language, and what (as I was just saying on another one of these book threads) Thomas Mann does with ideas in "The Magic Mountain"--smears 'em around, makes 'em into a palimpsest (ewww, "pinworm preserves" just came back to me). Some of the sexual-superhero stuff has aged a bit badly, but I love that sort of post-apocalyptic dancing-bear minigenre, especially when displaced into the past (see the second half of "The Tin Drum"), and it makes the sex encounters a little less self-conscious and self-congratulatory than in, say "Naked Lunch", or if Pynchon had set the book in 1971. But only a little, and while we've all been over that cultural-Tourettes aspect of the Sixties that just had to happen, honestly, I challenge any of you to name me one whip- or shit-based sex scene that still seems vital in 2009.
I like Roger Mexico and Jessica and I'm glad they came back before the end. In fact, Slothrop is the lamest of all the major characters and I would have liked to see him pop in as a caricature the way Texas Major Marvy does, and maybe make Pirate Prentice or Tchitcherine or Der Springer or Enzian the protagonist, or try to strike a balance between four or five of them, with machinations. I guess that "America: We fight harder and fuck longer" stuff just bores me (but of course, getting yer dudgeon up about that is sort of the Canadian disease). And actually, since writing the above (in a Facebook comment, shamelessly copied and pasted for this review), I have seen Slothrop disappear again in the last section, read Pynchon's cristalline rendering of his decoalescence, and 'scool--he's no two-fisted maverick, but neither is he a caricature, or a tragedy--he's got aspects of 'em all. Ascend into myth in your rocketman hat, Tyrone, and let me hear about someone else's encounters with everwilling Eurocunt, and we're cool.
One thing I've seen elsewhere but which Pynchon really overboards on is what I'm gonna call "serial autoecholalia": halfway through a book, a word appears, and it's unusual or being used in a notable way, and then all of a sudden you're deluged with it because the author is all "hey! this word exists!" and just as you''re like "fuck off with "that Pointsman" and "that Baltimore" and that this and that that out of Slothrop's mouth, you get into "preterite", and dude, using grammatical terms for evocation is just--you have to be nine Shakespeares; and that gives way to a flirtation with "usw.", and then there's something else, and on the last page you get one more "preterite" just to twist the knife. Compulsive! Annoying!
But hey, rocket, rainbow, freaky shit, Peenemunde, the Kirghiz Light, this book has texture, and the World War II angle is kind of rad--it's like, the world is already falling apart, so you're cool with the text falling apart, and the anachronisms are cute rather than offputting (funny how there was a tradition, however attenuated, of bohemianism and zoot suits and shit for the more lettered elements Sixties/Seventies counterculture to fall back on, but then Philistinism wins at a crawl and modern man has to put up with the long tail of that "the world began with rock 'n' roll" shit.
Here is something lovely:
"She's still with you, though, harder to see these days, nearly invisible as a glass of gray lemonade in a twilit room . . . still she is there, cool and acid and sweet, waiting to be swallowed down to touch your deepest cells, to work among your saddest dreams."
And:
"When something real is about to happen to you, you go toward it with a transparent surface parallel to your own front that hums and bisects both your ears, making eyes very alert. The light bends toward chalky blue. Your skin aches. At last: something real."
And, "The object of life is to make sure you die a weird death. To make sure that however it finds you, it will find you under very weird circumstances." Heady stuff. In summation, Gravity's Rainbow reminds me of lots of other books I like and am enjoying it very much.
Show Less
LibraryThing member myfanwy
This was one of those books that I finally picked up after many recommendations. I cannot help but compare it to that other tome of more recent years, Infinite Jest. Both authors have a love of tangents and a style that demands your attention and indulgence. The difference is that David Foster
The book. I'm not entirely sure what it's about. There is no particular plot, one nominally main character amongst the hundred others, all interconnected in some way. The American soldier Slothrop who sleeps with the German witch Geli who loves the Russian soldier Tschitscherine who wants to destroy his African half-brother Enzian who longs after his lover/sadist Captian Blicero who used as his sex slave the Dutch spy Katje who slept with Slothrop. A neatly closed circle. But all these characters spend the book wandering lost through post-war Germany, never finding one another. In fact, I believe the real arc of the book, if one can be found, is the personal disintigration of Slothrop who is inexorably tied to the creation of the secret 00000 rocket. He enters the Zone (occupied Germany) on a quest and slowly loses himself as he changes outfits. He loses his American uniform and dons a British one, then a Zoot suit, then a Rocketman outfit, then a tux, then a Russian uniform, and finally a giant plush pig suit, whereupon he has lost all sense of who he is. He is the ultimate DP (displaced person).
But the distracting part of the book is the authors obsession with paranoia and the penis. I'm afraid I'll have to get a little graphic here to really let you know. In amongst this higher arc, Pynchon takes every opportunity, and I mean every to describe in pornographic detail every sexual act/fetish you can think of. Um, perhaps necrophilia wasn't there, but certainly characters in the book dreamed or had sex with men, women, children, twins, midgets, horses, octopuses, and with whips and latex and fur-lined cuffs ... it was a veritable Green Eggs and Ham of sexual fetishes. And if it were just about sex, that would almost be okay, but it was really just about the penis. You couldn't go five pages without having the state of erection of some character mentioned or some metaphor made. I mean, the cigar, sure, the rocket, yeah, but the rainbow? "A stout rainbow cock driven down out of the pubic clouds into Earth, green wet valleyed Earth..." I mean, Pynchon was obsessed!
So, I'm not sure I get what was so wonderful about this book. The structure of it disintegrates following the same disintegration of Slothrop's personality. Perhaps I've read too much modern lit to truly appreciate the loose dream-like writing style. It's like watching the Matrix after seeing some other movie with bullet-time photography. It's just not as impressive. Is this good? It certainly had it's moments. But I will not be re-reading this. It's just not that good.
Show More
Wallace manages to create his opus out of many distinct voices. Pynchon's characters are all followed in the same dreamy lyrical prose. I found myself just delving in. Each 'chapter' was a pool of loosely interrelated images and thoughts to immerse yourself in, and god forbid you set it aside in the middle because he certainly wasn't going to bother you with a structure you could return to. The book. I'm not entirely sure what it's about. There is no particular plot, one nominally main character amongst the hundred others, all interconnected in some way. The American soldier Slothrop who sleeps with the German witch Geli who loves the Russian soldier Tschitscherine who wants to destroy his African half-brother Enzian who longs after his lover/sadist Captian Blicero who used as his sex slave the Dutch spy Katje who slept with Slothrop. A neatly closed circle. But all these characters spend the book wandering lost through post-war Germany, never finding one another. In fact, I believe the real arc of the book, if one can be found, is the personal disintigration of Slothrop who is inexorably tied to the creation of the secret 00000 rocket. He enters the Zone (occupied Germany) on a quest and slowly loses himself as he changes outfits. He loses his American uniform and dons a British one, then a Zoot suit, then a Rocketman outfit, then a tux, then a Russian uniform, and finally a giant plush pig suit, whereupon he has lost all sense of who he is. He is the ultimate DP (displaced person).
But the distracting part of the book is the authors obsession with paranoia and the penis. I'm afraid I'll have to get a little graphic here to really let you know. In amongst this higher arc, Pynchon takes every opportunity, and I mean every to describe in pornographic detail every sexual act/fetish you can think of. Um, perhaps necrophilia wasn't there, but certainly characters in the book dreamed or had sex with men, women, children, twins, midgets, horses, octopuses, and with whips and latex and fur-lined cuffs ... it was a veritable Green Eggs and Ham of sexual fetishes. And if it were just about sex, that would almost be okay, but it was really just about the penis. You couldn't go five pages without having the state of erection of some character mentioned or some metaphor made. I mean, the cigar, sure, the rocket, yeah, but the rainbow? "A stout rainbow cock driven down out of the pubic clouds into Earth, green wet valleyed Earth..." I mean, Pynchon was obsessed!
So, I'm not sure I get what was so wonderful about this book. The structure of it disintegrates following the same disintegration of Slothrop's personality. Perhaps I've read too much modern lit to truly appreciate the loose dream-like writing style. It's like watching the Matrix after seeing some other movie with bullet-time photography. It's just not as impressive. Is this good? It certainly had it's moments. But I will not be re-reading this. It's just not that good.
Show Less
LibraryThing member JaneSteen
I can’t even begin to encompass what Gravity’s Rainbow’s about – I know that there’s at least one companion book out there (costing more than the novel itself) to explain it all to you. I didn’t purchase it, as a) I’m a skinflint and b) I like to approach a book at the first reading
It was published far back in the mists of time, i.e. 1973, an era when drugs were cool and books about drugs were just the hottest thing out there. I remember letting Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, published at about the same time, percolate into my then teenage brain and thinking wow, this is deep because I don’t understand it. Could it be that Gravity’s Rainbow has the same effect on the reading public? Not that it’s about drugs, directly, you understand. My point, I think, is that getting all awestruck about a book just because it’s difficult to grasp is an erroneous approach.
Well I’m four paragraphs in, and still haven’t said what GR’s about. How Pynchonesque of me. Well, it’s about the V2 rocket, WWII, the Allied occupation of Germany after the defeat thereof, the beginnings of the Cold War in the contest between the USA and Russia to scoop up as much Nazi technology as possible, paranoia, mind-conditioning, espionage, sadism, masochism, power… The themes of Rocket, Sex, Excrement, and Death recur as relentlessly as pornography.
The obvious penis/rocket metaphor is given human shape as Slothrop, a character with so little personality that even the author is compelled to remark on that at one point. Conditioned in infancy, Slothrop is believed by those who control him to be able to indicate an incoming V2 by having an erection; he is therefore trained and sent out into the Zone (which seems to equate to Germany under Allied/Russian occupation but also has a symbolic value) to find a very special version of the Rocket by following his, well, not his nose. And the trouble with Slothrop is, the novel’s much more interesting without him, so you get a brilliant beginning, a long Slothrop Desert in the middle, and a somewhat interesting last section when Slothrop has sort of faded into the scenery. I got so tired of Slothrop’s penis at one point in the Desert that I stopped reading the novel for two weeks.
I haven’t read any other books by Pynchon, so I don’t know if the writing method employed in GR is typical of him, or confined to this book. He tends to shift suddenly from one subject to another, launching himself off a random reference into a new tangent at variable rates of frequency. In the first, and by far the best, third of the book, his tangents have a way of coming full circle, but once Slothrop is released across Europe, Pynchon’s train of thought wanders off with him and never returns, although the last part of the book is, mercifully, a bit more coherent. It also contains plenty of doggerel, snatches of song, and arcane references to secret societies and mysticism.
Still, as disjointed as the narrative may be, there are certainly plenty of unifying images: erections, the Rocket, excrement, inventively imaginative public toilets, drug dealers, prostitutes, and bad taste. Pynchon excels at the latter, and I must admit that the scene where Slothrop, in a hot air balloon, is being chased by a planeload of American military singing filthy limericks is one of the high points of the book. The scene where the characters begin making up disgusting, alliterative foods (menstrual marmalade, ringworm relish and the like) at dinner until the guests begin to vomit is decidedly Monty Python. There is also a very dark side to Pynchon: racism, homoeroticism with a homophobic edge, coprophagy, sadism and pedophilia are not left out of the mix. My local library declines to stock a copy of the novel, and when I tried to get an inter-library loan, it never arrived. If I were Slothrop, I would think that They are exercising censorship…
Show More
without context, to experience it as a new meeting of minds. My purchase came with some hype: “The most profound and accomplished American novel since the end of World War II” is the proud boast on the back cover of my copy. I feel a bit like the child who pointed out that the Emperor had no clothes on when I say, as I think I must, “No it’s not.”It was published far back in the mists of time, i.e. 1973, an era when drugs were cool and books about drugs were just the hottest thing out there. I remember letting Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, published at about the same time, percolate into my then teenage brain and thinking wow, this is deep because I don’t understand it. Could it be that Gravity’s Rainbow has the same effect on the reading public? Not that it’s about drugs, directly, you understand. My point, I think, is that getting all awestruck about a book just because it’s difficult to grasp is an erroneous approach.
Well I’m four paragraphs in, and still haven’t said what GR’s about. How Pynchonesque of me. Well, it’s about the V2 rocket, WWII, the Allied occupation of Germany after the defeat thereof, the beginnings of the Cold War in the contest between the USA and Russia to scoop up as much Nazi technology as possible, paranoia, mind-conditioning, espionage, sadism, masochism, power… The themes of Rocket, Sex, Excrement, and Death recur as relentlessly as pornography.
The obvious penis/rocket metaphor is given human shape as Slothrop, a character with so little personality that even the author is compelled to remark on that at one point. Conditioned in infancy, Slothrop is believed by those who control him to be able to indicate an incoming V2 by having an erection; he is therefore trained and sent out into the Zone (which seems to equate to Germany under Allied/Russian occupation but also has a symbolic value) to find a very special version of the Rocket by following his, well, not his nose. And the trouble with Slothrop is, the novel’s much more interesting without him, so you get a brilliant beginning, a long Slothrop Desert in the middle, and a somewhat interesting last section when Slothrop has sort of faded into the scenery. I got so tired of Slothrop’s penis at one point in the Desert that I stopped reading the novel for two weeks.
I haven’t read any other books by Pynchon, so I don’t know if the writing method employed in GR is typical of him, or confined to this book. He tends to shift suddenly from one subject to another, launching himself off a random reference into a new tangent at variable rates of frequency. In the first, and by far the best, third of the book, his tangents have a way of coming full circle, but once Slothrop is released across Europe, Pynchon’s train of thought wanders off with him and never returns, although the last part of the book is, mercifully, a bit more coherent. It also contains plenty of doggerel, snatches of song, and arcane references to secret societies and mysticism.
Still, as disjointed as the narrative may be, there are certainly plenty of unifying images: erections, the Rocket, excrement, inventively imaginative public toilets, drug dealers, prostitutes, and bad taste. Pynchon excels at the latter, and I must admit that the scene where Slothrop, in a hot air balloon, is being chased by a planeload of American military singing filthy limericks is one of the high points of the book. The scene where the characters begin making up disgusting, alliterative foods (menstrual marmalade, ringworm relish and the like) at dinner until the guests begin to vomit is decidedly Monty Python. There is also a very dark side to Pynchon: racism, homoeroticism with a homophobic edge, coprophagy, sadism and pedophilia are not left out of the mix. My local library declines to stock a copy of the novel, and when I tried to get an inter-library loan, it never arrived. If I were Slothrop, I would think that They are exercising censorship…
Show Less
LibraryThing member littlegeek
Pynchon has a lot to answer for, in my opinion, yet Gravity's Rainbow is one of the most haunting books I've ever read. Worth the effort, because there are payoffs on every page. I forgive the 3-page-long sentences because somewhere in there will be the perfect phrase to describe a mind-state so
Show More
fleeting you may never have actually noticed it before. And when all is said and done, he actually has a lot to say about the world, it's not just sturm and drang. Thank you, Tom, and damn you, too! Show Less
LibraryThing member fuzzy_patters
I'm really not sure what to think of Gravity's Rainbow. There were times when I could not put the book down. There were other times when I just could not pick it up. At times Pynchon's writing carried me away into his world that is almost our world- but not quite. At other times, I felt like I was
Show More
reading the same thing over and over until I became bored with it. Then, there were the times when the book just sailed over my head. I think I liked it, but I'm not really sure. Overall, I think it had the potential to be great but it lost its way somewhere but maybe that's just what They want me to think. Show Less
LibraryThing member MerricMaker
There are good books, and then there are "important books." A good book tells you a story, paints characters and scenes well, but might not necessarily be called literary art. "Gravity’s Rainbow" is an important book. It does odd things with narrative structure and character construction, it
All that said, this book is beautifully written. If you don’t mind having no idea what is going on or who happens to wear the narrator hat at the moment (or which character is on stage at that moment) it is a lovely book. While I would strongly encourage anyone interested in fiction to read this book, I would suggest a particular mindset. Put your evaluative machinery on standby and, without sounding too California-ish, just read the words…dude.
Show More
pushes writing as an artform in unusual and important directions. While this book is significant from an artistic standpoint, it isn’t the sort of thing one casually reads, this isn’t the latest Harry Potter novel.All that said, this book is beautifully written. If you don’t mind having no idea what is going on or who happens to wear the narrator hat at the moment (or which character is on stage at that moment) it is a lovely book. While I would strongly encourage anyone interested in fiction to read this book, I would suggest a particular mindset. Put your evaluative machinery on standby and, without sounding too California-ish, just read the words…dude.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ThePortPorts
I thought about adding a "WTF" shelf just for this book. Alas, better judgement.
I know many people love this book. I know this because I googled and read many people's ideas about this book as I trudged through these pages. I hoped, dreamed, indeed, I YEARNED for some help. How to read this
Alas, no matter how much people loved this book, they simply couldn't help me see their light.
I'll take the blame. Maybe I'm too plot-bound (though I do, indeed, love many books that are light on plot). Maybe I like characters too much. Maybe the poop-eating scene turned my stomach so much I read the rest of the novel prepared to shut my eyes, to not look.
Maybe. But really... This book just mystified me. For the first quarter or so I took notes. I thought it was helping, and then it wasn't. I tried re-reading. I tried reading more slowly. I tried shorter reading periods, longer reading periods. Nothing worked.
Fact: I just hated this book. Never in my working memory have I dreaded five weeks of "pleasure reading" so thoroughly. I found myself simply reading to plow through words, enjoying the periodic clever turn of phrase (and there are quite a few of these), trying to catch some gist of something amidst the clutter of words that just felt like... snippets of text.
I could not find the train of thought.
This book passed me by. For five whole weeks.
I never take five weeks to finish a blasted novel.
I know many people love this book. I know this because I googled and read many people's ideas about this book as I trudged through these pages. I hoped, dreamed, indeed, I YEARNED for some help. How to read this
Show More
thing?Alas, no matter how much people loved this book, they simply couldn't help me see their light.
I'll take the blame. Maybe I'm too plot-bound (though I do, indeed, love many books that are light on plot). Maybe I like characters too much. Maybe the poop-eating scene turned my stomach so much I read the rest of the novel prepared to shut my eyes, to not look.
Maybe. But really... This book just mystified me. For the first quarter or so I took notes. I thought it was helping, and then it wasn't. I tried re-reading. I tried reading more slowly. I tried shorter reading periods, longer reading periods. Nothing worked.
Fact: I just hated this book. Never in my working memory have I dreaded five weeks of "pleasure reading" so thoroughly. I found myself simply reading to plow through words, enjoying the periodic clever turn of phrase (and there are quite a few of these), trying to catch some gist of something amidst the clutter of words that just felt like... snippets of text.
I could not find the train of thought.
This book passed me by. For five whole weeks.
I never take five weeks to finish a blasted novel.
Show Less
LibraryThing member clong
This is a hard book to rate and review. It took me about five months to read. It’s a book where you often have to reread pages multiple times to figure out what is going on. It’s a book where you often have to go back and review some scene from 300 pages earlier to remind yourself who a
There are many stunningly great things about the book: it is often exceedingly funny; it has brilliantly surreal digression after brilliantly surreal digression; it makes you curious about history; it makes you think about today; and it offers a huge cast of colorful, fascinating characters. On the other hand, it is an exceedingly dense and often confusing book, which at times loses momentum and at times wades into quite uncomfortable territory. Characters will pop up and dominate the narrative for several pages, only to disappear forever…or for several hundred pages at least. And sometimes when they come back, you’re not really sure whether they’re the same person or not.
In Pynchon’s world man is a horny, perverted animal, and even the most paranoid amongst us isn’t nearly as paranoid as we all should be. Our protagonist Slothrop is one of the least interesting characters in the book, a sort of everyman who bumbles his way through a fantastic world.
Think Catch 22 meets Ulysses meets Justine meets The Sound of Music, and you’ll have some idea of what Gravity’s Rainbow is all about. Like Ulysses, I imagine this is a book that would get better each time you read it. And I will plan to reread it, but not for a few years.
Show More
character is and what they’re all about. There are many stunningly great things about the book: it is often exceedingly funny; it has brilliantly surreal digression after brilliantly surreal digression; it makes you curious about history; it makes you think about today; and it offers a huge cast of colorful, fascinating characters. On the other hand, it is an exceedingly dense and often confusing book, which at times loses momentum and at times wades into quite uncomfortable territory. Characters will pop up and dominate the narrative for several pages, only to disappear forever…or for several hundred pages at least. And sometimes when they come back, you’re not really sure whether they’re the same person or not.
In Pynchon’s world man is a horny, perverted animal, and even the most paranoid amongst us isn’t nearly as paranoid as we all should be. Our protagonist Slothrop is one of the least interesting characters in the book, a sort of everyman who bumbles his way through a fantastic world.
Think Catch 22 meets Ulysses meets Justine meets The Sound of Music, and you’ll have some idea of what Gravity’s Rainbow is all about. Like Ulysses, I imagine this is a book that would get better each time you read it. And I will plan to reread it, but not for a few years.
Show Less
LibraryThing member davehartl
Heave the brickbats, brand me a mindless literary clod. For me, this is the greatest novel I've ever read. Period. If I was an author, I would hope fervently for the ability to one day do one-tenth of what this book does.
A friend turned me on to this book in 1975. I've read it four times, the last
Greatest. Novel. Ever.
Do your worst.
A friend turned me on to this book in 1975. I've read it four times, the last
Show More
time with the Companion guide. It gets better each time. I stand in awe at the depth of imagination and intellect that created this reality.Greatest. Novel. Ever.
Do your worst.
Show Less
LibraryThing member figre
That’s it. I give up. Look, I’ve plowed through many books – good, bad, pathetic (think The Time Traveler’s Wife), insufferable, insert your favorite adjective here. I had to stop after 30 pages of Ulysses, but I realized I wasn’t in the frame of mind to properly read it and will return
Show More
some day. But this complex piece of gobbledy-gook is not worth any more of my time. 329 of 759 pages and I give up. In fact, I gave up a month or two ago, but thought I might go back. This week I returned, and I just can’t get up the gumption to care. I checked some reviews to see what I might be missing. Seems I got the plot. What I didn’t get is why I should care about plunging my way through this Sargasso Sea of a novel to get to that plot or an understanding of the relevance it all has. And reading the reviews I learned that I missed the nuances within that sea – that the number of sections in each chapter matches the eternal equinox or some such psycho-babble. Maybe it’s all true – but I just don’t get it. And I just don’t want it. Show Less
LibraryThing member browner56
If you have not experienced Pynchon before, getting ready to have your life taken over for a while. I bought this book when I was a freshman in college at the suggestion of my Political Science professor and, after several unsuccessful initial attempts, it remained unread for more than 25 years.
That this is the mother of all war novels is at once an accurate and highly misleading statement; it is a ride unlike any other that I have taken. From reading the myriad reviews on this site and others, Pynchon clearly is not to everyone's taste--if you are not hooked within the first 75-100 pages, you probably never will be. I found his (very) playful command of the language to be both impressive and occasionally enthralling. Reading this novel was well worth the effort, once the time was finally right for me.
Show More
Awhile back, I got sick of the thing sitting on my bookshelf mocking me and so I finally started and finished it, along with the aid of Weisenburger’s 'A Gravity’ Rainbow Companion.' (The fact that a 900-page novel requires a 300-page companion to explain all of the embedded allegories and allusions says a lot, but I’m not sure what exactly.) That this is the mother of all war novels is at once an accurate and highly misleading statement; it is a ride unlike any other that I have taken. From reading the myriad reviews on this site and others, Pynchon clearly is not to everyone's taste--if you are not hooked within the first 75-100 pages, you probably never will be. I found his (very) playful command of the language to be both impressive and occasionally enthralling. Reading this novel was well worth the effort, once the time was finally right for me.
Show Less
LibraryThing member teow
When I finished Gravity's Rainbow, I didn't know what to think. It's an incredibly complicated novel with a lot to resolve, and it leaves a lot of questions unanswered. It stuck with me for days as I mulled it over, and I reached the conclusion that everything I needed to be fully satisfied was
It also has some hysterically funny moments. For example, the scene where Slothrop is faced with the horrors of British candy is one of the funniest things I've ever read.
I'd highly recommend it.
Show More
there if I cared to look. I've never read another book so incredibly complex; it asks a lot of the reader and gives a lot in return. It seems like it's almost too much to handle at first, but once you get through the first third or so and out into The Zone the disjointed starting threads start weaving together. It also has some hysterically funny moments. For example, the scene where Slothrop is faced with the horrors of British candy is one of the funniest things I've ever read.
I'd highly recommend it.
Show Less
LibraryThing member ijustgetbored
everything AND the kitchen sink AND your neighbor's kitchen sink AND quite possibly a kitchen sink plucked from another dimension
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
Set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II, the novel centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military, and, in particular, the quest undertaken by several characters to uncover the secret of a mysterious device named the "Schwarzgerät" ("black device")
Frequently digressive, Pynchon subverts many of the traditional elements of plot and character development, and traverses detailed, specialist knowledge drawn from a wide range of disciplines. The novel has been praised for its innovation and complexity, though the acclaim has been criticized by some.
Show More
that is to be installed in a rocket with the serial number "00000."Frequently digressive, Pynchon subverts many of the traditional elements of plot and character development, and traverses detailed, specialist knowledge drawn from a wide range of disciplines. The novel has been praised for its innovation and complexity, though the acclaim has been criticized by some.
Show Less
LibraryThing member antao
I think I found it difficult in the sense of its denseness in fact. Well, I find it hard to answer the “difficulty” question with much certainty; I'm equivocating. I don't love it all equally no, that's not the case. There are parts that I prefer immeasurably to others however, simply because I
To take, again, a bit of care with words: for me, Donne and Keats and Dickinson are "difficult", in that seeing the image(s) and working with the syntax both to come to understand the meaning-generation in the poem and to enable the emotion in me to be clear (though not dissolute for its discernment) are slow and toilsome. Others may find these poets 'easy'. Proust is, for me, "difficult"; a lot of times, I have to rewind sentences and whole pages to figure out what he's saying. Again, other readers might find Proust to be a smooth cruise.
I gulped Gravity's Rainbow in a couple of weeks, I think now because the sophomoric humor and 'cabals and caries' intellection were just the companionship I then needed. "Dense"- lots of characters, situations, ideas, cleverness- sure. "Difficult"? Not that anything potent doesn't continue to mean 'more' because it continues to mean differently, nor that effective writing is ever controlled by one's understanding of it, but I didn't, and don't, think Pynchon is, let me say, 'hard' to read because one doesn't know what's happening in his pages. That's not burdensomely much rarefaction "to admit" to, is it? I'm of the opinion that a novel should be as long or as short as its contents demand. I have conquered such novels of length as “Underworld”, “The Runaway Life”, “Ulysses” and “2666”, all of which I feel were not too long, as there power relied on their length. I do feel however that a novel will suffer financially if it exceeds 500 pages but this is just one of the many casualties of the era "I want it big and right now" generation.
I think you'll find, if you keep reading, that there is depth of character in Pynchon (save where, as in all fiction, we're dealing with one-liners). You'll also find, if you get through it, that you'll have to read it again someday. And it'll be a different book when you do, characters included. Whereas a James Michener or Dan Brown tome will never, ever change. Ever read that paradigm work of fiction, The Bible? Is there "depth of character" there? Read, e.g., the story of David's career- all we're given as description is that he's a ruddy good-lookin' kid. That's all. (Which is about as descriptive as Biblical narration ever gets- what did Abraham look like? Not a word!) But in a few books you learn a great deal about (his) character. Actually, if you read the painfully succinct account of "The binding of Isaac" in Genesis, you'll find a great deal of Abraham's character revealed as well. There's more than one way to get there.
Bottom-Line: Pynchon employs paranoia and conspiracy themes in his work because those are the warp and woof of America's Puritan heritage. Which, although most present-day Americans wouldn't recognize it, is no less present than the air we breathe. Pynchon's family tree is entwined in that heritage; William Pynchon, the first in the new world, wrote a theological treatise titled The “Meritorious Price of Our Redemption”, published in 1650, denounced as heretical and publicly burned. In “Gravity's Rainbow”, Tyrone Slothrop's ancestor William writes a treatise titled “On Preterition”, which suffers a similar fate. Plenty of clues there as to what Pynchon's up to! But it took me about 200 pages before I even worked out where I was and what I was doing there...
Show More
prefer I'm not sure whether that persuades me that it would be 'better' in some sense without them. I don't have the figures for specific chapters with me but I do know that Joyce added a lot to some of the later chapters - from Oxen of the Sun to Ithaca I think - meaning that the manuscript expanded in proof. I think you notice this as you read it, right? On balance I'm not entirely convinced how 'necessary' some of the parts of the sections are, e.g., the example of Nausicaa would be a good sample of that. Still, I wouldn't want this to be a judgement too forcefully made - sometimes length, in my opinion, can be used not simply as 'story' or 'padding' but a sense of the passing of the time itself or a changing impression of the situation as it continues. For example, to some degree if Nausicaa was a great degree shorter I would be wary that the joke was too easy, the more critical parallel, ironical perhaps, less so.To take, again, a bit of care with words: for me, Donne and Keats and Dickinson are "difficult", in that seeing the image(s) and working with the syntax both to come to understand the meaning-generation in the poem and to enable the emotion in me to be clear (though not dissolute for its discernment) are slow and toilsome. Others may find these poets 'easy'. Proust is, for me, "difficult"; a lot of times, I have to rewind sentences and whole pages to figure out what he's saying. Again, other readers might find Proust to be a smooth cruise.
I gulped Gravity's Rainbow in a couple of weeks, I think now because the sophomoric humor and 'cabals and caries' intellection were just the companionship I then needed. "Dense"- lots of characters, situations, ideas, cleverness- sure. "Difficult"? Not that anything potent doesn't continue to mean 'more' because it continues to mean differently, nor that effective writing is ever controlled by one's understanding of it, but I didn't, and don't, think Pynchon is, let me say, 'hard' to read because one doesn't know what's happening in his pages. That's not burdensomely much rarefaction "to admit" to, is it? I'm of the opinion that a novel should be as long or as short as its contents demand. I have conquered such novels of length as “Underworld”, “The Runaway Life”, “Ulysses” and “2666”, all of which I feel were not too long, as there power relied on their length. I do feel however that a novel will suffer financially if it exceeds 500 pages but this is just one of the many casualties of the era "I want it big and right now" generation.
I think you'll find, if you keep reading, that there is depth of character in Pynchon (save where, as in all fiction, we're dealing with one-liners). You'll also find, if you get through it, that you'll have to read it again someday. And it'll be a different book when you do, characters included. Whereas a James Michener or Dan Brown tome will never, ever change. Ever read that paradigm work of fiction, The Bible? Is there "depth of character" there? Read, e.g., the story of David's career- all we're given as description is that he's a ruddy good-lookin' kid. That's all. (Which is about as descriptive as Biblical narration ever gets- what did Abraham look like? Not a word!) But in a few books you learn a great deal about (his) character. Actually, if you read the painfully succinct account of "The binding of Isaac" in Genesis, you'll find a great deal of Abraham's character revealed as well. There's more than one way to get there.
Bottom-Line: Pynchon employs paranoia and conspiracy themes in his work because those are the warp and woof of America's Puritan heritage. Which, although most present-day Americans wouldn't recognize it, is no less present than the air we breathe. Pynchon's family tree is entwined in that heritage; William Pynchon, the first in the new world, wrote a theological treatise titled The “Meritorious Price of Our Redemption”, published in 1650, denounced as heretical and publicly burned. In “Gravity's Rainbow”, Tyrone Slothrop's ancestor William writes a treatise titled “On Preterition”, which suffers a similar fate. Plenty of clues there as to what Pynchon's up to! But it took me about 200 pages before I even worked out where I was and what I was doing there...
Show Less
LibraryThing member Michael_Lilly
Too depressing and bleak. I could not finish it.
LibraryThing member DRFP
I read Gravity's Rainbow within a few months of William T. Vollmann's equally dense and WW2-focused Europe Central, and it made for interesting comparative reading (the former focused on the forces behind war and the later more on the personalities involved and how it shapes them).
Anyway.....
Anyway.....
Show More
Gravity's Rainbow doesn't make it onto my favourite's list, but it's undeniably a great book and, without having read Mason & Dixon or Against the Day, is the best thing I've read by Pynchon. It takes a lot of the themes of The Crying of Lot 49 and magnifies them to great effect. Some passages of the novel are better than others - Part 3 in the zone gets a little tedious at times - but overall the suffocating atmosphere of this is brilliant. Dense, dark days of war apply their weight and the sense of paranoia is palpable. Like in 2666, another mammoth tome of postmodern literature, the atmosphere is all important and brilliantly evoked. Slothrop might not end the novel a particularly rounded, or even that interesting character, but the world he inhabits pulls you in and is hard to escape. Show Less
LibraryThing member CapitainImperio
What an annoying book! A very talented writer chose to write a long, frequently tedious shaggy dog story.
LibraryThing member Ghost_Boy
WHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST READ?
Even though I got very little out of this, it was a fun wild trip...not ride. Is Pynchon on LSD or is he crazy or just a weird writer?
Erections, chaos, erections, bananas, erections, squids, erections, military, erections, WWII, erections, Shirley Temple, erections,
Even though I got very little out of this, it was a fun wild trip...not ride. Is Pynchon on LSD or is he crazy or just a weird writer?
Erections, chaos, erections, bananas, erections, squids, erections, military, erections, WWII, erections, Shirley Temple, erections,
Show More
some kind of plot, and last but not least ERECTIONS. Show Less
LibraryThing member ozzer
GRAVITY'S RAINBOW is just as hard to read, as it is to comprehend. Likewise it is almost impossible to write a coherent review. One feels a sense of exasperation with its length, density, and lack of coherence. Undoubtedly there are many grand themes hidden in writing that is always humorous and
The basic plot is simple. Lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop seems to be able to predict V2 rocket strikes during Britain’s blitz based on his level of sexual arousal. Inexplicably, British intelligence sends him on a search for the mysterious rocket 00000 in post-war Europe. This is characterized by a series of misadventures; plot twists; and intrigues that are almost impossible to make sense of. Most of the characters are never really developed. Instead they come and go, all the while injecting humor and craziness into the narrative while continuously challenging the reader’s perseverance.
The novel’s complexity is so great that it leaves one bemused and wondering just what it is all about. Some reviewers have attempted to tackle that question with mixed success, suggesting themes like the “neurotic instability” that comes with war; the lack of meaning in life; blacks and blackness; drugs and sex; paranoia, and even death. All of those elements are clearly present, but none ever rises to the level of a coherent theme.
What can one make of such a book? Clearly it is the work of a fertile imagination filled with much humor, historical insight, philosophy and occasional lyrical writing. Clearly, Pynchon knows a lot of facts but his tendencies to randomly insert them into his narrative with only the remotest relevance to his story make for an unsettling and—in the final analysis—boring reading experience. I’m sure that one could get more from a second reading of this novel, but life’s short and there are too many other things to experience.
Show More
often quite clever. Yet one gets the feeling that Pynchon was driven more to expand his plot, characters and overall craziness than to create an experience that most readers can comprehend.The basic plot is simple. Lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop seems to be able to predict V2 rocket strikes during Britain’s blitz based on his level of sexual arousal. Inexplicably, British intelligence sends him on a search for the mysterious rocket 00000 in post-war Europe. This is characterized by a series of misadventures; plot twists; and intrigues that are almost impossible to make sense of. Most of the characters are never really developed. Instead they come and go, all the while injecting humor and craziness into the narrative while continuously challenging the reader’s perseverance.
The novel’s complexity is so great that it leaves one bemused and wondering just what it is all about. Some reviewers have attempted to tackle that question with mixed success, suggesting themes like the “neurotic instability” that comes with war; the lack of meaning in life; blacks and blackness; drugs and sex; paranoia, and even death. All of those elements are clearly present, but none ever rises to the level of a coherent theme.
What can one make of such a book? Clearly it is the work of a fertile imagination filled with much humor, historical insight, philosophy and occasional lyrical writing. Clearly, Pynchon knows a lot of facts but his tendencies to randomly insert them into his narrative with only the remotest relevance to his story make for an unsettling and—in the final analysis—boring reading experience. I’m sure that one could get more from a second reading of this novel, but life’s short and there are too many other things to experience.
Show Less
LibraryThing member kswolff
Scenario: Imagine you're a peasant, wallowing about the mud, occasionally getting hassled by men in armor alleging they are kings because some lass threw a scimitar at him, and you're late for the biweekly meeting of your anarcho-sydiclist commune. Perhaps you're name is Dennis. Life is a constant
Your daily routine of mud farming is disrupted. Out of nowhere, an day-glo painted SR-71 Blackbird, piloted by a figure reminiscent of Donald Sutherland's character from "Kelley's Heroes" and co-piloted by Donald Sutherland's character from "JFK", lands in your mud-field. Your reaction would be very similar to that of the reading public in 1973.
This isn't so much a novel in the conventional character-plot-setting deal common since the days of Homer. No, this is something wildly, beautifully, obscenely different. Not so much a narrative as much as a Rosetta Stone of literary modernism and postmodernism.
What Pynchon did for the novel with Gravity's Rainbow is what Matthew Barney did for film in Cremaster 3. Epic gorgeous labyrinthine genius encased in paranoia and bio-psychic nightmares.
Parallels: Ulysses by James Joyce, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, and 2666 by Roberto Bolano.
Show More
struggle involving mud, plague, and rampaging Crusaders lopping the heads off random farmers.Your daily routine of mud farming is disrupted. Out of nowhere, an day-glo painted SR-71 Blackbird, piloted by a figure reminiscent of Donald Sutherland's character from "Kelley's Heroes" and co-piloted by Donald Sutherland's character from "JFK", lands in your mud-field. Your reaction would be very similar to that of the reading public in 1973.
This isn't so much a novel in the conventional character-plot-setting deal common since the days of Homer. No, this is something wildly, beautifully, obscenely different. Not so much a narrative as much as a Rosetta Stone of literary modernism and postmodernism.
What Pynchon did for the novel with Gravity's Rainbow is what Matthew Barney did for film in Cremaster 3. Epic gorgeous labyrinthine genius encased in paranoia and bio-psychic nightmares.
Parallels: Ulysses by James Joyce, Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, and 2666 by Roberto Bolano.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Farree
Tried reading this a couple times. Got to page 400 (of 887) before bogging down with Pynchon's gumbo up to the hubs. (Uh, gumbo. Missouri River Breaks mud. It is known for stopping even horse drawn buggies with no fenders, let alone motor vehicles.) It's funny and ironic, but that's not enough. A
Show More
story like this needs to be at least believable. This is tne main reason I had to stop. It just got too unbelievable. (A German in an FW 190 chasing a helium balloon and he can't shoot it down? Come on!!) I'll probably try finishing it again, but not soon. Show Less
LibraryThing member alexrichman
Infinite Jest's cranky uncle - the hardest book I've ever read. There are 900 pages and 400 characters, and far more casual paedophilia than I'm used to, but despite my difficulties, it's obviously a work of (mad) genius. I even managed to enjoy some passages - the Anubis orgy, Ilse's impostors -
Show More
but am mainly relieved to be finished. Show Less
LibraryThing member Jen7r
I thought the first line of this book was pretentious. In fact, lots of things Pynchon does in this book seem to put off the reader. But I kept going, and eventually got totally sucked into the book. it was my reality. bold, artistic, amazing; a fascinating work, that transcends ordinary life by
Show More
immersing one, ass over elbow, straight into it. An awesome piece of writing. Show Less
Subjects
Awards
National Book Award (Finalist — 1974)
Nebula Award (Nominee — Novel — 1973)
William Dean Howells Medal (1975)
Deutscher Hörbuchpreis (2021)
Notable Books List (1973)
A Century of Reading by LitHub ([1970])
Language
Original publication date
1973
Physical description
768 p.; 8.43 inches
ISBN
0140188592 / 9780140188592
Similar in this library
JR by William Gaddis