Gravity’s Rainbow

1944 - початок 1945-го, Друга Світова в Європі наближається до завершення, німці обстрілюють Лондон своєю “зброєю помсти” - ФАУ-1 і ФАУ-2.

ФАУ-1 - це крилата ракета, її навіть навчилися збивати, ФАУ-2 - надзвукова балістика, як ми, нажаль, знаємо з власного досвіду - збивати таке дуже складно, а тоді було просто неможливо. “Надзвукова” - в тому числі означає що спочатку вона прилітає, а потім ти її чуєш, якщо ще можеш чути.  ФАУ-2 - прямий пращур радянської і американської ракетних програм, військової і космічної, це, наприклад,  те що свого часу копіював, а потім модифікував Корольов.  “Веселка тяжіння” - роман про ФАУ-2, не можна сказати що Ракета є головним героєм, пафосно звучить, але скоріше все ж таки ні, проте все що відбувається так чи інакше крутиться навколо неї. 

Якщо поділити мапу Лондона на купу маленьких квадратиків і позначити місця “прильотів”, то виявиться що розподіл прильотів відповідає формулі розподілу [малоймовірних] випадкових подій Пуассона, принаймні в світі Пінчона, наскільки це правда - не знаю.  Людською мовою це означає що ви можете сказати, при заданій кількості запусків, в скільки квадратиків прилетить один раз, в скільки два і так далі. Але де саме розташований той квадрат в який прилетить визначити неможливо. Фактично єдине що ви можете: кожного ранку оновлювати мапу, виконувати перерахунок і констатувати той факт що так, усе все ще знаходиться в рамках того самого випадкового розподілу. Цим якийсь час і займається один з героїв. Жодної прямої практичної користі, людей не врятує, але цікаво, отака от вона жорстока ця наука: статистика. 

Як відомо, там  де офіційна наука не особливо може допомогти, псевдонаука і усякі маги і колдуни радо підставляють плечі. “Єдиний марафон” з псевдоекспертами і екстрасенсами тому дуже добра ілюстрація. Англійці також не проти погратися в цю гру, але німецького містицизму чи української забобонності в них нема, щоби просто так без питань в щось повірити; їм треба якось виміряти, обґрунтувати(, підшити в папку, здати в архів). І тут статистика стає в нагоді: якщо ви можете передбачити, розставити на мапі, величини які виглядають як цілковита випадковість, то це вагомий аргумент на користь того що це не просто співпадіння. Треба досліджувати далі.  Ну й зрозуміло, що цієї історії не було б, якби не знайшовся персонаж який може передбачати прильоти, у свій, дуже дивний, пост-модерновий, спосіб.

Потім війна закінчується [психологічні травми - ні], союзників цікавлять ракетні технології і все переростає в такий собі шпигунський роман. Там де шпигуни з різних сторін на якусь мить зустрічаються в кафешці, продовжують з середини розмову яка розпочалася в іншому місці в інший час, кидають один в одного парою загадкових напівзрозумілих фраз, за цей час встигають один одному вприснути отруту, проковиряти бронежилет, вистрілити, невлучити, прийняти протиотруту і розбігтися в різні сторони на середині речення, для того щоб ще колись, за інших обставин, повернутися до того де зупинилися. Параноя зростає, а разом з нею і абсурдність того що відбувається.

Звучить цікаво, і… воно дійсно цікаво, але в той же час оповідь дуже складна. Складність приходить з різних боків, вистачило б здається і якоїсь однієї Складності, але Пінчон, здається, вирішив зібрати колекцію. 

- Статистично :) очевидне:  пишуть що в книзі близько 400 персонажів,  це не абсолютний рекорд, але всеодно дуже багато. Навіть персонажів до яких оповідь час від часу повертається багацько, не плутаєшся, але вже десь на грані. Не знаю чи рахуються за персонажів установи і організації які згадуються, але з ними виникає набагато більше проблем. Якщо ви маєте звичку щось занотувати під час читання складних книг - накресліть схему організацій і звʼязків між ними, вийде цікава павутинка в кращих традиціях конспірології :)
- Науковість: це вже трохи очевидно зі згадки про розподіл Пуассона, але не Пуассоном єдиним.  Явища з математики, фізики, хімії, біології не просто згадуються, вони перетворюються в художні образи, шикуються в довільний асоціативний ряд і починають жити своїм життям. Навіть якщо ти здогадуєшся про що йде мова, спосіб яким автор вводить їх в текст досить складний: це як більшість шкільних підручників з фізики (боже, як же я їх ненавидів), які замість пояснити, структурувати, розкласти все по полицям все лише ускладнюють. 
- Якщо вам не вистачило науки, то численні посилання на німецьке й американське кіно 30-40-х, комікси і іншу поп-культуру точно добʼють.
- Порнографічність.. у цьому списку для того щоб не згадувати окремо. Це не складно, скоріше буває неприємно. Ок, копрофілія  - це не дуже приємно, якщо ви не отримуєте свої задоволення таким способом. І щоб два рази не вставати: гівна, в прямому сенсі, дуже багато. Взагалі гидотних епізодів вистачає.
- Складна структура тексту. Суттєва  частина розділів виглядає десь отак:

 * Хтось… незнайомий чувак, їде в вантажівці по полю. 
 * В полі стоїть кінь
 * Випадкова історія з випадковим конем у вакуумі.
 * З лісу вибігає кабан, застрибує на коня і мчить вдалечінь.
 * А, стривайте, це не кабан, це - Слотроп в костюмі кабана (головний герой, типу як)
 * Тик-дик тик-дик тик-дик, поле, трава, ммм…
 * Секс з конем
 * Оркестр армії УНР на чолі зі Святославом Вакарчуком виконує відомий хіт “Ой чий то кінь стоїть” (ги-ги-ги “стоїть”)
 * Кабан продовжує скакати на коні вдалечінь, власне ніколи і не припиняв. 

tТак, стоп, а секс з конем був чи ні? І взагалі: чувак у вантажівці, армія УНР, Вакарчук? - що це взагалі було? Наче зрозуміло що кінь і Слотроп знайшли одне одного, і загальна атмосфера їх єднання, але, бля… що відбувається? -  А пофігу.  Що відбувається - що відбувається? - історія продовжується. 


Якщо подивитися на це трохи під іншим кутом… Автор, коли пише текст, намагається балансувати емоції і логіку.  Наукова чи професійна література, особливо якщо це про точні чи природничі науки, - це майже повністю про логіку, про мислення. Художня література - це, як правило більше про емоції.  Автори художньої літератури намагаються тримати мислення в тонусі, звичайно, але більшу увагу спрямовують на відчуття і уяву, іноді виключно на відчуття і уяву, і коли з вами магія автора не спрацьовує і немає ніяких відчуттів і нічого не являється… неочікувано “включається мозок” і в найкращому випадку не знаходить ніякої поживи (ви просто не любите поезію, буває), а в найгіршому ви починаєте дивитися на нелогі��ний, непослідовний сюжет, нерозкритих, тупих персонажів, і… майже все інше на що ви тикаєте в книжці коли вона вам не подобається. 

Чому я про це пишу: оця перенасиченість деталями, складність структури, купа-купа усього за чим треба слідкувати призводить до того що ти ніби то читаєш і художній твір, але сприймаєш його радше як підручник з фізики, або, скоріше, як шизоїдну енциклопедію 30-40-х років XX століття. Це чимось схоже на читання “Улісса”, але у випадку з “Уліссом” певна частина складності повʼязана для нас з відсутністю контексту: ми не народилися в Ірландії початку XX століття, не вивчали давньогрецьку і латину на прикладі класичних творів, так що ці твори прям в’їлися б в кістковий мозок, Шекспір для нас.. ну Шекспір, був такий, один з.. тому окрім того ж “потоку свідомості” який тримає “мозок в тонусі” додається ще дуже багато чого що ми вимушені сприймати інтелектуально, бо на відміну від сучасників Джойса, інакше сприймати ми це не можемо. Пінчон же ж створює цей ефект цілком усвідомлено. Він фігачить складністю допоки не стає очевидним що за складністю треба слідкувати, зв’язки треба пам’ятати, “якщо цю тему не зрозумієш, далі буде ще гірше”… страх, параноя, чого і треба було досягти.  Одночасно, складність тримає під контролем емоції, відповідно тримає читача на певній відстані, не дозволяє повністю занурюватись в цей текст, цей світ, цих героїв, що хороша новина, насправді, це запобіжник від того що ваш дах почне протікати, як він тече у всіх без виключення основних персонажів.

В цілому: цікавий досвід.  Не стане улюбленою книгою, але сподобалось. Багато разів ловив себе на думці що якби це було написано трохи інакше, але про те ж са��е:  Друга Світова, Ракета,- воно скоріш за все полетіло б в мусорку.  Секс, Бухло, Наркота, Ракета.. і Керуак, наприклад, - це рецепт ідеального американського лицемірного блювотиння.  А от Пінчон сконструював щось цікаве.

One of the things that most irritates me is the idea that someone would read books like this purely in order to show off or impress people. I see comments like that all the time, have had them directed at me, things like: you didn’t actually enjoy it; you only wanted to make yourself seem intelligent. Wha? Who exactly would it impress? Some faceless dude on the internet? Well, gee. Or will some super hot girl on a train make lingering eye contact with me over the top-edge of my copy of Ulysses? One can but hope. Thing is, does anyone actually give a shit about the difficulty of what other people are reading, y’know, out in the real world? From the often hostile reaction readers like me get on forums and message boards you’d think that you could walk into a nightclub wearing a 'I’ve read Proust' t-shirt and be mobbed. It simply doesn’t happen.

Of course, when choosing to read any book, the themes, the plot [or content] have to appeal to me in some way, but, assuming that is the case, that I have two novels to choose from both of which appeal to me, and one is straightforward and one is not, why would I pick the difficult novel? The simple fact of the matter is that I like, I genuinely enjoy, being challenged, being stretched. As the 'serious reader' in my circle of friends and acquaintances I’m often invited to borrow best-selling books – detective novels mostly, or thrillers – and I always politely decline, not because I’m judging anyone, merely because I know that I don’t get off on that kind of thing. I need to be made to think. Recently I went on holiday and I took with me a hefty collection of Anton Chekhov’s short stories and Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White. I don’t do beach reads. In a way, I wish I did. I’d probably be a lot more at ease in myself. Anyway, it was for this reason – this desire to be challenged, to be made to work – that I took up Gravity’s Rainbow [GR].

To some extent GR’s reputation as unreadable or alienating is overstated. I mean, it’s only a book, and they’re just words, yo. If you can read, then you can read GR, only it might require a little bit more patience than your regular kind of novel, and you might have to accept that not every reference, not every paragraph in fact, will make sense, will be familiar, or recognisable. I think a lot of the time when the term unreadable is thrown around by people it simply means: I hated it. Which is fine. I hate a whole shit-tonne of things. But I think it’s unfair to try and turn others off reading something purely because you didn’t like or enjoy it. However, it would be remiss of me not to mention some of the stuff that traditionally turns people away from GR:

There is some science
And maths
And psychology
There are a bunch of acronyms, some of which are never explained
There is a huge cast of characters, and you won’t keep them all straight in your mind
There are extreme flights of fancy, that drop in on the reader without warning and appear to have no connection to what the author was writing about at the time

More so than the obscure references, the science, etc, I feel as though the real impediment to enlightenment, vis-a-vis GR, is Pynchon’s style, his syntax in particular. This is especially true of the first 200 or so pages, which are by far the most challenging. I must admit that the way the man puts together a sentence, his grammar and his word-order, is weird, is sometimes baffling. The style reminded me a lot of Faulkner, actually, especially Absalom Absalom. Like with that book there are some sentences here that appear to be random words strung together in no particular order; the words themselves aren’t obscure, they simply don’t naturally follow each other. Another thing that the two books have in common is what I call selective grammar. What I mean by that is that for a page or two the grammar seems conventionally correct, so obviously the author knows his business, and then one will suddenly come across a large chunk of text that appears to be missing the necessary commas, full-stops etc. Occasionally distracting or even tedious that might be, but it is not especially tough to navigate. Perhaps the most irritating thing for me, about GR and the style, was the way the story would shift perspective from one character to another without warning, almost in the middle of a sentence. And it would sometimes take a paragraph or two to realise that it had happened. That feeling of catching up with the book, of sometimes being one step behind, instead of riding along with it, was frustrating.

After the first two hundred plus pages the book becomes so so so much easier to read; if Part 1 is like being caught outside in a storm without an umbrella, then entering Part 2 is like stepping through your front door out of the rain; suddenly everything is clearer, more comfortable. There is *gasp* some straightforward plotting, but, more importantly, the writing is cleaner, more accessible. It is as one luxuriates in Part 2’s ease that one might start to wonder why Part 1 is the way that it is. With the marked difference between the two parts it is almost as though Pynchon wants to disorientate you, only to lead you toward enlightenment. It’s a kind of literary tough-love. In a lot of novels it is the main character who moves from psychological confusion to clarity, in GR it is the reader. But that, of course, still doesn’t explain why. One could say that as Part 1 is set mostly in war-torn London the disorientation is appropriate; most of the numerous characters are living in circumstances in which bombs are dropping all around them and at any moment one could take them out. The characters who don’t appear to be as concerned about death are at least professionally or psychologically under extreme duress. The war, in all its mind-fuckery, its horror, is being brought to bear on everyone in Part 1. In effect, then, your confusion, your disorientation, mirrors theirs and vice versa. Likewise, the world of Part 1 is in a state of disintegration, of collapse, and the characters are attempting to impose order on this chaos, just as you, the reader, are trying to impose order on the chaos of the text.

A lot is made of the book’s flat characters; it is the one of the chief criticisms of GR in particular, and the author’s work in general. By flat what these dissenting voices mean is that the characters are under-developed, simple, one-dimensional. They don’t, they say, feel like real people. We never, they continue, get to know them. Two things strike me as interesting about the flat characters accusation. Firstly, where are these novels which have characters in them that feel like real people? The critic Michael Hoffmann once wrote of Ebenezer Le Page that it is one of the few books that gives you the full man. I’ve always found that absurd. No book can actually give you a full man. As far as I am concerned, all characters in all novels are flat if what you want are real people.

I feel as though what readers are actually wanting from characters in books, when flat is thrown around as a criticism, are people who have a detailed back story and who subsequently grow or change or learn lessons and behave in ways that make sense to them, the reader. Don Quixote is flat, they’d say, because he does the same things over and over again. GR’s Slothrop is flat because we are told very little about his life and his feelings, beyond his paranoia, confusion and fear of death. My response to that is: yeah and so what? This is the second point of interest for me: why are some readers so put off by what they see as flat characters? Why is flat wielded as something with which to strike down a book or writer? Maybe it’s just me, but I like different things; I am able to appreciate a book that tells me, in detail, a bunch of stuff about a character’s mental life, but I am also equally able to enjoy a cornucopia of characters who merely serve the author’s themes or ideas. Books aren’t real life, the characters in them are not real people, so why do we insist that they must strive to be so? Search me.

Another fallacy when discussing Pynchon’s fiction is to label it cold and unemotional. I genuinely don’t get that. Of course, it is wrong on a literal level, because his work is obviously full of emotions such as fear and paranoia etc, but even if you put those aside, as I don’t think they are the kind of emotions people are missing in Pynchon’s work, I’d still say it’s a bad call. I’d say that Pynchon is one of the most sentimental and compassionate authors I have read. In fact, I think he takes it too far on occasions and his stuff can become mawkish. Take Jessica and Roger, who are two vulnerable and confused people who are unsure whether they are genuinely in love or whether they merely need each other in the appalling circumstances of war. All of their interactions are shot-through with longing and tension and doubt. Consider, also, the justly lauded dodo killing scene; the clumsy, not-made-to-endure dodos are clearly a stand-in for man, particularly those in war situations, civilians and soldiers. There is an atmosphere of pathos throughout almost the entirety of GR.

So, I hope I have gone some way to at least debating, if not refuting, some of the popular criticisms of Pynchon’s work. I also hope I have maybe gone some way to convincing those of you who have been previously put off by its reputation that it is possible to read Gravity’s Rainbow, that it isn’t nearly as intimidating as some would like you to believe. However, you may at this point be thinking: all that is fine and all, but you gave the fucker three stars.Yes, yes, I did. [I even *whisper it* considered giving it two stars.] So, what gives? Well, I think it is possible, and necessary, to defend the book - or any book - against petty or wrong-headed criticism, but it does not, of course, follow that you are therefore obliged to have fun reading it. Cards on the table? GR bored me quite a bit. I kinda felt as though Pynchon had made his point in the first 300 pages and, as the novel progressed, was starting to repeat himself, was starting to get on my nerves; I felt as though if I gave up I wouldn’t be missing anything, and that’s perhaps, like with a relationship, the point at which you know you ought to part ways. In all honesty, I just don’t think Pynchon and I are a good fit, because although I like the idea of his books I hardly ever love them, in the reading. In fact, the only one I have genuinely loved is Mason & Dixon. That’s a great book. But the rest of his stuff? Meh.

GRAVITY'S RAINBOW AS HORROR

A truly terrifying novel, from it's opening nightmare with the raw language of "A SCREAMING comes across the sky", to the dark paranoia, extraordinarily violent images, murders and battles and Nazi experiments and trapped children. This is not just your regular, "They're out to get me" Paranoia, this is wild Paranoia implicating the reader, confirmed by the narration, insane, surreal paranoia. Explosions, rockets, secrets, monsters, true EVIL. Gravity's Rainbow is a truly chilling horror novel.

GRAVITY'S RAINBOW AS COMEDY

A truly hilarious novel, from its slapstick cartoon characters bashing heads to the various jokes and worldplay to the custard-pie fights between Nazi aircraft. The novel truly takes nothing seriously, anyone can jump down the toilet to swim in the sewers at any time. It's a free-wheeling drug-fueled adventure of people bumbling around, blowing things up, wandering around in pig suits, and fighting giant octopuses.

GRAVITY'S RAINBOW AS TRAGEDY

A truly heartrendingly sad novel, with its themes of lonely lyrical lost love. Roger Mexico and Jessica Swanlake torn apart by the vagaries of loyalty and war, great sweeping flights of narrative fancy showing us the melancholy beauty of ordinary soldiers, Slothrop numbed and overwhelmed by the news of the death of his friend, Pokler and his daughter, and always this soaring, operatic sadness, a longing for a better time glimpsed sometimes through the fog of war, allowed sometimes to breathe, before disappearing forever...

GRAVITY'S RAINBOW AS ADVENTURE

A truly exciting novel, full of wild shootouts and crazed chase scenes, and conspiracies conspiracies conspiracies, intrigue in high places, secret books, codes and ciphers, Nazis vs. Good Guys, an ol' fashioned pulp adventure, explosive and maniacally fun, a rambling, insane action-thriller as gunfight-packed as "Raiders of the Lost Ark".

Possibilities...
Gravity's Rainbow as Philosophy
Gravity's Rainbow as Politics
Gravity's Rainbow as Romance
Gravity's Rainbow as War Story
Gravity's Rainbow as Fantasy
Gravity's Rainbow as Science Fiction
Gravity's Rainbow as Art

It took me a couple of tries to make it through Pynchon's Great Thing; the first time I began it eagerly enough, only to smash headfirst into an impenetrable wall of thick, viscous prose that so entangled and bewildered me that—after some seventy-odd pages—I said Enough! and moved on. However, the book nibbled away at my mind, and about three weeks later I gave it another try. Determined this time to see it through, I hit the ground running to match pace with A screaming comes across the sky...; somewhat surprised, I found I myself fairly easily clearing hurdles that I had earlier stumbled over and, flush with confidence, made it past my previous checkpoint. It was with bracing speed and excitement that I showed up at Un Perm' au Casino Hermann Goering, confident that I would not only be able to finish this sucker, but that it would be an amazing, difficult, revelatory, hilarious journey to undertake.

Now, to finish GR, even when under its anticipatory spell and dazed by its glamors, still presents a challenge. The text can switch from Keystone Cop routines and breezy pie-fights to steel cable paragraphs and triple-size airbags, inflated by super-dense sentences, that bring your forward momentum to a crashing halt. There are also stretches where you become exasperated with Pynchon, or bored, and only determination keeps you slogging on; and one still has to imbibe Pynchon's rapid-fire dispensation of culture (both high and low), technology, conspiracies, and science, parse it, and try to make sense of where he is leading you to with his variegated passages of breathtaking and stomach-punching prose—and Dorothy-O, it sure ain't Kansas. One thing that seized me was entropy-to-heat-death: the human body shedding energy as it freezes in the ever-slowing nanoseconds before the absolute-zero, moss-encrusted-stillness of non-life; the encephalic frost ushered in by almighty science as it fills its guts with exuberant energy and spews out entropic dung, the great equalizer that achieves parity in scything a playing field of rictus-limned corpses in an eternal cast renewal for the grand cosmic joke which ends with but a geriatric, wheezing Time inching along astride a single Galactus-like figure channeling Isabella Band-Aid and Wondering what it's for? Is it a truism in GR that those who expend energy in the pursuit of any ambition higher than fraternity hijinks end up paralysed or corrupted by their desires, enter fully into one or the other of the master-slave paradigm that seems the rising cream of the mass human psyche? I pondered whether Pynchon's twentieth-century could best be described as the thousand-fold madnesses of man—in the thrall of brilliant technologies hatched from his own rational mind, many of them mass-murder machines—the paranoia and irrationality, the dissipation of his spirit and sanity born of being forced to stare that mighty, slow-moving tsunami Death full-on into his fathomless, inert, coal-mine eyes without any sense of surety or stable footing whatsoever; of the observer and abyss sharing an eternal kiss of gazes, now that the concealing curtain has been consumed in firing the ovens. Can this be the peak of the parabola traced by the V2 painting gravity's rainbow?

I have no idea, because I've only read the book once, and more than almost any other cosa asombrosa I've ingested, GR screams to be consumed several times—if only to figure out what those square symbols fucking mean: vaginal or anal pursing chronologically branded by a god with more of an angular, less perfect bent? Geometrical hints regarding how to mathematically calculate the commonplace soul's daily suffering? This book stimulated and provoked and entertained me so much that I went on a Pynchon tear, one that—by the time I turned the final page of Mason & Dixon—had worn me to a frazzle. I still have Against the Day in my pile of to-reads; once the latter has been put to bed, I do believe I'll go back to Tyrone Slothrop and Benny the Bulb, to Pynchon's best of a handful of great books and the core of his canon, take a seat in the front-facing car, and experience the highs and lows of this inimitable and wild roller coaster ride once again.

CNP C. etc Gravitons & Rainbovitons


super nebulous or "difficult" authors , but dig this --
my right eye is dominant so I can read well enough
dozens of instances of pedophilia
telepathic elves who ride wolves
a lightbulb, randomly intersect
jargon-filled defenses of this book
if only we knew the melody
Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
the mark of a literary genius
A girl I dated in college said it was her
I quit reading at the coprophagia scene
a person with ADHD having an acid trip
the masterpiece literary snobs think it is
supposed to be one of the best books of the 20th century and all
I found myself laughing out loud as I progressed
waving his arms and shouting "look at me"
that I feel about David Lynch
Swaths of obscurity
But it was just annoying
the Pulitzer Board had difficulty with its coprophilic focus
nonchalance toward many a co-conspirator's favorite author
and throw it harder the second time
what I'd have for me tea
the brain of an untreated ADHD patient
the main reason a lot of people love this book
obsession with phallic objects
in their 20's while smoking clove cigarettes and drinking some PBR
as there's a later scene of coprophilia
I'd worry about you
it in its stupid ass
I ever read
the parts that were uncomfortably and pervertedly sexual
favorite
literary milestone that people seem to think it is
the writer's extreme hubris manages to shine through the written garbage
were on LSD the whole time
you feel as if you've been raped and torn to pieces
the myriad two page paragraphs filled with run on sentences that overwelm
also considered to be difficult
they fail to create the necessary feeling
LSD induced hallucinations, poor humor, anti-prose
Fuck his erections, fuck the rocket, fuck the S&M and shit eating and the fucking bananas
arsenic sauce represents pedophilia and/or
be rambling and incoherent
the mess appears some sense and cohesion
overblown, ridiculously difficult, wandering and fails
I'm a prude and lacking humor
banana pancakes
many loosely connected character developments
beauty in language
and it's author for having written it
a guidebook to help me understand it
bedazzled by the literary pyrotechnics
the rambling, self-impressed noodling
comic means smiling wryly every 100 pages or so
I reached a pedophilic sex-scene
...e poi e poi e poi?
taking the piss almost
misunderstood is to be thought great by critics
impenetrable - impenetrable and not worth reading
take drugs
unreadable
a long swim through a sewer makes me stupid
love this book or you don't get it
as complete gibberish
disjointed and uninteresting
take no more
writers that you love or you hate
shit
getting a boner
the company of a pretentious hipster
Just
filled stream-of-conscious writing
non stop stream of conscious bullshit
get it
grâce à de fulgurantes érections
kill me for what I am going to
doing some very serious drug
deserved a smack upside the head for abusing his readers
the assumption that his work is worth following
understand without tedious pretension
Han dynasty Chinese poetry in the original
so good ones or pretentious ones; esoteric ones and erudite ones
of contrived "postmodern literature"
show off his scientific prowess
thank God I did not
'literary classic' sometimes has to mean it is written in impenetrable
carry me along
sound your barberic yawp
have actually finished it
over-the-top theatrical fluff
"unreadable, turgid, overwritten, and obscene"
brutal
definitely a lost cause
flip open to random pages
one of the "great" authors
this insufferable book even without those people
get throug hthe whole thing
get through the first one hundred pages
literature at its best
guy goes down the toilet
great awards
morally outraged
Something about a banana breakfast
12 year old children and their math teacher
Sucked
a genius
bizarrely juvenile sex-obsession and dubious racial politics
realize this is supposed to be a classic
supposed to like this
war machine and scatophagia
picked for the 1974 Pulitzer
summers reading challenge
waste
getting this
negative stars aren't available
Pretentious!
a mechanical engineering textbook
Get off my lawn
Impenetrable
failed
about S/M, depravity
a graphing calculator
call this tome
Wordy author
didn't see any reason
Obscene pretentious assprat
impenetrable
Life's too short
Readability is a good thing
my worst enemy
Un-readable
finished in college
still wondering what
life's too short
understand what
The word "pretentious"
get into it
thirty years
painful
about T. Pynchon's nob
only person
dreck
En pausa hasta nueva orden
want to
0 stars
lightshow
age well
small coffee table of an epic
Not
Horrible
Hate

It took me the better part of seven months, going 10 to 20 pages at a clip and excluding all other novel-reading, but I have finished. And while I'm proud of my focus and tenacity, I'm not entirely sure it was worth it.
I'm not going to bash something that obviously means a lot to so many people. It just didn't mean much to me.
I have long contended that genius isn't just having a brilliant thought, but communicating that thought to others. If this work conveyed some amazingly deep meaning to you, then great. Pynchon is a genius. It simply didn't speak that way to me. I recognized several moments of really insightful writing, but they were buried too deeply in meandering subplots and obtuse characters I couldn't keep track of. I don't care if a book doesn't have a plot, but it needs to have a point.
The novel is a remarkable achievement and a one-of-a-kind literary benchmark. It's just not my cup of postmodern tea. I'm happy to be done with it so I can put it back up on the shelf and get back to actually enjoying my evening reading instead of just getting through it.

This novel: pure dynamite. The many stops and starts preceding my reviewing this thing were probably to be expected, after experiencing much the same in my reading of it, over some four months of feelings both extreme and paradoxical: annoyed incomprehension and delight, mad disgust and awe, blessed amusement and horror, etc., until settling into a kind of sad comforted confusion by the novel's quasi-end.
.
A work of impossibly mind-numbing yet -invigorating complexity, sinking to murky moral depths but also surfacing then soaring to awesome philosophical heights, Pynchon's monsterpiece boasts a hella impressive multiplicity of ideas, themes, and forms (moving beyond the novel to include film, comic-book, theatre, musical, even mathematical formulae: in a great postmodern pastiche), which nevertheless somehow crystallises into a singular brilliance, as of a rocket's flare, exploding to amazing if discombobulatory effect. All this demands a lot, i.e., patience, humility, sheer stubbornness, even in the face of the most impenetrable passages, because their more accessible if not epiphanous counterparts lie ahead, often just around the corner: waiting like pots of gold at the end of the rainbow.

"Gravity's Rainbow," like the V2/A4 rocket central to the novel and its many, many moving parts, defies conventional plot summary, yet here's my (pitiful) attempt anyway. Divided into four parts, the book roughly follows paranoid American Tyrone Slothrop during 1944 as he finds himself in the middle of serious and fast-developing shenanigans after various governments and organisations (whether British, German, Soviet) discovered the weird correlative if not causative link with rockets exploding all over Europe in places coinciding with Slothrop's sexcapedes. Now that's greatly simplifying this book, being the main thrust of a story with such smorgasbordic imagination it has things as bonkers as Pavlovian octopi, sentient pinballs, immortal light-bulbs (also sentient), superheroes, witches, seances, etc., but somehow makes them all hang together, in some tableau of beautiful chaos.

But what I enjoyed most about "Gravity's Rainbow," even when I didn’t Get It, are those frequent reassurances Pynchon plants throughout the book: that it’s Totally Okay not to understand some or all of it, that there too can be grace and humility in the not-knowing, the not-understanding. Paranoia is Slothrop’s defining characteristic, and also “Europe’s Original Sin—the latest name for that is Modern Analysis.” “Nobody,” Pynchon however cautions, “ever said a day has to be juggled into any kind of sense at day's end.” While there’s irony in my masochistic disregard of this very good advice and nevertheless ceaselessly annotating his book to hell and back, the margins scribbled over with desperate arrows and symbols, it’s no small relief to find these occasional little kindnesses, these meta-pats on the back.

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