"Si, amico mio, rifornito di carburante, vivo, pronto a essere lanciato... alto quindici metri, vibrante... e poi quel ruggito fantastico, virile, capace quasi di far scoppiare i timpani. Duro, crudele, pronto a penetrare i veli verginali del cielo blu. Oh, davvero fallico, non trova?"

Quando da lettore supponi di aver già letto il libro più stravagante possibile, ecco che ti imbatti in un altro che sposta più in là il limite di ciò che la letteratura può creare ma anche il limite di ciò che potresti mai immaginare. Per la mia esperienza, "L'Arcobaleno della Gravità" è stato uno di essi. Ci ho impiegato quattro mesi, sono partita in quarta, una salita piena di energie, ma a un certo punto i motori si sono spenti e ho attraversato una fase in stallo, rallentata e in declino, per poi riprendere velocità e scendere in picchiata, fino ad arrivare al bersaglio, alla fine. Un po' come la parabola che il Razzo compie dal lancio alla caduta. E' un libro folle, assurdo, paranoico-ossessivo, erotico in una maniera esagerata, fumettistico e caricaturale, comico, a ritmo di musica, metamorfico, enciclopedico, tragico...e potrei continuare all'infinito con gli aggettivi.

Sua Maesta il Razzo! Il Rivelatore! E' lui il protagonista assoluto di questa opera, assieme a Tyron Slothrop, condizionato da esso attraverso un esperimento pavloviano: ad ogni erezione di Slothrop corrisponde un nuovo lancio del Razzo V2 che ha come bersaglio proprio la zona in cui l'atto sessuale avviene. Lui però ne è all'oscuro, non sa di essere studiato dalle varie istituzioni belliche ma presto lo sospetterà e la sua fuga alla ricerca della verità lo porterà ad attraversare parecchie peripezie dalle più assurde. L'assurdità è amplificata non solo dalle bizzarre situazioni (come per esempio la "battaglia" a torte in faccia tra Slothrop che vola su una mongolfiera e Marvy che gli da la caccia su un piccolo aereo) ma anche dalla paranoia di un complotto di cui Slothrop cade preda. Intorno, una moltitudine di personaggi e miriadi di storie, ma il tutto ben intrecciato e gestito da Pynchon. Il Razzo simboleggia la Guerra, infatti il libro è ambientato nell'ultimo periodo dell seconda guerra mondiale e offre il suo punto di vista: la Guerra e una situazione in cui il Mondo si trova in continuazione, non cessa mai, a volte ha dei picchi (le guerre vere e proprie come le conosciamo noi) ma spesso è latente e uccide solo le persone "giuste". La politica è un pretesto di facciata, un teatrino, le guerre sono determinate dagli interessi delle macroeconomie, dalla tecnologia, e rappresentano un forte momento di sviluppo per loro a discapito dell'uomo che è solo il loro carburante, "carne da cannone" per citare Tolstoj:

"la verità è che la Guerra mantiene le cose in vita. Le cose. Tra cui le Ford. La storia dei tedeschi e dei giapponesi è stata solo una versione - piuttosto surreale- della Guerra vera. La Guerra vera esiste sempre. Il numero delle morti diminuisce di tanto in tanto, ma la Guerra continua a uccidere un sacco di persone. Solo che adesso le uccide in modo più sottile, spesso troppo complicato."

Questa complessa macchina della guerra, basata sulla divisione e mai sull'unione, è gestita da "Loro", un Sistema circolare vorace che si nutre di risorse in continuazione e in modo sempre più veloce, sempre più affamato e ghiotto di armi come di cibo e che continuerà a prendere, a prendere, e a sfruttare tutto finché non ci sarà più niente, prende senza dare nulla in cambio, nemmeno la protezione e verrà un giorno in cui non ci sarà più nulla da prendere...a meno che, non crediamo che Loro possano morire, che questo Sistema verrà demolito:

"Credere che ognuno di Loro morirà davvero, personalmente, vuol dire altresì credere che il Loro sistema morirà- che esiste ancora nella Storia una dialettica, una possibilità di rinnovamento. Affermare la mortalità della loro natura vuol dire affermare il Ritorno."

Questo concetto viene rafforzato anche dal modo simbolico in cui Pynchon lo rappresenta, gli attribuisce una valenza biblica, ma non paradisiaca, ovviamente ma demoniaca: Il Sistema viene nominato come il Serpente che questa volta non porge più una semplice mela della conoscenza del bene e del male ma l'invenzione e l'accessibilità di nuove particelle fatali, un Serpente che vuole cacciare l'uomo anche da questo Eden che noi chiamiamo Terra e lo ammaglia con la sua furbizia. Anche il Razzo stesso viene presentato come "Il Rivelatore", un Anticristo:

"Il Razzo viene sotto le spoglie del Rivelatore. Ci mostra che nessuna società è in grado di proteggere, non lo è mai stata - le società sono assurdi come scudi di carta (...). Loro ci hanno mentito. Non possono impedirci di morire, per cui ci mentono a proposito della morte. Il Loro è un castello di menzogne, costruito in cooperazione.(...). Non possiamo più credere in Loro. Per lo meno, se siamo ancora sani di mente e se amiamo la verità."

Prima ho detto che è anche il libro più erotico che abbia mai letto: si tratta di un erotismo diverso dal solito, ci sono rapporti disgustosi, incesti, pedofili nei confronti dei quali Hummert Humbert è un novellino a cui inizia solo ora a crescere la barba (vedi la scena tra Slothrop e Bianca oppure l'incesto tra Ilse e Pokler), orgie che sembrano uscite dai più spaventosi quadri di giudizi universali (vedi l'orgia sulla nave Anubis). Qualcuno, leggendo alcuni passi potrebbe pensare: ma era proprio necessaria questa descrizione?! Si, lo era, perché coerente con il Sistema che per sopravvivere ha bisogno di dominio e sottomissione:

"Ebbene, perché instillano in noi un riflesso automatico, facendoci provare un senso di vergogna non appena si tocca l'argomento? Perché la Struttura consente tutti gli altri comportamenti sessuali tranne questo? Perché la sottomissione e il dominio sono le risorse di cui la Struttura ha bisogno per la propria sopravvivenza. Non si possono sprecare in un atto sessuale qualsiasi. La Struttura ha bisogno della nostra sottomissione per poter restare al potere. Ha bisogno delle nostre brame di dominio per cooptarci nel suo gioco di potere. In essa non vi è nessuna gioia , soltanto il potere puro e semplice."

I citati che ho riportato sopra hanno il tono fermo, serio e rappresentano uno sguardo tagliente, osservatore, ma la prosa è in continua metamorfosi dove si alternano le scene ilari e dalla fantasia più estrema, ad altre disgustose, paranoiche, o super tecniche, mi piacerebbe postare qualche frammento birichino di Pynchon ma preferisco trattenermi e lasciarvelo scoprire a voi se mai lo vorrete leggere, perché ha poche mezze misure e non vorrei urtare la sensibilità altrui. Mitica la scena del tuffo di Slothrop nella tazza del water a recuperare la sua armonica, che riuscirà per davvero a recuperare nel finale del libro, trovata al suo rientro dalla Zona, oppure la disquisizione musicale tra Rossini e Beethoven di Gustav e Saure- papyromante che leggeva il futuro nelle cartine e nel fumo delle canne, gli inseguimenti cinematografici di Marvy su Slothrop che , karma vuole, viene scambiato per lui trovandosi nel posto sbagliato nel momento sbagliato e nel costume sbagliato (da maiale appartenente a Slothrop) e che viene castrato erroneamente, Slothrop travestito da maiale che insegue la scrofa Greta e che quasi quasi ci fa pure un pensierino malizioso, la storia dei lemming e dei maiali di William Slothrop, antenato di Tyron, insomma tantissimi piccoli universi ma che non sono mai fini a se stessi perché nella parte finale il tutto si riprende chiudendo il cerchio. Il finale è meraviglioso, una metafora della vita umana e di tutto quello che è stato espresso nel libro:

"Questa ascesa sarà tradita e consegnata alla Forza di Gravità. Ma il motore del Razzo, il grido profondo della combustione che lacera l'anima, promette la fuga. La vittima, inchiodata alla caduta, si alza su una promessa, una profezia di Fuga..."

Un libro diverso da tutto quanto ho letto fin'ora, che sconforta ma fa anche vedere le stelle, buchi nel corpo di Dio in cui noi infilziamo i nostri desideri.

I think reading and reviewing this book requires taking on some extra baggage because it...well, I don't actually need to explain why or else Gravity’s Rainbow wouldn't have this baggage in the first place. It's Gravity's Rainbow, and that makes me feel like I need to read it, preferably without thinking too much about why exactly I feel this way. But at the same time I feel like I should avoid it so I don't look like a damn hairdo, which I'm told is British slang for someone who “tries too hard” (to look cool, hip, intellectual, etc). Anyway, I decided that the draws of the former outweighed the risks of the latter, and I read it. But first I had to be mentally prepared. Because unless you possess a level of genius utterly alien to me, approaching this book requires that you take a moment to assess your reading goals. Specifically, you need to ask yourself some fundamental questions about the ways in which you are capable of deriving pleasure. The whole idea of a pleasurable reading experience is so subjectively malleable as to be rendered almost meaningless. For some, pleasurable means sticking to a plot structure, character ensemble, and prose style that's well within one's own capabilities, while also being offered thrills that lie on a primarily primitive and visceral level. For some it means making your brain sweat, drawing a little blood, grasping outside of your intellectual reach, and building up some serious (but less overt) tension to provide for powerful releases and enduring satisfactions. And for most of us, it usually means doing a little (or a lot) of both, occasionally in the same novel, depending on x number of mitigating factors in our non-reading lives. Sometimes we want to push ourselves and sometimes we just want to casually, facilely enjoy ourselves.

At the moment, I'm at a place in my reading life where it seems like the more I give in blood, tears, and neuronal overheating, the more pleasure I'm capable of deriving from literature (assuming all this work is actually worth it on the other end). Now I know a passing personal fad when I see one, and even if certain not-too-far-off responsibilities weren't looming, I don't think I could find the energy, desire, time, heart, balls, chutzpah, whatever to continue tackling books like this for any extended period of time. So I'm trying to harness the obsession that's currently ruling my free time and put that cruel Blicero-esque master to work.

So anyway, despite the baggage, I went into reading this with pretty realistic and tempered expectations. I recently read Pynchon’s startlingly mediocre early short stories and was also beginning to question my initial infatuation with The Crying of Lot 49. In truth, I was hoping I wouldn't love it too much or hate it (I more or less succeeded here). Reasons: I didn’t like the idea of being a full-on contrarian with claims of overwrought suckiness (while making sure to prove in my review that this opinion wasn't due to blatant comprehension inabilities), but I also couldn't make this a gushing splooge-fest for reasons nicely summed up by Goodreads Jessica: "Guys who are really into GR are like those overly-earnest guys who're way too into Tom Waits. It's this weird, jealous, intense kind of passion that can seem pretty incongruous with its object, and can make you (or me, anyway) not want to participate in this creepy cultishness." Now, simply admitting that I was concerned about all of this is likely betraying a repulsive and frightening narcissism that this website seems intent on drawing out. Yes, Goodreads is messing with me…and reading a long book about paranoia sure doesn’t help.

Another general issue Gravity’s Rainbow has me mulling over is: how legitimate is it to construct a book that includes hundreds of allusions the vast majority of well-read, well-educated people will be unable to grasp without a serious study of the text and outside sources? To be honest, I'm not really sure where that line is, if there even is one, or if (assuming it's there) Pynchon crossed it. Thankfully, grasping all (or even most) of the allusions doesn't appear to be necessary to enjoy the hell out of the book and have a good idea of what's transpiring. And for this reason, I'm leaning toward a belief that Pynchon did not cross the line (if it exists). For what's better than a book you can enjoy the first time through and perhaps even more (or better yet, for new and different reasons) on subsequent reads?

Initially, the difficulty of reading Gravity’s Rainbow centers on the disorienting nature of character and plot introductions, as Pynchon places you into scenes and conversations with no instructions or compass. After the first section, this disorientation (almost certainly intentional) starts to melt away, but I can imagine that most aborted reading attempts justifiably occur long before the 200 page mark. More than with any other book I've read, this one appears to have been designed for rereading. I know authors and critics throw this concept around quite a bit, with many people claiming, like Nabokov, that reading only begins with rereading. Ah, to have the luxury. But in this case, I think it's true. If I were to go back to the beginning armed with a solid grasp of the convoluted characters and plot, I'd think I'd be able to piece together aspects to which I was nakedly subjected the first time around.

Pynchon's ability to create an evocative setting with an infectious mood is pretty amazing. The decimated 1945 London he cooks up is mesmerizing and provides the perfect backdrop for Roger and Jessica’s passionate, doomed love affair. He flawlessly balances feelings of reality and bizarreness here and there’s also this great just-at-the-edges-of-my-mind-but-out-of-reach-familiarity thing going on. Kind of like when you get nostalgia for something you've never experienced (but have studied or heard about or whatever). These were the things that kept me plowing through the early stages of the book. Well, in addition to all of the references (6!) to my favorite actor, Cary Grant, who’s even impeccably impersonated by Slothrop via Pynchon’s perfectly placed commas.

The first section is both the easiest and hardest to navigate. Pynchon seems intent on having the readers experience the dislocation of the characters, many of whom don’t really understand the whats or whys of the situations in which they find themselves. At the beginning of a book, I expect to be a little lost when dealing with the many character introductions, new setting, etc., so this is easier to take. Later on, when we move away from major characters for the umpteenth time to meet someone new and tangentially-related, this can be a little more taxing. I’m used to having information in a novel presented in certain ways, even in the most unconventional books I’ve read, but Pynchon seems hell-bent on blazing his own narrative path. One early 20-page stretch delivered the wildest emotional rollercoaster ride I’ve ever experienced in fiction: first I was thoroughly disturbed by the S&M re-telling of Hansel and Gretel, then moved by the lushness and sorrow of the dodo slaughtering, and finally laughing hysterically (on the T, embarrassing) during the “Disgusting English Candy Drill”, in which Slothrop is subjected to various horrible British ‘candies’ by a little old lady. Seriously, the dodo-bird scene is one of the greatest pieces of writing I’ve ever encountered and it also sets up one of GR’s major themes: the Elect vs. the Preterite, a concept which surfaces throughout the book to signify the powerful vs. the powerless; those ‘passed over’ vs. those killed in war; the Man vs. the Counterforce; et al. Strangely, I am unsure whether this book itself is Elect or Preterite—was Modern Library right to exclude it from top 100 books of 20th century? Or is the quote from The New Republic on the back cover correct? The most profound and accomplished American novel since the end of World War II. This question of what is lasting and remembered literature, hinted at with subtle brilliance in 2666, is something I find fascinating.

One practice that sets Pynchon apart from other writers is his incorporation of metaphors from nearly every branch of science—often very difficult ones (referring here to metaphors and branches of science). Since he doesn’t do much in the way of explaining, this can be a significant source of frustration. But it allows us science geeks to finally justify the hours spent studying organic chemistry. Actually, justify is much too strong a word. But I really enjoyed seeing Tchitcherine’s penchant for attracting counterrevolutionaries described in terms of molecular bonding capability, or seeing Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle used to describe the relationship between analgesia and addiction. Only from Thomas Ruggles Pynchon. I was also delighted, to my surprise, by much of the postmodern winking—from the few but potent direct addresses to “you” (the reader), to a discussion of difficult avant-gardism vs. pleasing simplicity that, although couched in a musical argument, was undoubtedly a direct commentary on the merits of Gravity’s Rainbow. Pynchon also can’t help himself from summarizing and distilling GR within other stories, such as that of Byron the immortal light bulb (whose experiences mirror Slothrop’s) and the plot to a drug-induced film entitled “Doper’s Greed”. There are probably many more commentaries on the book that I have either missed or forgotten—another rereading bonus, I’d bet. Perhaps most effectively, Pynchon plays around with the concepts of Pavlovian stimuli, and he relishes eliciting responses (especially sexual arousal) that will inevitably be accompanied by ethical unease, disgust, or shame. This writer-to-reader flirtation with the “ultraparadoxical phase”, wherein positive stimuli become inhibitory and vice versa, is one of the most brilliant aspects of the book.

Before tackling GR, one of my main concerns about Pynchon was what I perceived to be a lack of personal human insights to balance all the other stuff—philosophical and scientific allusions, gorgeous prose, compelling metaphysics…basically everything else I need or want in a book. Gravity’s Rainbow does deliver some of this, most prominently with the Pökler storyline, but these truly human and revealing moments are rather few and far between. For me, this is where the one star deduction comes in. Telling us many times that Slothrop was sad to lose Tantivy or Katje isn’t the same thing as making us feel it. Isn’t that writing 101? I have no doubt that Pynchon can (and occasionally does) aim for character insight and evocation, but for whatever reason he frequently chooses not to. Our loss. Still, I’ve developed a bit of a Pynchon addiction and it's weird because the buzz isn't that great, but I compulsively take another hit anyway. Actually, let me rephrase that—the buzz is occasionally fantastic but usually short-lived, and frequently the let down/hangover is rather rough and nauseating. But outside of my favorite Modernists, I've never read anyone who can zing me quite the way he does on occasion.

While technically the ending presents us with the ultimate climax, the last bit of the book felt appropriately anti-climactic. In the final 100 pages or so, Slothrop starts to disappear (literally?) and the “plot” sort of peters out after reaching a high point of coherence and intrigue part way through the 3rd section, which also contains some of the craziest shit I’ve ever read. Indeed, Gravity’s Rainbow makes Infinite Jest and 2666, to compare it to other postmodern monsters on which it had no small amount of influence, look conventional by comparison. How can we be expected to piece it all together? One of the least sympathetic characters in the book, Pointsman, is obsessed with Pavlovian cause-and-effect and therefore is searching for something that the more likeable stand-in Roger Mexico rejects in his analysis of events that he determines to be pattern-less and Poisson-distributed. Extrapolating from this, is Pynchon suggesting that we shouldn’t try to make too much sense out of this entropic book, which may simply be filled with random happenings rather than any connected or logical series of events? Or is that just a red herring, a false trail to divert us from some greater meaning?

“I am Gravity, I am That against which the Rocket must struggle, to which the pre-historic wastes submit and are transmuted to the very substance of History.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow



I personally enjoyed Against the Day more, liked Mason & Dixon better, but think Gravity's Rainbow is the more important. Pynchon definitely belongs on the shelf next to Joyce, Kafka, etc.. There are only a handful of modern writers who belong near him... Roth, McCarthy, DeLillo, DFW (perhaps). Anyway, I started the book in 1993 and stopped after just a couple episodes. I loved it, but wasn't nearly ready. I wasn't close to being prepared. Finished it today. "Tree arising! O pure ascendance!"

90th book of 2021. Artist for this review is American painter Jackson Pollock.

Talking to my German grandmother, trying to explain the plot of the novel since she asks (‘Have you got a new one?’ a common question which never gives any context but I luckily understand it means what novel I am currently reading?), and decide to go for it, to mention several things but generally omit most of the sex/penises/erections/etc.: so I say, for starters, it’s a mad book set in WW2. My granny, after all, was once a child being taken from Germany on the Kindertransport, the War making her (and her brother) an orphan. Eyes wide as I continue saying, “It’s about the V-2 rockets that are so fast that the sound of their exploding occurs after they have hit their target, so one would never hear it coming. . .” She shakes her head, sez: “Jolly nuisance. . .” Living with dementia and schizophrenia, conversations are limited to several stock answers; jolly nuisance is reserved for the worst of things, the realisation of mortality, the pain in her legs that persists and makes them shake, anything on the BBC News that startles her, and now, V-2 rockets. But I press on, cautious of her wide eyes, almost, fear?, at the mention of the rockets, and say, “There are hundreds of characters and one of the main ones (main ones?) is a character called Slothrop!” That makes her laugh. For all her paranoia, she laughs a lot (brightly coloured flowers: funny; birds tweeting loudly: funny; cars honking their horns: funny; anyone else laughing near her: funny: infectious).


“One: Number 31”—1950

Gravity’s Rainbow is a novel I started half-heartedly about a year ago, read some 100 pages and found other things more interesting. Once, talking to Dr Swan (codename), at university, about The Crying of Lot 49, we discovered shared opinions about Pynchon (though admittedly mine was rather minimal on knowledge): Pynchon, whether he is a genius or not, I suppose he could be, writes novels that are so scattered, so ridiculous, so wild, that any emotional investment is impossible and therefore Swan could never will himself to care. He is on the wrong side of postmodernism for me [Swan said], apart from the writers he adored like Vonnegut. True to this day, I didn’t care about a single character in the novel. Not always a bad thing. And here? Not entirely a bad thing. Famous for having over 400 characters, it’s quite clear that Gravity’s Rainbow isn’t trying to make us fall in love with characters and have a joyous/easy read. I once read someone describe the novel as an exploded bomb reconstructed as a novel. Apt. On closing the final page last night well past midnight I had the usual moment of keeping my hand on the book and allowing the scenes that remained in my head to float about, visit me. It was quite the storm, a storm of erections, boners, penetration, sperm, rockets, toilets, paedophilia, incest(?), literal shit-eating. . . sadly the most disturbing elements of the novel did remain in my head: Zwolfkinder, the infrequent descriptions of sex with children, the sex throughout which prevails as utterly revolting and bizarre. It does often beg the all important question. Why?


“Convergence”—1952
(Funnily enough I used this Pollock painting in my Infinite Jest review. Funnily enough the two novels are very similar.)

The last days of WW2, the V-2 rocket, the overarching paranoia, these things hurtle the novel on. At times it rarely feels like it’s about anything. Scenes barrage the reader, characters swim in and out of the narrative with almost no introduction, no “character”. The last 100 pages or so feel completely abstract, Pynchon almost does away with the main characters and we are, instead, attacked with more crazy scenes, strange characters. Byron the Bulb, a sentient lightbulb, is one such character in the novel. This we accept as much as we accept that Slothrop’s (laughter) erections have anything to do with the V-2 rocket, and that where he sleeps with women will become a missile-strike site several days later. It may be connected, it may not be.

(When I post this review They will undoubtedly read it. They will wonder why I didn’t like the novel more, perhaps They will confirm the fact that I am not intelligent enough to appreciate the novel’s complexity. The problem with the Internet is whatever I do They know, They see. The worst part is you can never prove that They are reading everything (essentially your mind, your thoughts), but you know. They probably know that you know and yet that doesn’t stop Them; that makes it more fun for Them. It is far more fun for Them that you know, that you are conscious of it, that you know every time you think, They think. No, every time you think, They hear. They have their ear against the wall of your mind and They hear every whisper from the other side. They hear.)


“The Deep”—1953

Pynchon’s writing is sometimes brilliant, so brilliant that I like to imagine it is a product of his time studying under Nabokov at Cornell university. (I read once that Nabokov was asked about T. Pynchon and he admitted he didn’t recall such a boy in his class, but, but, Vera did. All she could recollect was that his work (Mrs Nabokov helped Nabokov mark papers, apparently) was a strange mix of typewritten and handwritten, breaking suddenly from being typed into his strange handwriting and then starting again being typed—incidentally, a little scattered and disjointed, like his later works?) If we compare these two lines which appear in the very same paragraph we can see Pynchon’s oscillating tone, line-by-line most of the time: ‘The flower is shaped like the cunt of a young girl.’ Yup. And yet, several lines below this horrible line: ‘A late butterfly pale as an eyelid winks aimlessly out over the stalks of new hay.’ Remarkably different. Most pressingly, the novel is supposed to be funny. People do find it funny. Other than mildly amusing scenes, I didn’t find the novel funny at all. In fact, in the whole novel the only bit I would say, “That’s funny”, is this, which I underlined and wrote in the margin “Heh”,
n  

Ever since reading about Benjamin Franklin in an American propaganda leaflet, kite, thunder and key, the undertaker has been obsessed with this business of getting hit in the head by a lightning bolt. All over Europe, it came to him one night in a flash (though not the kind he wanted), at this very moment, are hundreds, who knows maybe thousands, of people walking around, who have been struck by lightning and survived. What stories they could tell!

n
You see, I already need to read it again. The novel spins with speed, unravelling. I found myself returning to some of the things I underlined in the first 100 pages of the novel, when the prose was a little less abstract, and finding gems that later echo deeper, ‘“It’s eminently fair,” Roger now cynical, looking very young, she thinks. “Everyone’s equal. Same chance of getting hit. Equal in the eyes of the rocket.”’ Or, probably still one of my favourite bits in the entire tome:
n  

Imagine a missile one hears approaching only after it explodes. The reversal! A piece of time neatly snipped out... a few feet of film run backwards... the blast of the rocket, fallen faster than sound—then growing out of it the roar of its own fall, catching up to what's already death and burning... a ghost in the sky...

n
So anyway it’s really about the 00000, but that’s for you to find out. A William S. Burroughs Shotgun Art of a novel. No no, a Jackson Pollock of a novel. ‘An exploded bomb reconstructed as a novel,’ credited to no one, some Pynchon-character(less) character somewhere. The 00000. All the erections and sex between the pages, all the characters breaking into song, the chilling lines of prose where Pynchon stops messing and starts—what?—writing? A big old mess that will for some reason stay with you. Unlike anything else. Not always a good thing but sometimes. Mr Pynchon, I don’t know. Mr Pynchon, if you say so.

„Now everybody-“

Postmodernizam je za mene bauk. Em što je težak (a ne tako, što bi Englezi rekli, rewarding), em što je meni lično dosta pretenciozan kao književni pravac. Zašto je onda ovo jedan od boljih romana koje sam pročitao, uz puno muke doduše (bez muke nema ni nauke) i čitavih šest meseci čitanja, a Pinčon jedan od boljih pisaca sa kojim sam se upoznao? Zato što je on postmodernista koji svesno parodira postmodernizam, i to ga čini neuporedivo zabavnijim, zanimljivijim, i bližim autorom od njegovih kolega (Nabokov je takodje izuzetak). E sad, koliko je moje razumevanje pouzdano govori i to da mi neko potpiše da sam razumeo svega 30% sadržine romana, ja bih bio jedan jako srećan čovek. Slojevita knjiga, koja zahteva više čitanja.

Ovo čudo od romana, bavi se poznim WW2 i to na, ubedjen sam, sasvim jedinstven način. Pinčon ne koristi tragediju i sentiment kako bi razgalio čitaoca i izvukao neke njegove emocije, on ne piše o logorima i leševima i ratnim zločinima, već o običnom čoveku, o promeni morala i o činjenici da se niko ne venčava za vreme Rata. Za njega, a i za mene, još pre upoznavanja sa ovom devetsto strana dugom knjigom, WW2 ili samo Rat, kamen je spoticanja ljudske rase, možda i nepovratnog. Od Rata, pitanje “Zašto?” izgubilo je svaki smisao.

A šta je sama Raketa, beli kit (Mobi Dik je idealno štivo kompanjon ovog romana) Duge Gravitacije, to je pitanje koje od svakog čitaoca traži drugačiji odgovor. Za mene, ona predstavlja samo odraz novog sveta, metamorfozu kolektivnog nesvesnog, simbol iskrivljenosti i nešto što leti... I što još nije sletelo.

(Ispod su neki moji hronološki utisci posle svakog dela, sigurno predugački, možda spojlerasti. Ko voli, nek’ izvoli.)


I - Beyond the Zero
„Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death.“ –Wernher Von Braun(inace čika odgovoran za te V2 rakete, ključne za roman)

Jedna od odlika Pinčonovog stila je ta što on ne piše o ljudima: njegovi pravi protagonisti su pojave, a ljudi samo nekakav kanal, posrednik, preko kojih se on njima bavi. Te pojave (u V ih naziva Velikim Silama) u Dugi Gravitacije (za sad) su: Rat, Ljubav, Nauka, Čovečnost, Razvrat. Ističe se Rat kao ključan, kao nešto što je otvorilo vrata ka promeni, nešto što je iskrivilo samu koncepciju sveta. Desetine likova i njihova čudna razmišljanja, gadne navike i hardkor fetiši (da, svako ima bar po jedan) ovde su prikazani kao direktna posledica Rata, velikog Rata koji je stvarno promenio sve (misli se na WW2), usput počupavši korenje.

Vrlo bitna tema je i Pavlovljev refleks, ovde prisutan u mikro značenju, primenjen na životinjama ili na ljudima, ali i makro značenju: Pavlovljev refleks čitavog čovečanstva koji zadire iza te nule (ostaci refleksa čak i nakon „odvikavanja“) koja i nosi ime ovog dela romana.

Mislim da se ceo prvi deo da opisati kroz pitanje koje postavlja jedan nacista: Is God really Jewish? Opšti haos i ludilo gde se ne zna ko je gori, ko je ludji (osim Džesike i Rodžera <3).

II - Un Perm' au Casino Hermann Goering
„You will have the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood.“ -Merian C. Cooper to Fay Wray

Korak po korak, mic po mic.

Ovaj deo je daleko koherentniji i narativno stabilniji od prvog, iako to sve i dalje podseća na niz uzastopnih apsurdnih snova usled dugoročne konzumacije teških halucinogenih droga. Slotrop (ahem, leading man, ahem), ovde je apsolutni fokus, uz neke omanje epizodice članova jedne od mali milion institucija tj. organizacija u romanu. Doduše, ovi jesu iz glavne (nešto kao Bond zlikovci koji samo hoće da spasu svet, a u stvari su naučnici... koji se bave ezoteričnim stvarima poput duhova i jelte sasvim logične povezanosti seksa i oktopoda), na neki način zavereničke, čiji je štab simpatično nazvan "The White Visitation" tako da taman dovoljno podseća na ludaru. Postavljaju se ovde mnoga pitanja, na koja Pinčon verovatno neće ni odgovoriti, jer bože, zašto bi. Daju se i poneki odgovori, ali više se unosi sumnja u to ko ovde koga vuče za nos i da li je moguće da su svi ludi ili je to samo dejstvo Rata? Rat guši i krivi čak i prostorvreme, sve podleže njegovom uticaju.

Slotrop, neko ko u ovom delu ispunjava ulogu protagoniste, i dalje je začudjujuće prazno okarakterisan i ostaje sasvim u funkciji nekih motiva kojima se Pinčon bavi. Nisam siguran koliko mi se to dopada, pošto baš volim da navijam za likove, a Slotrop je manjeviše prazan list po kome svi ostali crtaju. Uz to, čovek je i težak paranoik, pa je sve što se dogadja vrlo, vrlo klimavo. Ali i zabavno. Ima tu jedna tenk sekvenca koja je očito bila i Kusturici vrlo upečatljiva.

Sad sledi sledeći deo, za koji će mi trebati još nekih četiri do pet do šest do sedam meseci.

III - In The Zone
„Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore...” –Dorothy, arriving in Oz

Glavni deo romana od čak četristo stranica (!), posle koga mogu samo da skinem zamišljenu kapu i viknem au.

Ovako nešto ludo, razuzdano, perverzno, umobolno, potresno i, naravno, sasvim moguće, čita se jednom u životu. Pinčon spaja prethodno, činilo se nasumično, predstavljene likove i niti priče u jednu celinu koja konačno ima smisla, na isti onaj besmisleni, pinčonovski način kao i do sada.
Zona, odnosno Nemačka neposredno po kapitulaciji nacista, postala je središte još uzavrelijeg konflikta izmedju raznoraznih strana koje ne gaje nikakve ideološke vrednosti i vodjeni su ličnim, sebičnim, a opet nadrealnim kosmičkim načelima. Potraga za famoznom raketom simbol je simbola simbola: a ipak, to je samo potraga za raketom. Izbeglice (ima i nas!), mazohisti i sadisti i ostali psihološki bolesnici, usamljene devojčice koje po šablonu padaju na Slotropov imaginarni šarm, tradicionalno poremećene seksualne prakse koje izazivaju istovremeno i smeh i mučninu. Ne zna čovek da li da se smeje ili da plače u tom, oko sto strana (ravnom dakle četvrtini), delu treće knjige koji se u suštini čita kao crna, crnja, najcrnja erotika.

Ističu se sukob Enziana i Čičerina, sve oko broda Anubis i najduža epizoda celog romana o naučniku Pokleru, priča podjednako tužna koliko i ratna.

Za kraj, mogu da utvrdim da ipak Pinčonovi likovi imaju identitet i da nisu isključivo u službi motiva kojim se roman bavi: ali njihovi karakteri toliko su suptilno (i divno) nacrtani da se mogu primetiti tek posle, evo, sedamsto i nešto strana.

IV – The Counterforce
„What?“ –Richard Nixon

Oni protiv Nas, i kraj, koji me podseća na završnicu Aberkrombijevog Prvog Zakona, iako je to na neki način kao da poredim babe i žabe - zvuče isto, ali tu se svaka sličnost završava (doduše, iskustva iz meni omiljenog gradskog prevoza se baš ne slažu sa tim, ali šta sad). Medjutim, tu su male pobede, kao da je običnom čoveku dosta i, kada je već jedini pobednik Rata sam Rat, on pronalazi odredjeno zadovoljstvo u tim sitnim trijumfima, u tom miru što ga čeka na kraju puta, i on više ne luta... I nada se da neće završiti u gradu Raketa.


5+

What just happened to me . . .

I feel like reviewing this could be dangerous. There are many who have strong feelings about this book. Also, as my status updates for this were hitting Twitter, I was getting several likes from random Pynchon fans, so I feel like this could be under more of a microscope than usual.

So . . . here is how I am going to do this review. The first paragraph will be my experience with the book and my star review. This is strictly my experience and does not reflect on how I feel others should feel about this book. If it triggers anyone, that is not my intention . . . but nothing surprises me anymore. After that I will have just a few bullet point observations that are not necessarily pros or cons, but just things that went through my mind while reading.

Here goes!

Overall . . . I am giving this book 3 stars. At times I felt like I was at 1 star and ready to give up. At other times I was at 5 stars and what I was reading was creative genius. So, it only seems fair to average things out around 3. It was not an easy book to read, follow, or stay interested in. I often found my mind wandering and had to go back several times to recap. But, when a section stuck with me, it really stuck with me and, overall, it is a book I will not forget.

Now . . . random Gravity’s Rainbow thoughts . . .

-tIf David Foster Wallace was not partially inspired by this book to write Infinite Jest, I would be very surprised. There is such a similar feel between the two.
-tThroughout the book I also kept thinking this felt at times like Catch-22 (released 12 years before this book), so I feel like Pynchon must have had some inspiration from that classic.
-tI heard that this book won the Pulitzer, but they retracted the award because of the extreme nature of the content. After reading the book, I am not saying it is right that they did it, but I can say that I am not surprised.
-tIf you are sensitive or easily offended (and blush easily), this may not be the book for you. It has been a long time since I have been this shocked about things that were put down on the page. Also, proceed with caution when reading my next bullet point.
-tIf there was a book about The History of the Penis, it would refer to penises less than this book does. To be blunt, I think penises (and ejaculation) came up so much in this book as a symbolism of rockets, their trajectory, and the force of a launch.
-tThis is a book I feel you might need online resources to help you get through/understand it. It has so much bizarre stream of conscious imagery and so many outlandish plot points that a little extra help won’t hurt.

I am going to stop there for now, but this book was so long and led to so many thoughts while I was on my journey that I may come back later to add additional bullet points as I think of/remember them.

Do I recommend this book? Did you like Catch-22 and Infinite Jest? Do you like very epic, very bizarre stories that will likely make your head hurt but also might blow your mind? Are you trying to complete a list of recommended books? Then yes! But otherwise . . . no or proceed with extreme caution.

It has been more than a month since I bunged Slothrop’s world of paranoia. Yet, the very mention of Gravity’s Rainbow sends an agonizing quiver through my spine. With a half-burnt Marlboro dangling in between my lips to preserve my sanity, I am geared up to shred Slothrop and the psychoanalytical puzzle of a disgruntled civilization.

Pynchon is a badass! He knows the poise of unbalancing the sanctuary of one’s mind. Just when you get composed with the narration, a bombshell laced with mystifying lexis splatters your brain cells into a neurotic mirage of bewilderment. Akin to an Archimedean Spiral this manuscript propels you into a hypnotic daze making you yearn for rehabilitation sessions with Freud. Pynchon in this fierce literary opus skillfully crafts a jagged brainteaser, dexterously moving through every character modulating strains of fright, convoluted psyches by means of sardonic humor; overwhelmed by the cosmic premeditated aggression of the World War II and tentative military technology. Analogous to an amoeboid action, the labyrinthine plot propels into a sinister reverie engulfing the most impenetrable enigma –Tyrone Slothrop into a mammoth annihilation of sanity and perseverance.

Is Slothrop a military covert operative? Is he an experimental specimen or a mythopoetic hero? To me, Slothrop is a frightening model of entropy. A quintessence of degradation trying to decipher the flippant conducts of war-conspiracies and inevitability of death, finally fading into a collective zilch. An American agent who is allegedly being monitored by the Allies in London during WWII ,Slothrop comes across as the "anti-hero" with his shady misdemeanors, sexual orgies and his ever so volatile penis which equates Slothrop’s copulations with frequent bombing targets (Pavlovian sexual conditioning). However, as the script unfolds amid the admission of numerous secondary characters, Slothrop metamorphoses into a justifiable representation of humanist dogma heaving with extreme paranoia and hallucinatory raptures. His European sojourn involving fatal information on the V-2 Rocket mechanism and sinister elucidations of the Government conspiracies delineates the fine line that sustains the parameters of life and mortality eventually decomposing in the calamity of rockets and bombs.

"All very well to talk about having a monster by the tail, but do you think we would have h the Rocket if someone, some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn’t wanted to chuck a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilian? Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology ,deify it if it will make you feel less responsible-but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they are."

Underneath the astrological parameters and laws of thermodynamics, Pynchon employs each building block of the universe to impart us the knowledge of irrevocability of death and its unethical exploitation through inhumane power-mongers.

Festooned with an astounding color palette, the rainbow is a nature’s charming bequest after a treacherous storm. Conversely, Pynchon in the course of Slothrop cautions us about the prevalence of a man-made scientific marvel – a mock arc (rocket) that looms on our tomblike unawareness and may unpredictably descend on to the earth patterning a “rainbow” of blood and gore of humanity. A baffling sarcasm, isn’t it?

Can you imagine what an experience this was for Pynchon’s editor. I’ve read The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland, and Bleeding Edge, the latter written decades later, yet was wholly unprepared by them for the onslaught of ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’. It was recommended to me by my Dad, who read it in the 1970s while under the influence of various substances. That was certainly his excuse when I commented upon its vicissitudes. While the shorter Pynchon novels of my experience certainly had the same turgid and labyrinthine quality, ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ intensified this in length and depth to the point of burying the reader. I only became capable of reading more than a handful of pages at a time once I gave in to this and allowed shovelfuls of baffling and arcane tangents to be heaped upon my head. Initial attempts to discern plot, characterisation, and themes were futile. I did not quite resort to the approach of treating the whole thing as poetry rather than prose, but at times got close to it. It is always indicative when a novel has no description of what its about on the cover at all, just reviewer quotes equating it with other notoriously long and opaque tomes (Ulysses and Moby-Dick or, the Whale). The blurb writer may have thrown up their hands in despair, but I shall attempt what they would not: ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ illustrates the paranoia and sexual perversion incited in men by rockets.

The novel’s form is a sequence of scenes and digressions tangled together like so many strings of fairy lights. It apparently begins in London at the very end of the Second World War and proceeds chaotically across occupied Europe (referred to as The Zone) beyond VE day. In the final twenty or so pages, the reader suddenly finds themself in the 1970s apparently listening to Pynchon make excuses for what they have just read, in addition to intimations of time travel via a lengthy tarot card reading. The other 740 pages follow a handful of protagonists through the chaos of Western Europe in 1945. Said protagonists have distinctive names (perhaps my favourite element of Pynchon’s work), yet appear to all be exactly the same man. Or rather, they all behave in the same reactive, horny, chaotic fashion while fleeing, fighting, fucking, falling off things, and contracting food poisoning across hundreds of pages. One of them is American, but this makes surprisingly little difference. As in Vineland, paranoia and conspiracy are so heavily featured as to become meaningless and absurd, another thing I appreciate about Pynchon. An ever-capitalised ‘They’ are referred to constantly, and specifically associated with multinational industry, without being personified or clearly explained. The absence of catharsis about this is oddly satisfactory, given that the world is in fact a conspiracy insofar as no single person could possibly understand all the interests, organisations, and technologies involved. We just blunder around using simplified theoretical frameworks in order to function.

Of course, I am projecting this from the vantage point of 2020. It could just as easily be that Pynchon won a bet that he could get a full bingo card of sexual perversions to be considered serious literary fiction. I was disconcerted, to put it mildly, by quite how much weird sex there was. I like to think I’m not too prudish, but Pynchon leaves De Sade in the dust with the number of heavy kinks his characters engage in. Bestiality, incest, paedophilia, rape, whipping, piss and shit consumption, orgies, and interruption by an owl are especially notable. I was surprised, in fact, by the absence of necrophilia, as there was one scene that seemed to be going that way then did not. Death is certainly sexualised throughout, although no-one actually fucks a corpse. (Spoilers?) This is the kind of thing that one might be tempted to label problematic, were it not so mulched into the novel’s word-compost as to be absolutely lacking in titillation. The combination of incest and paedophilia is extremely creepy, though. Something entirely absent from all sexual scenes, I noticed, are condoms. From this I infer that every character has many STDs. Late stage syphilis would certainly explain some of their bizarre behaviour.

Since I added ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ to my to-read list, goodreads has once or twice recommended me a companion volume which allegedly explains all the references. I believe life is too short for me to read that. The references I did pick up on were disorientating, as nearly all were to later fiction. Page 539 contains major spoilers for the Magnus Archives podcast, for example. That reflects upon my familiarities, of course, and presumably Pynchon’s conscious or subconscious influence on later writers. There are also a great many terrible puns and enough songs that I wondered if the novel could be made into a musical. “Ha ha!” thought I, “Who would turn an incredibly long and digressive literary novel into a Broadway musical!” And then, “Oh shit, Les Misérables”. I doubt such a project could make it to Broadway, but reckon someone could get an Edinburgh Fringe show out of it. If they have not already.

My tone may suggest that I suffered through ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ purely for the satisfaction of having achieved something during lockdown and being able to hold my head high when finally able to return my library books. To a point, this is true. Still, there is something curiously compulsive about it once one accepts its fundamental incomprehensibility. On many occasions while reading literary fiction, I have reflected that I am merely lacking the appropriate training and knowledge to fully appreciate the text. In this case, I refuse to concede that even esteemed Emeritus Professors of English Literature could entirely explain things. What of the robot crabs? The chapter from the perspective of a lightbulb? The Toilet Ship? The Argentine submarine? The pig costume? The banana-based breakfasts? The sexy polymer? The monkey orchestra? The mistaken identity castration? The hot air balloon custard pie skirmish? Yet behind the relentless onslaught of vividly surreal details can be found brief glimpses of reality: concentration camps, refugees, weapons of unprecedented destructive capacity. The book is animated by a sense of constant movement, as all characters seem to be running away from the horrific aftermath of WWII both physically (on boats, planes, cars, and foot) and mentally (via drugs and sex). Reducing it to that stolid description removes everything weird and distinctive, albeit often unpleasantly so, about the reading experience, of course.

I am of the opinion that lockdown was the right time to read ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’. Its sense of time as erratic, fungible, and meaningless reflects current experience. I found it slow to read and could not manage more than a hundred pages at a time. The narrative is so loose and sloshy that even in the final fifty pages I found myself wondering who the fuck Roger was and checking back for his surname. Not that this knowledge clarified anything, as the male protagonists were essentially indistinguishable. Yet that sense of being engulfed by the dense bafflement of Pynchon was surprisingly calming. I wondered what the hell I was reading, while being glad it wasn’t more articles about the death toll and long-term health effects of coronavirus. I did not think of the pandemic at all; my brain was wholly transported from one fucked-up reality to another. At least in the world of ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’, I have the luxury of being able to make sardonic remarks from a distance rather than being stuck there whether I like it or not. Sometimes I think that’s the main appeal of long novels. Whether every paragraph, page, or chapter is necessary to the book becomes irrelevant (perhaps never more so than in this case) as the sheer weight of it all submerges the reader.

Amid the freewheeling mayhem and flatulence, there emerge occasional moments of pointed insight and sometimes unsettling prescience. These are all the more disconcerting for their arbitrary contexts. For instance, this occurs in a vast communal toilet:

”Do you find it a little schizoid,” aloud now to all the Achtfaden fronts and backs, “breaking a flight profile up into little segments of responsibility? It was half bullet, half arrow. It demanded this, we didn’t. So. Perhaps you used a rifle, a radio, a typewriter. Some typewriters in Whitehall, in the Pentagon, killed more civilians than our little A4 could have ever hoped to. You are either alone absolutely, alone with your own death, or you take part in the larger enterprise, and you share in the deaths of others. Are we not all one? Which is your choice,” Fahringer now, buzzing and flat through the filters of memory, “the little cart or the great one?”

I was also very taken with the comparison of Jormungandr the world serpent and capitalism, which as far as I can tell occurs within a memory within a dream:

Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holdings its own tail in its mouth, the daydreaming serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, “The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally returning,” is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that “productivity” and “earnings” keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity – most of the World, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it’s only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which sooner or later must crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life.

That paragraph is followed by an extended metaphor of a bus, which had less appeal, then a comparison of Jormungandr and the atomic structure of benzene. In moments like this, it feels like the character (and possibly the writer) is briefly coming down from their trip and realising what they got high to hide from.

Reading a more normal, less Pynchon novel will require some mental readjustment. I thought to alternate ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ with a sci-fi thriller, Spin State, but found this impossible. Once in the Pynchon Zone, my brain found a plot-led narrative outlandish and could not concentrate upon it. One might almost suppose that reading this manner of writing employs different synaptic connections to most fiction; a paranoid thought worthy of a Pynchon protagonist. Would I recommend ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’? No. Was it worth reading? Yes. Would I read it again? No. Will I read another, even longer Pynchon novel? Yes, in a few years time.

This was the ninth time I’ve read this book since 1993, quite a few more than any other. I was in high school, head brimming with acid and the inheritance of a hippie counterculture not my own, and Pynchon’s name kept popping up in these funky period pieces with names like The Anatomy of Psychedelicvm Gnostica Terribellum that, for whatever reason, my high school library was a repository for. The section on mysticism and hallucinogenic drugs alone would probably form the cornerstone of a semi-respectable drug-witch’s rare and profane, if variable, chrestomathy.

The same round library at school (literally; 360°) had, 28-summers ago, an original Viking edition of Gravity’s Rainbow. I remember circling it (concentrically, given the architectural fundament of the building), imagining it as some sort of skeleton key that would reveal and, more importantly, clarify all the contrasting distortions that had, til then, been fucking with me since the advent of LSD. I was 15: I was unformed clay: but I was not uninformed: from beginning, as was the wont of my generation, with King, and the spring boarding fountain-wise from there: Lovecraft and Poe (‘cause: Metal Up Your Ass); Hesse; Lao-Tzu; Castaneda; Hemingway; Steinbeck; Burroughs; Kerouac; Ginsberg; Roth; Brautigan; ‘Gonzo’; Rimbaud…and on and on. Add in an even more constant, constant flow and current of new music—the likes of which I’d never thought possible in their synergies of beauty and noise—and I had a lot of shit rattling around in my head. Least of which was all that acid.

The point, if there is one, is that this book brought it all together then, and it still does now. Of course I labored like a field hand through that first reading, and I’m sure the second was just as over my head. But I knew, the minute I hit upon the rhythms of Gravity’s Rainbow, that I’d found the poly-idealist syncopation that matched the poundings of my own heart. Over time, what once seemed difficult is now pure enjoyment, naturally, but that’s what a lifetime of active reading gifts you. This single work has gifted more than anything: it gifted me MY writer, the one that I can swear allegiance to and feel I’m on the side of Good (while rejecting all that is truly dark). The one that wrote, here, “They are in love. Fuck the war,” which I proceeded to scrawl on my backpack. Fuck the war, always and indeed.

I believe that a goodly amount of our better traits as citizens of my country, though disappearing quickly, are quintessentially embodied in Tyrone Slothrop. He is the American dipshit, quite legitimately dumb, that possesses a brilliance of compassion. He holds no personal realty for nonsense like honor; he is concerned with the immediacy of love, friendship, conviviality, and, sure, carnality. Who isn’t? He is the product of an American-German system that literally engineered him from childhood, making him the New Man of the Atomic Age—he cums just before the bombs. But his bearing is unspoiled; his flame is true.

And there is always this in Slothrop, and it has never failed, in 28-years, to make me cry in its humor, soppy humanity, and absolute tragedy. I hope that this bodes well for my soul:

Trees, now—Slothrop’s intensely alert to trees, finally. When he comes in among trees he will spend time touching them, studying them, sitting very quietly near them and understanding that each tree is a creature, carrying on its individual life, aware of what’s happening around it, not just some hunk of wood to be cut down. Slothrop’s family actually made its money killing trees, amputating them from their roots, chopping them up, grinding them to pulp, bleaching that to paper and getting paid for this with more paper. “That’s really insane.” He shakes his head. “There’s insanity in my family.” He looks up. The trees are still. They know he’s there. They probably also know what he’s thinking. “I’m sorry,” he tells them. “I can’t do anything about those people, they’re all out of my reach. What can I do?” A medium-size pine nearby nods its top and suggests, “Next time you come across a logging operation out here, find one of their tractors that isn’t being guarded, and take its oil filter with you. That’s what you can do.”

Now everybody…

“It is difficult to perceive just what the fuck is happening here”

- Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow pg 657

I actually thought this book’s difficult reputation was undeserved, but then I hit the last 50 pages which are…opaque, to say the least, and changed my mind. The book expands rapidly, entropically, and then collapses under its own gravity. There’s a whole lot of (new) stuff thrown at you right there at the end, much of which I’m still trying to make heads or tails of. But the very final sections are absolutely coherent and perfect, a crowning finish to an equally perfect book.

I just think it’s really brilliant, Pynchon understood the world in 1970 in a way that I doubt most folks, myself included, understand it now. One thing I can’t understand is how the Pulitzer committee didn’t recognize the genius of this work, to me it was so obvious reading the thing that this was cut a rung above almost everything else. Although I certainly do see where they got “obscene” - there’s a lot of graphic, but thematic, sexual violence in these pages. But there’s a lot of laughs too, and a lot of tangents, and a lot of brilliant sections of prose

“A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.”

Between 1945 and 1959, the United States JIOA & CIC conducted an intelligence program named “Operation Paperclip”, in which an excess of 1600 surrendered German scientists, engineers, and technicians were brought over to the Western mainland for government employment. The primary purpose of this operation was to advance the US’s position in both the Soviet-American Cold War and Space Race. These German STEM workers found themselves dispersed amongst various branches of government and commercial industry across the US, bringing with them their years of experience researching, developing, and deploying German weapons, most notably the V2 rocket. This expertise, fostered during their years in the Rakentenstaat, was crucial to the development of the Americans’ own avionic weapons, not least of all the X-20 Dyna-Soar.

Stay with me.

One of the most notable companies to employ swathes of these reformed German scientists was a little aviation company named Boeing. The work done by those hired at Boeing during the Paperclip Era was to further develop the X-20 (among other devastating weapons and vehicles), based partly on the technology that only these German minds had insight into. Which leads me to my point – who was working at Boeing in the late-50's to early-60’s as a technical writer? I think at this point it should be pretty obvious.

This is where my impromptu historical lesson transitions gracelessly into conjecture. I cannot speak for the man, only offer hypotheses. I suspect that Pynchon was terrified by what he saw going on behind the shuttered windows of Boeing. I don’t believe the public knows (or will know) everything that was experimented with and on during those years, but I would happily bet my copy of GR that it was not all related to simple commercial flight. I think his singular brand of paranoia skyrocketed in response to the work he found himself unwittingly implicated in. With no other outlet besides writing to process such existential dread, the author worked on two novels in alleged simultaneity. And thus, we’ve found ourselves the grateful recipients of two responsive works: The Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity’s Rainbow.

While the Norman Mailers and James Jones of the era aimed to distil the horrors of war with transparency and cold integrity to history as it unfolded, another literary camp emerged. Enter, the satirists, the comics, the Joseph Hellers and Kurt Vonneguts. These writers felt dissatisfied with realism as a sufficient medium to convey the terror of facing annihilation on a daily basis. Thus, a new brand of black comedy and absurdist historical retellings found its way into the cultural consciousness. When the day-to-day reality of war vacillates somewhere between surreal and absurd, it stands to reason that a satirical take would actually be fitting to capture the moment. Pynchon positioned himself as one of the leading authorities on this literary approach, producing a momentous work that defies any easy summary.

Go ahead, try – tell me what Gravity’s Rainbow is about, in fifty words or less. Now you see what I’ve spent the last 500-odd words doing little more than tread analytic water. I too, am struggling to distil the novel down to the digestible soundbite and amateur Goodreads “review”. Where does one even begin? Well, I suppose you could start it like this:

It starts with a desk.

A desk in an ordinary government office, plainly organised with algorithmic precision; fibreboard sectional walls with no rooves, every corner a perfect Pythagorean ninety degrees. On this desk is a haphazard assortment of junk. Throat lozenges, jigsaw pieces, ukulele strings, News of the World… It’s a complete mess impinging on the precision of its surroundings. And that pristine office sits stoically in a crumbling city, pockmarked with rocket fire from a projectile which annihilates its target before they even hear its approach. Chaos amidst order, order amidst chaos. This moment, 18 pages deep, is the firing pin of the explosive narrative that’s about to ruin your month.

Gravity’s Rainbow is an audience-hating compendium of polarity. Every action that occurs is equalled only by its opposite, as Newton, Keynes, Moses, and Farina wrestle for ascendancy amidst the rubble. Do you think I’m joking? Look closer:

The projectile’s zenith marks an equilibrium between its rise & fall; Prederites converge together to counter the dominant Elect; the bell rings & the dog salivates; anthropological exposure emerges at that same rate that history suffers erasure. It’s everywhere, you can’t escape it, Pynchon thought it through. If you’re willing to endure his histrionics, you’ll see it for yourself.

I would love to cognitively unburden myself with the belief that GR is simply the bi-product of the author’s drug use; An illicit pharmaceutical panoply crossing the blood-brain barrier of a genius recluse armed with a typewriter & all the time in the world.

I wish it were that easy…

…but it never is with Pynchon. That's why readers continue to flock to him, as one generation rolls into the next. He left all the pieces on Slothrop’s desk on page 18, intent on letting you know that there’s meaning to be mined within the madness… but only if you're willing to dive in with the understanding that no matter how hard you try, you'll still lose. Every object on that desk recurs with stark intentionality - this is not an accident. While literary entropy is the dominant force governing the pages of The Zone, that’s not to say that this is all just “weird and wacky” for its own sake. This is intentional. Why does entropy and absurdity matter; what’s the point he’s trying to make?

Imagine spending years of your life ambling between your day-to-day obligations, burdened with the knowledge that at any moment you may disappear entirely off the face of this Earth before you even hear a noise. You’ve seen it happen before. You’ve watched buildings crumble and friends evaporate under the impact of the V2’s wrath. As far as the Poisson distribution is concerned, your number will be called sooner or later.

What do you reckon that would do to your psychology? I can’t speak for you, but I know my mind would bend under the weight of that knowledge. I’d likely watch my own psyche fracture and fragment as the Rocket blew apart more and more features of the world I once considered familiar. It stands to reason that given enough time under these conditions, the absurdity of my reality would likely become conditioned to my new norm, and horrifically fantastic occurrences would no longer seem out of place. Perhaps a Toilet Ship, a sentient Octopus, or chatty Lightbulb aren’t that strange after all. I don’t know about you, but I think the author’s terror was entirely justified.

Pynchon is smarter than you. He hates you. He's out for your blood. You can try your hardest to control the variables, but in the end, entropy always wins.

My head hurts. I love it.

I needed to read this a third time (a new and "clean" text, without my wife's and my own histrionic marginalia, BUT alongside my clipboarded notes/extracts/charts from the first and second readings AND the companion) to make certain I wasn't incorrectly remembering that it is without question the greatest novel. I wasn't, it is. There is inexhaustible depth here, slapstick fun and political prophecy, an apex in the arc(h[e])-function of language and bone-shatteringly cold insight into the limitless propensity for self-destruction, despite the clearest warnings and the easiest opportunities to simply not do it. Beyond the hallucinatory shenanigans, technical specs, and sundry mindless pleasures, there lies a realm of poetics so compelling and frightening, it is (in unison with DeLillo's stunned silence at the end of Falling Man) "like nothing in this world," or as Pynchon puts it at a precise moment of Erwartung so gravid only your asshole shields you from spontaneous inside-outedness, "the kind of light where at last the apple is apple-colored. The knife cuts through the apple like a knife cutting an apple." Gravity's Rainbow is thus a realistic historical document--ala ceci n'est pas une pipe.

Three times in 17 years, everyone should be so lucky. I've worked-through it under Bushit, Obummer, and Tramp. Could I ever--do I need to?!--lucidly articulate that the tropes of paranoia, homecoming, and mastery are herein presented as veritable horizons of existence? In form that leaves one speechless, awestruck, and traumatized? There's plenty of that, y'know. From the purview of the Rocket, I have simply been passed over. I have heard its shrill call time and again, I have no reason to expect 17 more years for anybody. We don't call it War anymore, not over here, but somehow a Weird Death will devised for Us. You never hear the one that gets you. A ripe old age is the luxuriant privilege of those who've most profitably plundered the Earth and imagine themselves protected. Boomers, zoomers, preterite, finally united in death, the tragically predictable solidarity of "too late." Whatever crumpled joys you can pry from the stingy fist of post-post-post-contemporaneity, count the cold comfort in the last breath of Gravity's Rainbow--"The Elect will not survive, either"--as One, Beyond the Zeros, somewhere over the--