Ive never been affected by a book the way I was with GR. I did not love the experience of reading the book for long stretches. But once I was done, once I could see the whole thing, I loved it and missed its presence in my life. I had to resist the urge to immediately start over again.
If i had to pick one "wtf am I reading?" moment from GR, it would have to be the seemingly random flashback to Katje's ancestor and his role in the extinction of the dodo bird. That was when I realized this was the weirdest goddamn book I've ever read. Oh, and Gregori.
In 1984 I bought a record by Laurie Anderson, who had been featured on German radio some years before. Her record had a song on it called "Gravity's Angel" which she sang with Peter Gabriel. I then went to a university in 1987 (being 27 at the time seemed rather old), and I went through the English section of their central library in Bochum, Germany. I went through the shelves to see what I could check out to read. And I came upon the title "Gravity's Rainbow. I said to myself, where do I know this from. My brain went into action and soon I made the connection to Laurie Anderson. An I thought, what she likes couldn't be bad. I was hooked to Pynchon's writings ever since. Though, my favorite now is divided between "Against The Day" and "Mason & Dixon". I find it strange that it has never occurred to anybody to liken the latter to John Barth's "The Sodweed Factor". Also a wonderful book.
Damn, you finally made this video! :) I recently read his V. and was admiring how much in control of his text he is. You know when you're reading a dense passage and not quite understanding anything so much so that you think he's playing with you--the reader--just at that moment he shifts the scene and the tone of the piece so much so that you feel disoriented? Kinda like Suttree? Like the stuff with Pokler, or Katje and Slothrop. And I didn't know about the circular structure, damn! I read a book about IJ where the author compares the disintegration of Hal to Slothrop, which was really interesting. This summer I plan to read stuff about Peenemunde, Wernher von Braun, V-2, Mittelwerk, Carl Jung, Freud and Norman Brown just because they're related to GR. :P P.S. I remember, in 2014, when I knew absolutely nothing about literature; I'd read only three-four books by then; and I somehow came across your Top 10 of 2012 video, and I remember your describing GR as a "century-defining book," and I bought book. I had no idea how to even read prose and underestimated GR's difficulty. It took me three months to finish the fucker and I hated it a lot of times along the way. I didn't understand more than half the book but I had the experience. I didn't know one could be that smart and goofy and serious and silly at once. I don't know whether it changed my life, but it definitely did broaden my outlook on life; and from about that point I started becoming a serious reader. So my point being: thank you, Bookchemist. The books you've recommended me here have most of them have become my favorites, and I'll always be grateful to you for that. It's a testament to that fact that what you do with your channel is excellent. :)
+Asher Deep This must be the most heart-warming comment I've received so far! Thanks to you, man - it's always great to read your feedback, and I'm so glad I could be of help :)
Man,the book ends in two words: "now everybody".It's as simple as that!Apart from that,I like your work and love the book,which being read in English - as it is not my mother language - was my biggest mental challenge so far!Keep up the good work.
The books about the Montauk Project are labelled "science fiction". But is that really the case? I've yet to see any commentary about GR suggesting that it is actually a disclosure, and deep explanation about the topics most important about the nazis: trauma-based mind-control amplified and streamlined in programs that developed into the MONARCH and MKULTRA programs, plus much more. There is excellent material available regarding the nuts and bolts of programming (and more importantly DEPROGRAMMING). But that material is usually kept far far away from academic circles. Those interested in that topic might be generally unaware of Pynchon's contribution. I'll just say that I've read a lot to try to understand things like THE MONTAUK BOYS PROGRAM, and as soon as I began reading GR, the science lessons popped into dimensional explications that I was not expecting and was barely prepared for. Why mind-control programming and deprogramming is not part of Psych.101-111 classes in every accredited university is a BIG FUCKING PROBLEM!!! That we know the militaries and corporations around the world extensively study, employ, and structurally depend on compartmentalized people and departments - why do we KNOW that explicitly, but leave the knowledge that would set people free from those traps, out of the academic officaldom? What I'm writing here is the most dangerous topic to speak, or even think about! But since it is about truth and the potentials for both human freedom, and human excellence through programming... Dangerous shit can be lots of fun. And truth is truly a force of nature, so it has its own gravitational impact and necessity - and cycles bound with time. I bet that as the years go on increasing numbers of people will recognize that Pynchon delivered a deep-secrets science manual regarding the most radical considerations that developed in the nazi era of mind technology. The Angelic Hierarchy is a rainbow in a silver-white realm. Gravity's Rainbow is the substantialization of mind into matter. (As Above, So Below) Why were the nazis interested in stuff like the Rainbow Body discussed by Tibetan mystics?!? Gravity's field is brown. The use of color throughout the book is not just poetics or "postmodernist" verbiage gone berzerkers. His use of color is as precise as any manual about mind and energetic functioning. (A rainbow involves much more discrimination than ROYGBIV. Pale Orange is not rust nor a heavy orange. Maybe Pynchon worked in one of the secret backrooms at Boeing... not Skunkworks, but something like that. No one knows anything about him - he's very private. So it doesn't hurt to speculate, and provoke questions that get people to face the real horrors, and real excelleneces (in the sciences) of fascism, the nazi era, and most especially DATA-BUNDLING. Fascism is a matter of binding and bundling stuff together - in fascicles.)
Thank you so much for your video. I took GR with me on my first trip to Europe this fall (I was traveling for over a month). It turned out to be a good choice for traversing "the zone" so to speak. I started it on the plane ride over the Atlantic and finished it on the return journey over the Atlantic. I think Pynchon would approve of the cyclical nature of my reading experience I thought it was a devastating book, funny, obscene, romantic, absurd, I could go on and on. It's been hard to sift through some of the supplemental material though, and your video really helped me! I was touched by some of the passages about love, I love the way Pynchon writes about sex and relationships. Even when it's really fucked up, its so immersive and fluid and it never feels forced or voyeuristic. It's one of the most amazing books I've ever read, and I'm really happy to find people who have read it because it leaves you with a lot of questions! thank you for your video!!
Just wanted to say thank you for introducing me to Pynchon, your enthusiasm through your videos made me pick up Gravity's Rainbow and as tough as it is, stylistically I absolutely love it. Have already ordered some of his other novels including 'Against The Day' - so yeah cheers. Keep the fantastic videos coming.
Just finished the book today, so it was very exciting to see this video pop up just in time for the event. I'm a rather casual reader, and could only follow the book vaguely , but here's some uneducated thoughts. Long comment incoming: I'm glad you mentioned the pastiche elements. That octopus scene is indeed one of the best in the book, and it's kind of the first time I really consciously realized that what Pynchon was doing was transplanting different forms of entertainment into literary fiction. One moment you're reading a Serious Anti-War Novel, the next you're reading a 1950s B-movie or a fable or an episode of Looney Tunes. Sure, this is a core tenet of pomo in a sense, but I've never encountered this technique in quite such a muscular way, and it's very impressive. Builds a hilarious, intensely unique atmosphere. Though the political aspect that you touch on - criticising our ever oblique masters for Their evils and corruption of our world - is indeed the driving force of the novel, if not Pynchon's whole writing career, my personal main take-away from GR (along with Lot 49 and Bleeding Edge), is, cheesy as it may sound, The Power of Love and Friendship. A running theme in this guy's books is human connection as a respite from a world that is beyond our control or understanding. The way to live is as fiercely romantically as Mexico, or as spontaneously and freely as Slothrop, because the love and empathy experienced that way is the one thing They cannot corrupt or take away from us. For me, the crucial passage of the book wasn't any of the Proverbs for Paranoids or political stuff, but this, when Säure is discussing Rossini vs Beethoven: " 'With Rossini, the whole point is that lovers always get together, isolation is overcome, and like it or not that is one of the centripetal movements of the World. Through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs. All the shit is transmuted to gold. The walls are breached, the balconies are scaled - listen!' It was a night in early May, and the final bombardment of Berlin was in progress. Säure had to shout his head off. 'The Italian girl is in Algiers, the Barber's in the crockery, the magpie's stealing everything in sight! The World is rushing together...'" What an ending. If the final actions against Gottfried (the trusting, ideologically bought-in follower, as I read it) are not the ultimate indictment of The Powers That Be, I don't know what is. Bleak as everything about the ending seems, though, to me the song and "Now everybody -" is not a final cynical joke, but another reinforcement of the edifying power of camaraderie and joie de vivre. The bomb hangs over us, we can't do anything about it, well, might as well hold the hand of the person next to you and sing, you know? It's super cheesy, but the more I read Pynchon (the Inherent Vice film contributed to this as well), the more I'm convinced he's a total sap. Which is lovely. PS You left a very nice, thoughtful response to my comment on the recent IJ video, and I feel crummy for not responding, not even a 'thank you'. So using the chance here - thanks. Just didn't have anything substantial to respond with, you pretty much schooled me on the subject of pomo, haha.
+Pēteris Masļenčenko The more I read hist stuff, the more I'm sure your conclusion is right! He gets especially sweet when parenthood is involved - he can turn into a real honey bear on that subject. His books can be filled with sick shit, but you always get one or two amazingly beautiful lyrical scenes that completely annhilate all the bad stuff. And no worries for the comment at all :)
Pēteris Masļenčenko, I've scoured reviews and forums of this book to find somebody or something mentioning the element of human connection and love. It's sparse. You are one of the few people who have mentioned it and it's strange because that's what's so striking to me about this book in general. I felt that it isn't the V2 parabola perspective, the title, "Gravity Rainbow" refers to all! It's the colors that heaviness brings to the soul. Nobody me that so maybe I'm crazy, but with Pynchon it feels right. We go through this inanity and paranoia and fear and relief again and again, cycles. And how do you study cycles? Through math. It's so beautiful and I wish I was smart enough to be able to describe it, but Pynchon does. Sorry if this makes no sense. Thanks for bringing up those elements
Finished reading Gravity's Rainbow over 1½ years with a big break and many smaller ones in between. Never read any other postmodern or Pynchon novels before this. It was not difficult in the way I thought it would be. It was all readable (unlike Finnegan's Wake for example. Before ordering GR I feared I wouldn't be able to make sense of the book on the level of understanding the words, but that wasn't the case at all) and frequently very funny. It wasn't as plotless as I thought it would be, only very complicated. It wasn't even as dark and disgusting as I kind of expected. I don't know... I mean sure they eat poop in one scene, but that's hardly a reason to deny a Pulitzer. While I understand why some people would find the work depressing, I found the endless parade of comic scenes to be life affirming as well. The book is just so funny in parts. "The disgusting english candy drill" was by far the funniest thing I know of. Hilarious. Similarly the dark stuff was often just over the top. Franz Pökler though... that one long recollection about him and his daughter in the middle of the book was haunting. So all in all, either it wasn't that difficult or most other difficult works are like this: They just require patience, and maybe a study guide to help along. I found reading "Some Things that 'Happen' (More or Less) in Gravity's Rainbow" after each episode very helpful in connecting some of the dots. So the book wasn't easy reading, I understand why it's regarded as difficult and there are parts in it that I don't understand. But it doesn't take superpowers. Humans can read it and find it enjoyable and moving. One of the side effects of having read this one was that all sensible fiction became laughably easy to follow. I've had problems with concentrating on books, but after reading GR I breezed through Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials in little over a week. And that was like 1100 pages. I think GR did something irreversible to my brain! Thanks for the tips in this and your other videos.
Kudos for your experience with GR! Although I do think it's a very dark novel, I agree 100% with you that the silliness all over it is very life affirming - beautifully put man.
I find there's a lot of part vs. whole metaphors in the book ... the description of the missile is one of these' a rainbow is white light decomposed into constituent colors ... so the notion that a missile's fixed course (hostory) can be deflected by the misbehavior of one component, thereby saving the lives of the innocent.
I love the sense of the feeling of when he has to disguise himself- I feel the fear and excitement...I don't remember the extent of the costumes he wore, yet the feeling of being caught up in the action remains.
Just finished it. Throughout the course of the book I found it difficult, original, interesting, provocative, infuriating, long, rambling, disorienting, devastating, profound, fun, funny, disgusting, headache inducing, silly, ridiculous, surreal, acutely factual, bleak, philosophical, jarring, deconstructionist, holistic, profane, upsetting, inspiring and upsetting. I had deep reflections on the nature of the world to be told through grand narratives in terms of history, politics, science, identity and religion; and how domination involves imposing one narrative over others. How people don't choose their narratives but take pre-produced narratives and attach themselves to it to try and find a place in the world. How we often obscure the world by trying to explain it and understand it. How our understanding of WWII is ultimately a constructed narrative that highlights key events, makes political assumptions about nationhood and what facts should be considered important/prioritised (whilst forgetting other things entirely like the ethnic cleansing of the Herero, labour camps for children building rockets, or the alienation of mid-level bureaucrats). The naivety of objectivity, even in terms of a scientific ideal, as ultimately humans tend to subsume things into a narrative, to serve certain interests, to have a sense of organisation/bureaucracy that ultimately get out of control. A couple of sections really stuck with me. When we share Margherita's consciousness and trauma as she has a break down in the toilet, Slothrop's reaction is to only focus on what she says about Imipolex G and descends into his own paranoia about Them. Very sad. Showed to me how we can be so subsumed in our own narratives we do not see other people beyond how they fit into our own story, even if they breakdown in front of us. Horst Achtfaden's justifications for not being guilty for being involved in the V2 project were also very interesting, and how he takes the language of rocket engineering to explain his own narrative. When he leaves and realises that there no longer be instructions from the megaphone was also very interesting, highlighting the desire to have a place in the world, serve a purpose and to divulge our responsibility for action to another. To be part of a System. So many other great moments (Pokler and his daughter, Byron the lightbulb, Captain Marvy's end). Won't mention them all. At the end of the novel all this was wiped out, almost like by a literary rocket and I felt weirdly empty about the 900 pages I had just read. I no longer wanted to analyse or learn lessons, and my brain hurt! It left an effect on me, but I would find it hard to describe. Interesting experience. I'm not an academic and would have really struggled to complete the book, let alone get this much out of it, without these videos. Thanks a lot man.
Just started Vineland (uh oh!) but I feel like i'm due another read of Gravity's Rainbow - especially the 'Counterforce' chapter which, off the back of the chaos of 'The Zone,' just becomes nigh on impossible to traverse! There are definitely things you don't forget from GR - the sublime Kentish sermon; also Pokler's sinister/heartbreaking trips to Zwolfkinder to meet his daughter, or what may or may not be a series of daughters, progressively older, to simulate 'the moving image of a daughter.' Unforgettable!
GR was the first book I read when I decided to get back into fiction after spending years lost in the wilderness of Existential and Postmodern Philosophy. I remember really liking it (no matter how much it confused me), but also feeling that the book was so angry at times that it was difficult to end up loving. What I love about Bleeding Edge so much is Pynchon's move away from cold cynicism or irony, and while that exists in parts of GR, I've always felt that it was more of a series of case studies on some emotions rather than encouraging them. But the ending of the book would tend to point to my own misreading of the text in all odds. I really am not sure in the end. It's right near the top of my "read again" list (as I feel that I am better reader now than I was when I read it), but the more I read Pynchon the more I like his other stuff (with the exception of V. I really didn't like V. even a little bit). I prefer Lot 49, Mason & Dixon, and Bleeding Edge to almost every book on my shelf. All three of them are outstanding novels. With GR, after being certain it was going to finish in the top ten of my "Best I read in 2015" list, I realized I just didn't think it was nearly as good as Lot 49, and really nowhere even close to Mason & Dixon. These "Reader's Guides" videos are really enjoyable, btw.
+Keith Witty It was the same for me after I finished GR - I thought of it as the most cruel, disillusioned and nihilist book I'd ever read, and probably the most depressing too. I still believe it's all those things, but I've been pointed out some of the brilliantly uplifting moments in it too. I'd still take post-Vineland Pynchon every day of the week!
Nice overview. You pretty much touch on my overall response to the book. I'd like to try one day to write up my take on GR, but I don't think I'll ever have the time to capture it.
I finished reading Inherent Vice and I can see why you like late Pynchon. The next day I started right in on Gravity's Rainbow and I have been reading it along with the online wiki based on Weisenburger. I'm on page 47, so far so good!
Glad you liked IV! Best of luck with Gravity's Rainbow, the wikis are sometimes very useful, sometimes pointless, but they complement the reading experience beautifully ;)
By the end of the book, those last words put me over the edge. Cried for at least 20 minutes. Uncontrollably. So sad. So horrific, and so beautiful. Thanks for this and your other videos!
Just started to re-read "Gravity's Rainbow". Thanks for the hints you gave. They clear a few things, but I guess I'll read about the book afterwards. Cause I don't want to disturb the re-reading experience itself. This is my second reading, the first was kind of akward and I didn't get so much, maybe half. It was like a dream and I had it for 23 days. But I loved the book throughout, and there were chapters so clear and poetic. I think the dualism of absolute surrealism and hard realism is what fascinated me the most. Because he overcomes this contradiction. By the way: You said that you like the recent Pynchon novels more, but have you read "V."? If someone would point a gun at me, and I was supposed to decide, I would say: "Mason & Dixon" may be his most accomplished, but "V." is my favorite.
Nope! V, Mason & Dixon and Slow Learner are the ones I still need to read, though I should probably also re-read Vineland. I aim at reading all these, or at least M&D and another one, during the summer. I'm very curious about V - lots of people tell me they love it, lots tell me it's a downer! And good luck with GR, I too had that kind of dreamy feeling when I read it :) let me know what you think once you're done with it!
Gravity's rainbow is my favorite book I think the main issue with it isn't the difficulty surrealness etc it's more of the fact that it is a book lol. I think you have to go into this not thinking if it being a book more of it being an experience and I think it's necessary to go back after a few months or a year and re read it and experience it again. You get a different experience every time it's wonderful
I have been reading GR and I'm up to part three- In the Zone. I stopped looking up every last little reference in the wiki because it was slowing me down too much and it was leading to a choppy reading experience. The cropophelia part was a little hard to read and I couldn't understand why it was there but I recently discovered that some people think Hitler had these tendencies.
It was one of the most disturbing bits in a novel that's filled with veeery disturbing bits. But do stick with it! It's a very rewarding experience once you've finished it. Also, the wikis are only useful insofar as they don't hinder the reading experience, so I think you did well ditching them ;)
Agree. As I am reading GR now I am getting a feel of a rabbit hole from every segment I'm in. For me it's not a cultural, or postmodernistic experience. This is a full blown trip
if it wasn't for +The_Bookchemist i would have never found out about postmodern literature authors such as delillo, Pynchon and Wallace. I am so gratefull for finding this youtube channel, i have bought Gravity's Rainbow but haven't read it, and Infinite Jest im in the process of reading it, the are so long, but either way i'm happy to have found about them here. oh, just wanted to ask you about Coetzee, dou you like his books? I'm such a fan of his. Thanks, pardon my english. xD
+Alejandro Betancourt Thanks for the great feedback man :) the only Coetzee novel I've read so far is Disgrace - I liked it, but not too much I'll admit. My uni's library has a huge collections of his novels though and I'd like to read one or two before I leave this place, maybe Waiting for the Barbarians!
I'm reading Thomas McGuane's The Bushwacked Piano. 3 pages in, and you really wake up. Perhaps it's good training for Pynchon. Perhaps not, but it is writing of the highest caliber. And I just read Street of Crocodiles.
Was hoping you would do a video of this sort on Gravity's Rainbow! I'm planning on re-reading it soon. The ending for me was definitely one of the most depressing endings I've read. The best advice I would give someone who is thinking about or wants to read it is that it helps to read it in large chunks. Reading 50 or more pages at a time things start to make sense. Especially the science parts that you touched on, which in my experience turn most people off to the book, more so than the pornographic parts haha.
+The_Bookchemist not too long after you uploaded this, I picked it back up for a re-read and ended up reading all the way up to part 3 in a day. I am absolutely loving it this second time around.
Is that Gregori the trained octopus from the book on your shirt? And is the key in the door to the left an Illuminutty all seeing eye or the key to reality? Slothrop spelled backwards is porhtols which is German (as is Pynchon) for portholes or portals (or assholes). Portals to where? Gravity Waves or a gravity well shaped like a portal or cellar door zero point right here on earth. Depicted by James Cameron in the movie Avatar.
I really wish I liked Gravity's Rainbow. The prose is beautiful and damn near awe-inspiring on every page. However the humor kills me, make a comedy, or make a serious novel, but both into the same novel kills me. (Side note:there's nothing wrong with humor to break up heavy pieces if a book, I just feel the humor was too heavy handed) All and all though the book truly is a masterpiece.
I have three editions of gravity's rainbow and will start it, eventually lol. I bought calvino's "on a winters night a traveler" because you recommended it for postmodern essentials. I have already read pynchon's "inherent vice" and "the crying of lot 49" and I can say he is one of my favorite authors, up there with mccarthy, delillo, faulkner, franzen and foster wallace.
Thank you for your review of Gravity's Rainbow, I want to read it but it is a little intimidating. You have inspired me to try it. If you continue to do videos on American literature I would be interested in hearing your opinion on William Faulkner.
+bigfoot875 Well it is kinda intimidating and it can be haunting and endless, actually! But know that there's lots to be taken from the experience of reading it :)
I finished reading it a few hours ago and I have som very complex feelings about the whole experience. First of all, I definitely feel like I jumped in the deep, shark infested end of the pool with this one. It is only recently that I started reading in my spare time and GR is my first experience with post modern fiction. I actually bought it a couple of years ago and have tried reading it a few times before but gave up on it maybe 50 pages in (if that). One day last year I decided that if I read 100 pages of it that same day, I would be to invested in it to stop reading. It turned out to be a successful strategy. My background is in science (I actually first encountered GR through a chemistry textbook, which featured some quotes from it), and I really enjoyed the nerdy science stuff. There are some A+ math jokes in the book, and he has a beautiful way of tying some pretty hardcore stuff (like Gödel's Incompleteness Therorem) into the themes of the book. Finally, having finished it, I can't help but compare it to Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach. If you are not aware, it's a (very long) book about the nature of conscience and what we experience as existing. Interestingly, whereas GR is a piece of fiction that uses science to talk about its themes, GEB is a science (sort of) book that uses fiction to talk about its themes. Both have a very interesting structure that loops around on itself, and are clearly works of brilliant minds. In a weird way, I feel that GEB is kind of a mirror image of GR, at least in some sense. I'm gonna go see if I cant find som writing comparing the two of them.
Aha! I actually found a paper of some sort comparing the two. I found it here, if anyone is interested: pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/articles/abstract/10.16995/pn.438/
Hey that's great stuff man! And I have the utmost respect for science people reading hard literature (I can barely stand hard literature, and it's supposed to be my job!)! If you're looking for more math jokes, I warmly recommend Against the Day ;) it's even longer than GR but sooooo much easier
Dude you gotta try reading Illuminatus. Gravitys Rainbow was recommended to me after discussing Illuminatus with a friend. Hardest book i have ever read, but easily the most rewarding!
The only Pynchon book I've read is The Crying of lot 49. It was confusing at times, but a lot of fun too. Gravity's Rainbow is on my shelf, but I have to say that I'm a little intimidated by it.
+peaceandllov It is an intimidating book indeed: it's basically what you get in Crying, but to the nth power. If you feel like trying something else by Pynchon before moving to it, Inherent Vice might be a good second read :)
Ciao ti seguo da un anno ormai, complimenti per i tuoi video ;) Mi hai invogliato a leggere Pynchon e infatti un anno fa ho letto Vizio di forma. Ora vorrei leggere Gravity's Rainbow e infatti lo comprerò a breve. Secondo te data la difficoltà è meglio comunque leggerlo in lingua originale oppure con una traduzione italiana (forse perdendo qualcosa, come spesso capita con le traduzioni)ma forse capendoci qualcosa in più? Ho un livello di inglese avanzato/C1
+Tyler Durden Se hai un C1 secondo me puoi decisamente provare a leggerlo in inglese; fai conto però che il libro non è facile nemmeno per i madrelingua, per via di una combinazione letale di lessico astruso, stile intricato e pura follia; tieni poi a mente che di suo non si suppone che tu capisca tutto al 100% (è più l'esperienza che conta), ma che sarà senz'altro tosta. Io la prima volta l'ho letto in italiano, e di sicuro se non te la senti di provare in inglese anche l'italiano va bene (soprattutto se non leggi abitualmente in inglese, l'italiano potrebbe essere meglio). Il mio suggerimento sarebbe di provare a leggere le prime pagine in inglese su Amazon o dal vivo, e giudicare da lì cosa preferisci fare! Grazie mille per il feedback :)
@@TheBookchemist she doesn't say much, besides he was really quiet and needed braces. When I read The Crying of Lot 49, I said, "Mom, what did you do to this guy in college to make him write this way!?" She refused to tell me anything. But he dropped out and did not come back to college until my mother had graduated, so this seems a little suspicious.
I love it and yes, it messed me up too pretty badly the first time I experienced it! My way of seeing it is, just as you're taken away from the narrative to a theater where some narrative (potentially Gravity's Rainbow itself but also not) was being shown, and that theater is destroyed by a bomb, so the end of the book snatches away from that narrative only to consign you to a reality in which you still have a (potential? metaphorical?) bomb above your head.
Have you come across the argument that Post-modernism is not actually a step forward in thought or literature - and thus cannot be considered "post" - but rather it's the late, exhausted form of Modernism, with the only difference being a stylistic change? If so, how would you argue against it? Here's an analogy I'll propose and see what your thoughts are on it: Modernists are digging a hole, hoping to find capital T truth (which I'd argue is moral absolution) no matter how long it takes to reach the bottom. Post-modernists are digging the hole with full knowledge that there's no capital T truth, but instead dig just for shits and giggles. I'm interested to hear what you have to say.
+Trey Rogge I've come across countless arguments on how postmodernism either never existed, is dead, or hasn't started yet! I think I get what you mean with your example, and the theory that post-modernism is very much about the freedom and liberation that comes from abandoning all beliefs in "capital T truth" is very popular here in Italy. I'm not so sure post-modernism is only about giggles though - I never fully subscribed to the view that postmodernism is only about sheer deconstructive destruction. To me, people like Pynchon or Marquez seem way more interested in serious, political stuff than any High Modernist. So yeah, I don't have a very strong opinion, but to me postmodernism is very much something different from Modernism in several ways, although pointing out in which ways it differs can be tricky.
+The_Bookchemist I completely understand how pointing out differences can be tricky. Personally, I'm a modernist disciple. I do, though, enjoy Pynchon, Borges, DeLillo, and Marquez, and I recognize some differences between their works and those of Joyce, Svevo, and Woolf, but I always revert to Ulysses as my argument for elements in postmodernism - metafiction, political agendas, multiple voices etc. - existing before the actual postmodern movement (and let's assume Tristram Shandy was written by some time traveler wanting to fuck with us :)). I know I'm pitting Ulysses against a legion, but I'd argue it and Joyce's successors are monumental enough to compete against the postmodern cornerstones. As for the philosophy of rejecting "capital T truth," I often say Nietzsche's claim "god is dead" sparked that idea, and modernism and postmodernism (perhaps late modernism) display two equal sides to that: either we must create moral absolution through examination of our consciousness, or let us not create it and instead reexamine the nature of reality outside our consciousness. But, postmodernism is still relatively new in that it's not even 100 years old. Maybe in the next 10 years or so we'll be able to pinpoint some definite progressions that merit the "post" in postmodernism and therefore nullify this ongoing debate. I do think those progressions are there, but I can't see them as clearly as you do. Anyway, I love discussions like these and could go on for hours, but this is already long enough, haha. Thanks for this helpful video and for many others! I will now reread Gravity's Rainbow with less anxiety and more excitement.
Awesome! I'm Alan, btw. I'm soaking up all your videos and will pass them along to the other guys and gals. You're doing the lord's work here. I just picked up a 50s paperback copy of What Mad Universe on your recomendation.
Pastiche does not mean a mixing of styles, it means an imitation of another style. Mason & Dixon is a pastiche of eighteenth century picaresque prose as seen in various C18th English novels like Tristram Shandy and Tom Jones. Also several things are said here which aren't totally backed up by evidence, I fail to see for instance how an equation describing the motion of the rocket under yaw control has any bearing on humanistic concerns. Also the book is far from a perfect circle. It's circular, sure. The ending alludes to the beginning, but when faced with a truly circular book like Infinite Jest or Finnegans Wake, Gravity's Rainbow structurally comes off a little more linear (although of course it isn't, it's full of digressions, so 'many-forked' would be more accurate). I'm not sure how much insight this video has to offer for the new reader coming into Gravity's Rainbow, but to your disadvantage I think it's a text that's designed to be deliberately confounding and to resist any conclusive academic lit crit probing. Having just finished it I think it was absolutely amazing and humanistic in a very abstract and suggestive way. Its morality or moralising is implied and never as direct as say Wallace.
I started back in March, and I finally finished the book last Sunday! Here's my long, sprawling review: cmsfoundation.wordpress.com/2016/07/30/review-gravitys-rainbow-by-thomas-pynchon/
i was interested in this book for a time, its just that it's to expensive on AMAZON for hardcover, and if a book i want is in hard back then paperback is not an option for me. BTW mr book chemist have you ever tried swedish authors of the sort? I highly recommend Lindqvist, he's the one that did let the right one in a really good vampire novel, it's better in all honesty than i am legend.
+Jonah Farmer I've heard about him and I'd really like to try it (I'm always on the lookout for quality horror or genre stuff!)! Thanks for reminding me of him :)
As soon as I saw you make a post on it - I felt I had to get off my bum and actually read the book. I knew it was going to be a bit of a complicated book, so I used a post card to write down anything I thought was relevant (link- www.mrsamueljones.com/books/gravitys-rainbow/ ) I loved the short stories and you were right, it did feel like cinema. I was quite suprised to how attached I was to these transitory characters, Enzian, Tchitcherine, Mexico, Pokler and especially Byron the Lightbulb.
+thedudeperson I'll consider filming that video, but I don't think I'm knowledgeable enough about it to film a reader's guide of any sort (I've read no monograph on the book for instance). Maybe a shorter video!
Well. I finished it tree weeks ago before i did the first test of maturity exam here in Italy. I think this book was a perfect way to reach (after 6 months, i took my lounge time) the maturity exam, maybe the book was the maturity exam itself eheh. However it has been one of the most intense, epic and mindfucking novel i've ever read. Some parts are really awesome, i'll always remember the digression about the Dodo's extermination by Franz van Der Groov, Katye's ancestor, the story of Byron the lamp, and most of all the entire chapter "The Zone". The last chapter the "Counterforce" is an absurd delirium which messed up my brain, for this reason i suppose I must read some part one more time. However it has been a wonderful, educational and historic book (reading it while I was studying the XX century at school was very helpful!) about the real and obscure nature of the human being, and how the second world war has been a point of no return for the entire world, a world bound for the End. I think my next Pynchon's reading will be "Against the day". I suddenly found the english edition (the one you reviewed) in my Feltrinelli store, and as a conditional reflex I immediately bought it (eheh). I think I'll wait a little more to read it, because I want to train more with English reading. I red "In watermelon sugar" that you advised me weeks ago, and now I'm really enjoying Stephen King's 11/22/63. Then I'll read Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut (that I've already bought with Against the day). And then I might be ready for another long and unique "Pynchonian" experience, in english! haha
Really, man, respect - I'm mind-blown you did it, when I was 18 I would have stopped at page 3. And you clearly read it closely, which is all the more impressive (I know uni professors who read it skipping parts and such, and I understand why they did it)! Have fun with your readings, they're all awesome (let me know about King's novel, I've been willing to read it for quite a while now), and good luck with Against the Day! Compared to Gravity's Rainbow, it's a breeze; the only difficult thing about it is that it's got dozens of characters and it's veeery long, but that said, it's as enjoyable as it gets. Amazing. Oh and how did the maturity exam go?
The maturity exam went very well, i made 95/100 (but I studied very serenely). At the beginning I thought to prepare a thesis about Pynchon, but in March i saw that i was very very behind in the reading of Gravity's Rainbow, though it's was very difficult to relate subject as i did an economic school. However at the beginning I was very accurate with the reading of GR, and I when i bought it i bought also a little notebook. I read the first chapter annoying everything, like a summary of each chapter.. but when I reach the chapter "The Zone" I preferred to continue the reading very fluency. The error was that in the last part of my copy are few pages underlined instead of the first part where everything was noted (but requested me so much time..). About 11/22/63 I think is very very charming, and I think King reached the poetry in the prologue, very touching. I haven't read a King's book since the old age, when i was 12/13, and I think this book is perfect to rediscover the author (though my aut sustains that the majority of his latest production is mediocre), and it was a pleasure reading the crossover with another famous book of the author (I don't spoil anymore hah). And, as i Said, i'm enjoying it as an english lecture. I hope when it comes the time for Against the day to not have such difficulties in reading it D: ;)
When I watch Italian cowboy films of the late 1960s and '70s, not the good ones with lots of money, with Sergio Leone, no, the really shit cheap ones, the Djangos and Ringos, does the really bright red blood entertain us? The terrible actors who can't say their lines in English very well, the over the top good-looking single brunette in it, who also struggles to say her lines well or has to be dubbed over? Yes, I watch those films, I understand them for various reasons, they are charming in their own way, it's nice to see parts of Southern Spain that I know well being used in the background. But I can only watch them alone, and I have to be in the right mood. There is also an association for me with the past, with friends who used to force me to watch those films, and there was nothing else to watch. Those times it wasn't funny and I used to feel sorry for the films, the makers, myself, now it's ok, but it also feels like a kind of Stockholm syndrome, no? We need to make sense of our past, in that case perhaps of the time that we tried to read GR the first time and went mad, came back, and suddenly the book made sense somehow. But it's hard to get other people to understand sometimes, no?
The thing I find maddening about Pynchon is his (deliberate) carelessness in the use of pronouns. The reader is frequently left bereft, in the impossibly long paragraphs covering so much stuff, as to who is being written about and it's the feeling of being further lost because of this is frustrating and needless. I don't the think any of Pynchon's books would lose their wonder if he were to throw us this one sop of compassion to our plight when reading him; but then, compassion is not a word I would normally associate with his works.
Finished it today. My general impression is that it's an overrated book. I can see the literary genius behind many segments; many paragraphs were so full of life and essence that I lost my breath. Buuuuut--- I just think that, for a 760-page novel, there had to be more long-term density (i.e., without needing secondary lit). On a page-by-page level I found lots of treasures, yet in the end, they seemed not worth the effort. [I had already seen some core ideas of GR in the works of Jean Beaudrillard for instance, a pretty creative post-modern French philosopher] Comparing to TCL49, the other Pynchon novel I read, GR seemed too wasteful (yeah, I preferred the former). Parts 2 and 3 could disappear, I guess. Comparing to the other "Great American Novel" I read, Infinite Jest, GR lacked density of plot and character, of human touch (DFW was right! LOL); it (GR) has so many ideas that they don't have time to crawl inside our souls. About the ending, it's very good indeed. I had a different view: the rocked was falling in an LA theatre, not a London one. Blicero/Weissman and Gottfried seemed to represent some kind of master/slave dialectics (LOL; cf. They v. Us through the novel); Gottfried falling in LA meaning that the New Order, post-war, would be directed through the US by Hollywood and all that American soft power...
As someone who’s old enough to have lived through the cold war and was registered for selective service when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, I can PROMISE you we DO NOT still live in anywhere bear the kind of existential fear that we once did. That’s self important rationalization for trying to justify postmodernism. You’re a child.
Can someone please explain to me why anyone would award this book anything? It is the literary equivalence of Dadaism ("Oh look, it's a urinal, no it's a book, no it really is just a urinal"). After reading over 300 pages, I've come to suspect this text is really the transcript from a 9 year old boy on crack delivering a 7 hour dissertation on the aberrant sexual behaviors of Londoners during the Blitz of WWII. If Thomas Pynchon had had a credible editor, this whole 700'ish page atrocity against trees would have been reduced to a 12-page pamphlet and then immediately thrown out. Is it worth continuing onward (I know it can't get worse), or should I just skip the remaining 400 something pages and see if I can mulch the entire heap into garden fertilizer? PS - I am considering reading pages at random rather than in numbered order, as I suspect this strategy might produce a more coherent story line. Thoughts?
The book was incomprehensible and nihilistic. It's 760ish pages of pointlessness. Pynchon is obviously an extremely intelligent man but I think he has the most pessimistic view of humanity I have ever seen. You learn nothing from this book. It reflects almost nothing true about humanity or history. Read literally anything else and you'll learn more than you will learn from this book.
If the book was incomprehensible to you how do you know Pynchon is “extremely intelligent”? It’s like reading a math paper you don’t understand and calling the author a genius, which is absolutely meaningless imo 😂😂
Ive never been affected by a book the way I was with GR. I did not love the experience of reading the book for long stretches. But once I was done, once I could see the whole thing, I loved it and missed its presence in my life. I had to resist the urge to immediately start over again.
If i had to pick one "wtf am I reading?" moment from GR, it would have to be the seemingly random flashback to Katje's ancestor and his role in the extinction of the dodo bird. That was when I realized this was the weirdest goddamn book I've ever read. Oh, and Gregori.
I mean...
The book starts out with a lugubrious apocalyptic dream vision and follows that with a banana breakfast vaudeville number...
two words: toilet scene
In 1984 I bought a record by Laurie Anderson, who had been featured on German radio some years before. Her record had a song on it called "Gravity's Angel" which she sang with Peter Gabriel. I then went to a university in 1987 (being 27 at the time seemed rather old), and I went through the English section of their central library in Bochum, Germany. I went through the shelves to see what I could check out to read. And I came upon the title "Gravity's Rainbow. I said to myself, where do I know this from. My brain went into action and soon I made the connection to Laurie Anderson. An I thought, what she likes couldn't be bad. I was hooked to Pynchon's writings ever since. Though, my favorite now is divided between "Against The Day" and "Mason & Dixon". I find it strange that it has never occurred to anybody to liken the latter to John Barth's "The Sodweed Factor". Also a wonderful book.
Damn, you finally made this video! :)
I recently read his V. and was admiring how much in control of his text he is. You know when you're reading a dense passage and not quite understanding anything so much so that you think he's playing with you--the reader--just at that moment he shifts the scene and the tone of the piece so much so that you feel disoriented? Kinda like Suttree? Like the stuff with Pokler, or Katje and Slothrop.
And I didn't know about the circular structure, damn! I read a book about IJ where the author compares the disintegration of Hal to Slothrop, which was really interesting. This summer I plan to read stuff about Peenemunde, Wernher von Braun, V-2, Mittelwerk, Carl Jung, Freud and Norman Brown just because they're related to GR. :P
P.S. I remember, in 2014, when I knew absolutely nothing about literature; I'd read only three-four books by then; and I somehow came across your Top 10 of 2012 video, and I remember your describing GR as a "century-defining book," and I bought book. I had no idea how to even read prose and underestimated GR's difficulty. It took me three months to finish the fucker and I hated it a lot of times along the way. I didn't understand more than half the book but I had the experience. I didn't know one could be that smart and goofy and serious and silly at once. I don't know whether it changed my life, but it definitely did broaden my outlook on life; and from about that point I started becoming a serious reader.
So my point being: thank you, Bookchemist. The books you've recommended me here have most of them have become my favorites, and I'll always be grateful to you for that. It's a testament to that fact that what you do with your channel is excellent. :)
+Asher Deep This must be the most heart-warming comment I've received so far! Thanks to you, man - it's always great to read your feedback, and I'm so glad I could be of help :)
Really?Hal and Slothrop?It makes sense,I haven't really made that connection.
Man,the book ends in two words: "now everybody".It's as simple as that!Apart from that,I like your work and love the book,which being read in English - as it is not my mother language - was my biggest mental challenge so far!Keep up the good work.
The books about the Montauk Project are labelled "science fiction". But is that really the case?
I've yet to see any commentary about GR suggesting that it is actually a disclosure, and deep explanation about the topics most important about the nazis:
trauma-based mind-control amplified and streamlined in programs that developed into the MONARCH and MKULTRA programs, plus much more.
There is excellent material available regarding the nuts and bolts of programming (and more importantly DEPROGRAMMING).
But that material is usually kept far far away from academic circles. Those interested in that topic might be generally unaware of Pynchon's contribution.
I'll just say that I've read a lot to try to understand things like THE MONTAUK BOYS PROGRAM, and as soon as I began reading GR, the science lessons popped into dimensional explications that I was not expecting and was barely prepared for.
Why mind-control programming and deprogramming is not part of Psych.101-111 classes in every accredited university is a BIG FUCKING PROBLEM!!!
That we know the militaries and corporations around the world extensively study, employ, and structurally depend on compartmentalized people and departments -
why do we KNOW that explicitly, but leave the knowledge that would set people free from those traps, out of the academic officaldom?
What I'm writing here is the most dangerous topic to speak, or even think about!
But since it is about truth and the potentials for both human freedom, and human excellence through programming...
Dangerous shit can be lots of fun.
And truth is truly a force of nature, so it has its own gravitational impact and necessity - and cycles bound with time.
I bet that as the years go on increasing numbers of people will recognize that Pynchon delivered a deep-secrets science manual regarding the most radical considerations that developed in the nazi era of mind technology.
The Angelic Hierarchy is a rainbow in a silver-white realm.
Gravity's Rainbow is the substantialization of mind into matter. (As Above, So Below)
Why were the nazis interested in stuff like the Rainbow Body discussed by Tibetan mystics?!?
Gravity's field is brown.
The use of color throughout the book is not just poetics or "postmodernist" verbiage gone berzerkers.
His use of color is as precise as any manual about mind and energetic functioning.
(A rainbow involves much more discrimination than ROYGBIV.
Pale Orange is not rust nor a heavy orange.
Maybe Pynchon worked in one of the secret backrooms at Boeing... not Skunkworks, but something like that.
No one knows anything about him - he's very private.
So it doesn't hurt to speculate, and provoke questions that get people to face the real horrors, and real excelleneces (in the sciences) of fascism, the nazi era, and most especially DATA-BUNDLING.
Fascism is a matter of binding and bundling stuff together - in fascicles.)
Thank you so much for your video. I took GR with me on my first trip to Europe this fall (I was traveling for over a month). It turned out to be a good choice for traversing "the zone" so to speak. I started it on the plane ride over the Atlantic and finished it on the return journey over the Atlantic. I think Pynchon would approve of the cyclical nature of my reading experience
I thought it was a devastating book, funny, obscene, romantic, absurd, I could go on and on. It's been hard to sift through some of the supplemental material though, and your video really helped me!
I was touched by some of the passages about love, I love the way Pynchon writes about sex and relationships. Even when it's really fucked up, its so immersive and fluid and it never feels forced or voyeuristic. It's one of the most amazing books I've ever read, and I'm really happy to find people who have read it because it leaves you with a lot of questions!
thank you for your video!!
Just wanted to say thank you for introducing me to Pynchon, your enthusiasm through your videos made me pick up Gravity's Rainbow and as tough as it is, stylistically I absolutely love it. Have already ordered some of his other novels including 'Against The Day' - so yeah cheers. Keep the fantastic videos coming.
+Craig Scott Glad I introduced him to him, he's the fucking boss! Thanks for the feedback :)
It's been ages since I've read Gravity's Rainbow and you definitely made me wanting to read it again.
also, you kind of spoiled the ending... not sure if that matters with this particular book, but wish you gave a heads up
Just finished the book today, so it was very exciting to see this video pop up just in time for the event. I'm a rather casual reader, and could only follow the book vaguely , but here's some uneducated thoughts. Long comment incoming:
I'm glad you mentioned the pastiche elements. That octopus scene is indeed one of the best in the book, and it's kind of the first time I really consciously realized that what Pynchon was doing was transplanting different forms of entertainment into literary fiction. One moment you're reading a Serious Anti-War Novel, the next you're reading a 1950s B-movie or a fable or an episode of Looney Tunes. Sure, this is a core tenet of pomo in a sense, but I've never encountered this technique in quite such a muscular way, and it's very impressive. Builds a hilarious, intensely unique atmosphere.
Though the political aspect that you touch on - criticising our ever oblique masters for Their evils and corruption of our world - is indeed the driving force of the novel, if not Pynchon's whole writing career, my personal main take-away from GR (along with Lot 49 and Bleeding Edge), is, cheesy as it may sound, The Power of Love and Friendship. A running theme in this guy's books is human connection as a respite from a world that is beyond our control or understanding. The way to live is as fiercely romantically as Mexico, or as spontaneously and freely as Slothrop, because the love and empathy experienced that way is the one thing They cannot corrupt or take away from us. For me, the crucial passage of the book wasn't any of the Proverbs for Paranoids or political stuff, but this, when Säure is discussing Rossini vs Beethoven:
" 'With Rossini, the whole point is that lovers always get together, isolation is overcome, and like it or not that is one of the centripetal movements of the World. Through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs. All the shit is transmuted to gold. The walls are breached, the balconies are scaled - listen!' It was a night in early May, and the final bombardment of Berlin was in progress. Säure had to shout his head off. 'The Italian girl is in Algiers, the Barber's in the crockery, the magpie's stealing everything in sight! The World is rushing together...'"
What an ending. If the final actions against Gottfried (the trusting, ideologically bought-in follower, as I read it) are not the ultimate indictment of The Powers That Be, I don't know what is. Bleak as everything about the ending seems, though, to me the song and "Now everybody -" is not a final cynical joke, but another reinforcement of the edifying power of camaraderie and joie de vivre. The bomb hangs over us, we can't do anything about it, well, might as well hold the hand of the person next to you and sing, you know? It's super cheesy, but the more I read Pynchon (the Inherent Vice film contributed to this as well), the more I'm convinced he's a total sap. Which is lovely.
PS
You left a very nice, thoughtful response to my comment on the recent IJ video, and I feel crummy for not responding, not even a 'thank you'. So using the chance here - thanks. Just didn't have anything substantial to respond with, you pretty much schooled me on the subject of pomo, haha.
+Pēteris Masļenčenko The more I read hist stuff, the more I'm sure your conclusion is right! He gets especially sweet when parenthood is involved - he can turn into a real honey bear on that subject. His books can be filled with sick shit, but you always get one or two amazingly beautiful lyrical scenes that completely annhilate all the bad stuff. And no worries for the comment at all :)
Pēteris Masļenčenko, I've scoured reviews and forums of this book to find somebody or something mentioning the element of human connection and love. It's sparse. You are one of the few people who have mentioned it and it's strange because that's what's so striking to me about this book in general. I felt that it isn't the V2 parabola perspective, the title, "Gravity Rainbow" refers to all! It's the colors that heaviness brings to the soul. Nobody me that so maybe I'm crazy, but with Pynchon it feels right. We go through this inanity and paranoia and fear and relief again and again, cycles. And how do you study cycles? Through math. It's so beautiful and I wish I was smart enough to be able to describe it, but Pynchon does. Sorry if this makes no sense. Thanks for bringing up those elements
Finished reading Gravity's Rainbow over 1½ years with a big break and many smaller ones in between. Never read any other postmodern or Pynchon novels before this. It was not difficult in the way I thought it would be. It was all readable (unlike Finnegan's Wake for example. Before ordering GR I feared I wouldn't be able to make sense of the book on the level of understanding the words, but that wasn't the case at all) and frequently very funny. It wasn't as plotless as I thought it would be, only very complicated. It wasn't even as dark and disgusting as I kind of expected. I don't know... I mean sure they eat poop in one scene, but that's hardly a reason to deny a Pulitzer. While I understand why some people would find the work depressing, I found the endless parade of comic scenes to be life affirming as well. The book is just so funny in parts. "The disgusting english candy drill" was by far the funniest thing I know of. Hilarious. Similarly the dark stuff was often just over the top. Franz Pökler though... that one long recollection about him and his daughter in the middle of the book was haunting.
So all in all, either it wasn't that difficult or most other difficult works are like this: They just require patience, and maybe a study guide to help along. I found reading "Some Things that 'Happen' (More or Less) in Gravity's Rainbow" after each episode very helpful in connecting some of the dots. So the book wasn't easy reading, I understand why it's regarded as difficult and there are parts in it that I don't understand. But it doesn't take superpowers. Humans can read it and find it enjoyable and moving.
One of the side effects of having read this one was that all sensible fiction became laughably easy to follow. I've had problems with concentrating on books, but after reading GR I breezed through Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials in little over a week. And that was like 1100 pages. I think GR did something irreversible to my brain!
Thanks for the tips in this and your other videos.
Kudos for your experience with GR! Although I do think it's a very dark novel, I agree 100% with you that the silliness all over it is very life affirming - beautifully put man.
I find there's a lot of part vs. whole metaphors in the book ... the description of the missile is one of these' a rainbow is white light decomposed into constituent colors ... so the notion that a missile's fixed course (hostory) can be deflected by the misbehavior of one component, thereby saving the lives of the innocent.
+Keith Peck I like that a lot!
I love the sense of the feeling of when he has to disguise himself- I feel the fear and excitement...I don't remember the extent of the costumes he wore, yet the feeling of being caught up in the action remains.
Just finished it. Throughout the course of the book I found it difficult, original, interesting, provocative, infuriating, long, rambling, disorienting, devastating, profound, fun, funny, disgusting, headache inducing, silly, ridiculous, surreal, acutely factual, bleak, philosophical, jarring, deconstructionist, holistic, profane, upsetting, inspiring and upsetting.
I had deep reflections on the nature of the world to be told through grand narratives in terms of history, politics, science, identity and religion; and how domination involves imposing one narrative over others. How people don't choose their narratives but take pre-produced narratives and attach themselves to it to try and find a place in the world. How we often obscure the world by trying to explain it and understand it. How our understanding of WWII is ultimately a constructed narrative that highlights key events, makes political assumptions about nationhood and what facts should be considered important/prioritised (whilst forgetting other things entirely like the ethnic cleansing of the Herero, labour camps for children building rockets, or the alienation of mid-level bureaucrats). The naivety of objectivity, even in terms of a scientific ideal, as ultimately humans tend to subsume things into a narrative, to serve certain interests, to have a sense of organisation/bureaucracy that ultimately get out of control.
A couple of sections really stuck with me. When we share Margherita's consciousness and trauma as she has a break down in the toilet, Slothrop's reaction is to only focus on what she says about Imipolex G and descends into his own paranoia about Them. Very sad. Showed to me how we can be so subsumed in our own narratives we do not see other people beyond how they fit into our own story, even if they breakdown in front of us. Horst Achtfaden's justifications for not being guilty for being involved in the V2 project were also very interesting, and how he takes the language of rocket engineering to explain his own narrative. When he leaves and realises that there no longer be instructions from the megaphone was also very interesting, highlighting the desire to have a place in the world, serve a purpose and to divulge our responsibility for action to another. To be part of a System.
So many other great moments (Pokler and his daughter, Byron the lightbulb, Captain Marvy's end). Won't mention them all.
At the end of the novel all this was wiped out, almost like by a literary rocket and I felt weirdly empty about the 900 pages I had just read. I no longer wanted to analyse or learn lessons, and my brain hurt! It left an effect on me, but I would find it hard to describe. Interesting experience.
I'm not an academic and would have really struggled to complete the book, let alone get this much out of it, without these videos. Thanks a lot man.
Just started Vineland (uh oh!) but I feel like i'm due another read of Gravity's Rainbow - especially the 'Counterforce' chapter which, off the back of the chaos of 'The Zone,' just becomes nigh on impossible to traverse! There are definitely things you don't forget from GR - the sublime Kentish sermon; also Pokler's sinister/heartbreaking trips to Zwolfkinder to meet his daughter, or what may or may not be a series of daughters, progressively older, to simulate 'the moving image of a daughter.' Unforgettable!
GR was the first book I read when I decided to get back into fiction after spending years lost in the wilderness of Existential and Postmodern Philosophy. I remember really liking it (no matter how much it confused me), but also feeling that the book was so angry at times that it was difficult to end up loving. What I love about Bleeding Edge so much is Pynchon's move away from cold cynicism or irony, and while that exists in parts of GR, I've always felt that it was more of a series of case studies on some emotions rather than encouraging them. But the ending of the book would tend to point to my own misreading of the text in all odds. I really am not sure in the end. It's right near the top of my "read again" list (as I feel that I am better reader now than I was when I read it), but the more I read Pynchon the more I like his other stuff (with the exception of V. I really didn't like V. even a little bit). I prefer Lot 49, Mason & Dixon, and Bleeding Edge to almost every book on my shelf. All three of them are outstanding novels. With GR, after being certain it was going to finish in the top ten of my "Best I read in 2015" list, I realized I just didn't think it was nearly as good as Lot 49, and really nowhere even close to Mason & Dixon.
These "Reader's Guides" videos are really enjoyable, btw.
+Keith Witty It was the same for me after I finished GR - I thought of it as the most cruel, disillusioned and nihilist book I'd ever read, and probably the most depressing too. I still believe it's all those things, but I've been pointed out some of the brilliantly uplifting moments in it too.
I'd still take post-Vineland Pynchon every day of the week!
What impresses me the most is not only your devotion to literature, but your devotion to sweeping the floor.
Nice overview. You pretty much touch on my overall response to the book. I'd like to try one day to write up my take on GR, but I don't think I'll ever have the time to capture it.
It's all about starting.
I finished reading Inherent Vice and I can see why you like late Pynchon. The next day I started right in on Gravity's Rainbow and I have been reading it along with the online wiki based on Weisenburger. I'm on page 47, so far so good!
Glad you liked IV! Best of luck with Gravity's Rainbow, the wikis are sometimes very useful, sometimes pointless, but they complement the reading experience beautifully ;)
It was a book I've wanted to read and I think i ll start after this video. Thanks!
By the end of the book, those last words put me over the edge. Cried for at least 20 minutes. Uncontrollably. So sad. So horrific, and so beautiful. Thanks for this and your other videos!
Damn, I didn't put it together that the introduction is a cinema and that it connects to the ending. Thank you for this!
Just started to re-read "Gravity's Rainbow". Thanks for the hints you gave. They clear a few things, but I guess I'll read about the book afterwards. Cause I don't want to disturb the re-reading experience itself. This is my second reading, the first was kind of akward and I didn't get so much, maybe half. It was like a dream and I had it for 23 days. But I loved the book throughout, and there were chapters so clear and poetic. I think the dualism of absolute surrealism and hard realism is what fascinated me the most. Because he overcomes this contradiction.
By the way: You said that you like the recent Pynchon novels more, but have you read "V."? If someone would point a gun at me, and I was supposed to decide, I would say: "Mason & Dixon" may be his most accomplished, but "V." is my favorite.
Nope! V, Mason & Dixon and Slow Learner are the ones I still need to read, though I should probably also re-read Vineland. I aim at reading all these, or at least M&D and another one, during the summer. I'm very curious about V - lots of people tell me they love it, lots tell me it's a downer! And good luck with GR, I too had that kind of dreamy feeling when I read it :) let me know what you think once you're done with it!
Gravity's rainbow is my favorite book I think the main issue with it isn't the difficulty surrealness etc it's more of the fact that it is a book lol. I think you have to go into this not thinking if it being a book more of it being an experience and I think it's necessary to go back after a few months or a year and re read it and experience it again. You get a different experience every time it's wonderful
Then I'm going to start...
I have been reading GR and I'm up to part three- In the Zone. I stopped looking up every last little reference in the wiki because it was slowing me down too much and it was leading to a choppy reading experience. The cropophelia part was a little hard to read and I couldn't understand why it was there but I recently discovered that some people think Hitler had these tendencies.
It was one of the most disturbing bits in a novel that's filled with veeery disturbing bits. But do stick with it! It's a very rewarding experience once you've finished it. Also, the wikis are only useful insofar as they don't hinder the reading experience, so I think you did well ditching them ;)
The word psychedelic comes closest to describing this book.
Agree. As I am reading GR now I am getting a feel of a rabbit hole from every segment I'm in. For me it's not a cultural, or postmodernistic experience. This is a full blown trip
if it wasn't for +The_Bookchemist i would have never found out about postmodern literature authors such as delillo, Pynchon and Wallace. I am so gratefull for finding this youtube channel, i have bought Gravity's Rainbow but haven't read it, and Infinite Jest im in the process of reading it, the are so long, but either way i'm happy to have found about them here. oh, just wanted to ask you about Coetzee, dou you like his books? I'm such a fan of his. Thanks, pardon my english. xD
+Alejandro Betancourt Thanks for the great feedback man :) the only Coetzee novel I've read so far is Disgrace - I liked it, but not too much I'll admit. My uni's library has a huge collections of his novels though and I'd like to read one or two before I leave this place, maybe Waiting for the Barbarians!
I'm reading Thomas McGuane's The Bushwacked Piano. 3 pages in, and you really wake up. Perhaps it's good training for Pynchon. Perhaps not, but it is writing of the highest caliber. And I just read Street of Crocodiles.
Was hoping you would do a video of this sort on Gravity's Rainbow! I'm planning on re-reading it soon. The ending for me was definitely one of the most depressing endings I've read. The best advice I would give someone who is thinking about or wants to read it is that it helps to read it in large chunks. Reading 50 or more pages at a time things start to make sense. Especially the science parts that you touched on, which in my experience turn most people off to the book, more so than the pornographic parts haha.
+80085word69 Totally agree with your suggestion! If you read it one page per day, you'll end up dropping it after a week or two :P
+The_Bookchemist not too long after you uploaded this, I picked it back up for a re-read and ended up reading all the way up to part 3 in a day. I am absolutely loving it this second time around.
Is that Gregori the trained octopus from the book on your shirt? And is the key in the door to the left an Illuminutty all seeing eye or the key to reality? Slothrop spelled backwards is porhtols which is German (as is Pynchon) for portholes or portals (or assholes). Portals to where? Gravity Waves or a gravity well shaped like a portal or cellar door zero point right here on earth. Depicted by James Cameron in the movie Avatar.
And The Truman Show.
I really wish I liked Gravity's Rainbow. The prose is beautiful and damn near awe-inspiring on every page. However the humor kills me, make a comedy, or make a serious novel, but both into the same novel kills me. (Side note:there's nothing wrong with humor to break up heavy pieces if a book, I just feel the humor was too heavy handed) All and all though the book truly is a masterpiece.
I have three editions of gravity's rainbow and will start it, eventually lol.
I bought calvino's "on a winters night a traveler" because you recommended it for postmodern essentials. I have already read pynchon's "inherent vice" and "the crying of lot 49" and I can say he is one of my favorite authors, up there with mccarthy, delillo, faulkner, franzen and foster wallace.
+Justin Lance That's a dope list there ;)
I shall recommend your list to the publishers PR department.
Thank you for your review of Gravity's Rainbow, I want to read it but it is a little intimidating. You have inspired me to try it. If you continue to do videos on American literature I would be interested in hearing your opinion on William Faulkner.
Nice video, I've been wanting to read this book but have to intimidated by the length and themes, but you made it seem very approachable.
+bigfoot875 Well it is kinda intimidating and it can be haunting and endless, actually! But know that there's lots to be taken from the experience of reading it :)
I finished reading it a few hours ago and I have som very complex feelings about the whole experience.
First of all, I definitely feel like I jumped in the deep, shark infested end of the pool with this one. It is only recently that I started reading in my spare time and GR is my first experience with post modern fiction. I actually bought it a couple of years ago and have tried reading it a few times before but gave up on it maybe 50 pages in (if that). One day last year I decided that if I read 100 pages of it that same day, I would be to invested in it to stop reading. It turned out to be a successful strategy.
My background is in science (I actually first encountered GR through a chemistry textbook, which featured some quotes from it), and I really enjoyed the nerdy science stuff. There are some A+ math jokes in the book, and he has a beautiful way of tying some pretty hardcore stuff (like Gödel's Incompleteness Therorem) into the themes of the book.
Finally, having finished it, I can't help but compare it to Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach. If you are not aware, it's a (very long) book about the nature of conscience and what we experience as existing. Interestingly, whereas GR is a piece of fiction that uses science to talk about its themes, GEB is a science (sort of) book that uses fiction to talk about its themes. Both have a very interesting structure that loops around on itself, and are clearly works of brilliant minds. In a weird way, I feel that GEB is kind of a mirror image of GR, at least in some sense. I'm gonna go see if I cant find som writing comparing the two of them.
Aha! I actually found a paper of some sort comparing the two. I found it here, if anyone is interested: pynchonnotes.openlibhums.org/articles/abstract/10.16995/pn.438/
Hey that's great stuff man! And I have the utmost respect for science people reading hard literature (I can barely stand hard literature, and it's supposed to be my job!)! If you're looking for more math jokes, I warmly recommend Against the Day ;) it's even longer than GR but sooooo much easier
Dude you gotta try reading Illuminatus. Gravitys Rainbow was recommended to me after discussing Illuminatus with a friend. Hardest book i have ever read, but easily the most rewarding!
The only Pynchon book I've read is The Crying of lot 49. It was confusing at times, but a lot of fun too. Gravity's Rainbow is on my shelf, but I have to say that I'm a little intimidated by it.
+peaceandllov It is an intimidating book indeed: it's basically what you get in Crying, but to the nth power. If you feel like trying something else by Pynchon before moving to it, Inherent Vice might be a good second read :)
Ciao ti seguo da un anno ormai, complimenti per i tuoi video ;) Mi hai invogliato a leggere Pynchon e infatti un anno fa ho letto Vizio di forma. Ora vorrei leggere Gravity's Rainbow e infatti lo comprerò a breve. Secondo te data la difficoltà è meglio comunque leggerlo in lingua originale oppure con una traduzione italiana (forse perdendo qualcosa, come spesso capita con le traduzioni)ma forse capendoci qualcosa in più? Ho un livello di inglese avanzato/C1
+Tyler Durden Se hai un C1 secondo me puoi decisamente provare a leggerlo in inglese; fai conto però che il libro non è facile nemmeno per i madrelingua, per via di una combinazione letale di lessico astruso, stile intricato e pura follia; tieni poi a mente che di suo non si suppone che tu capisca tutto al 100% (è più l'esperienza che conta), ma che sarà senz'altro tosta. Io la prima volta l'ho letto in italiano, e di sicuro se non te la senti di provare in inglese anche l'italiano va bene (soprattutto se non leggi abitualmente in inglese, l'italiano potrebbe essere meglio). Il mio suggerimento sarebbe di provare a leggere le prime pagine in inglese su Amazon o dal vivo, e giudicare da lì cosa preferisci fare! Grazie mille per il feedback :)
thank you so much sir , i really love your content , your videos are my life savior :)
Big thanks for this, BC.
I'm still trying to decide if I want to read this novel. I don't really want to, but my mom knew him in college, so I kind of feel obligated.
That's so cool! Does she have any fun stories :)?
@@TheBookchemist she doesn't say much, besides he was really quiet and needed braces. When I read The Crying of Lot 49, I said, "Mom, what did you do to this guy in college to make him write this way!?" She refused to tell me anything. But he dropped out and did not come back to college until my mother had graduated, so this seems a little suspicious.
Good job, The Bookchemist!
What do you thing abour the ending? I just finished, and im feeling deeply disturbed
I love it and yes, it messed me up too pretty badly the first time I experienced it! My way of seeing it is, just as you're taken away from the narrative to a theater where some narrative (potentially Gravity's Rainbow itself but also not) was being shown, and that theater is destroyed by a bomb, so the end of the book snatches away from that narrative only to consign you to a reality in which you still have a (potential? metaphorical?) bomb above your head.
and what about the relation between sdm and the rocker? that was so dark! a rocket stuffed with a young boy!
Have you come across the argument that Post-modernism is not actually a step forward in thought or literature - and thus cannot be considered "post" - but rather it's the late, exhausted form of Modernism, with the only difference being a stylistic change? If so, how would you argue against it?
Here's an analogy I'll propose and see what your thoughts are on it: Modernists are digging a hole, hoping to find capital T truth (which I'd argue is moral absolution) no matter how long it takes to reach the bottom. Post-modernists are digging the hole with full knowledge that there's no capital T truth, but instead dig just for shits and giggles.
I'm interested to hear what you have to say.
+Trey Rogge I've come across countless arguments on how postmodernism either never existed, is dead, or hasn't started yet! I think I get what you mean with your example, and the theory that post-modernism is very much about the freedom and liberation that comes from abandoning all beliefs in "capital T truth" is very popular here in Italy. I'm not so sure post-modernism is only about giggles though - I never fully subscribed to the view that postmodernism is only about sheer deconstructive destruction. To me, people like Pynchon or Marquez seem way more interested in serious, political stuff than any High Modernist.
So yeah, I don't have a very strong opinion, but to me postmodernism is very much something different from Modernism in several ways, although pointing out in which ways it differs can be tricky.
+The_Bookchemist I completely understand how pointing out differences can be tricky. Personally, I'm a modernist disciple. I do, though, enjoy Pynchon, Borges, DeLillo, and Marquez, and I recognize some differences between their works and those of Joyce, Svevo, and Woolf, but I always revert to Ulysses as my argument for elements in postmodernism - metafiction, political agendas, multiple voices etc. - existing before the actual postmodern movement (and let's assume Tristram Shandy was written by some time traveler wanting to fuck with us :)). I know I'm pitting Ulysses against a legion, but I'd argue it and Joyce's successors are monumental enough to compete against the postmodern cornerstones.
As for the philosophy of rejecting "capital T truth," I often say Nietzsche's claim "god is dead" sparked that idea, and modernism and postmodernism (perhaps late modernism) display two equal sides to that: either we must create moral absolution through examination of our consciousness, or let us not create it and instead reexamine the nature of reality outside our consciousness.
But, postmodernism is still relatively new in that it's not even 100 years old. Maybe in the next 10 years or so we'll be able to pinpoint some definite progressions that merit the "post" in postmodernism and therefore nullify this ongoing debate. I do think those progressions are there, but I can't see them as clearly as you do. Anyway, I love discussions like these and could go on for hours, but this is already long enough, haha.
Thanks for this helpful video and for many others! I will now reread Gravity's Rainbow with less anxiety and more excitement.
ill put in a plug for our pynchon in public podcast where we are knee deep in GR. this was great!
You're with the podcast? You guys are amazing, I love your stuff!
Awesome! I'm Alan, btw. I'm soaking up all your videos and will pass them along to the other guys and gals. You're doing the lord's work here. I just picked up a 50s paperback copy of What Mad Universe on your recomendation.
Pastiche does not mean a mixing of styles, it means an imitation of another style. Mason & Dixon is a pastiche of eighteenth century picaresque prose as seen in various C18th English novels like Tristram Shandy and Tom Jones. Also several things are said here which aren't totally backed up by evidence, I fail to see for instance how an equation describing the motion of the rocket under yaw control has any bearing on humanistic concerns. Also the book is far from a perfect circle. It's circular, sure. The ending alludes to the beginning, but when faced with a truly circular book like Infinite Jest or Finnegans Wake, Gravity's Rainbow structurally comes off a little more linear (although of course it isn't, it's full of digressions, so 'many-forked' would be more accurate). I'm not sure how much insight this video has to offer for the new reader coming into Gravity's Rainbow, but to your disadvantage I think it's a text that's designed to be deliberately confounding and to resist any conclusive academic lit crit probing. Having just finished it I think it was absolutely amazing and humanistic in a very abstract and suggestive way. Its morality or moralising is implied and never as direct as say Wallace.
I started back in March, and I finally finished the book last Sunday! Here's my long, sprawling review:
cmsfoundation.wordpress.com/2016/07/30/review-gravitys-rainbow-by-thomas-pynchon/
Thanks man - I'll check it out for sure :)!
i was interested in this book for a time, its just that it's to expensive on AMAZON for hardcover, and if a book i want is in hard back then paperback is not an option for me. BTW mr book chemist have you ever tried swedish authors of the sort? I highly recommend Lindqvist, he's the one that did let the right one in a really good vampire novel, it's better in all honesty than i am legend.
+Jonah Farmer I've heard about him and I'd really like to try it (I'm always on the lookout for quality horror or genre stuff!)! Thanks for reminding me of him :)
Try reading "the hip hop gospel" by krs one. Took me like 5 years
As soon as I saw you make a post on it - I felt I had to get off my bum and actually read the book. I knew it was going to be a bit of a complicated book, so I used a post card to write down anything I thought was relevant (link- www.mrsamueljones.com/books/gravitys-rainbow/ ) I loved the short stories and you were right, it did feel like cinema. I was quite suprised to how attached I was to these transitory characters, Enzian, Tchitcherine, Mexico, Pokler and especially Byron the Lightbulb.
Love the postcard - and the Octopus scene is also one of my favorites :). Byron the Lightbulb tends to be a favorite among GR readers!
Love the postcard - and the Octopus scene is also one of my favorites :). Byron the Lightbulb tends to be a favorite among GR readers!
how about Ulysses?
+thedudeperson I'll consider filming that video, but I don't think I'm knowledgeable enough about it to film a reader's guide of any sort (I've read no monograph on the book for instance). Maybe a shorter video!
Great vid man, thanks a lot. Such a confusing book, you need to be focusing so much or else you easily get lost.
Well. I finished it tree weeks ago before i did the first test of maturity exam here in Italy. I think this book was a perfect way to reach (after 6 months, i took my lounge time) the maturity exam, maybe the book was the maturity exam itself eheh.
However it has been one of the most intense, epic and mindfucking novel i've ever read. Some parts are really awesome, i'll always remember the digression about the Dodo's extermination by Franz van Der Groov, Katye's ancestor, the story of Byron the lamp, and most of all the entire chapter "The Zone". The last chapter the "Counterforce" is an absurd delirium which messed up my brain, for this reason i suppose I must read some part one more time. However it has been a wonderful, educational and historic book (reading it while I was studying the XX century at school was very helpful!) about the real and obscure nature of the human being, and how the second world war has been a point of no return for the entire world, a world bound for the End.
I think my next Pynchon's reading will be "Against the day". I suddenly found the english edition (the one you reviewed) in my Feltrinelli store, and as a conditional reflex I immediately bought it (eheh). I think I'll wait a little more to read it, because I want to train more with English reading. I red "In watermelon sugar" that you advised me weeks ago, and now I'm really enjoying Stephen King's 11/22/63. Then I'll read Cat's Cradle by Vonnegut (that I've already bought with Against the day). And then I might be ready for another long and unique "Pynchonian" experience, in english! haha
Really, man, respect - I'm mind-blown you did it, when I was 18 I would have stopped at page 3. And you clearly read it closely, which is all the more impressive (I know uni professors who read it skipping parts and such, and I understand why they did it)! Have fun with your readings, they're all awesome (let me know about King's novel, I've been willing to read it for quite a while now), and good luck with Against the Day! Compared to Gravity's Rainbow, it's a breeze; the only difficult thing about it is that it's got dozens of characters and it's veeery long, but that said, it's as enjoyable as it gets. Amazing. Oh and how did the maturity exam go?
The maturity exam went very well, i made 95/100 (but I studied very serenely). At the beginning I thought to prepare a thesis about Pynchon, but in March i saw that i was very very behind in the reading of Gravity's Rainbow, though it's was very difficult to relate subject as i did an economic school.
However at the beginning I was very accurate with the reading of GR, and I when i bought it i bought also a little notebook. I read the first chapter annoying everything, like a summary of each chapter.. but when I reach the chapter "The Zone" I preferred to continue the reading very fluency. The error was that in the last part of my copy are few pages underlined instead of the first part where everything was noted (but requested me so much time..).
About 11/22/63 I think is very very charming, and I think King reached the poetry in the prologue, very touching. I haven't read a King's book since the old age, when i was 12/13, and I think this book is perfect to rediscover the author (though my aut sustains that the majority of his latest production is mediocre), and it was a pleasure reading the crossover with another famous book of the author (I don't spoil anymore hah). And, as i Said, i'm enjoying it as an english lecture. I hope when it comes the time for Against the day to not have such difficulties in reading it D:
;)
Sorry, I meant to say Cuban Missile Crisis.
1972 was certainly not one of the worst years of the Cold War. Just ask anyone who remembers the Cuban Missile Crises (1962).
Sounds clever af
When I watch Italian cowboy films of the late 1960s and '70s, not the good ones with lots of money, with Sergio Leone, no, the really shit cheap ones, the Djangos and Ringos, does the really bright red blood entertain us? The terrible actors who can't say their lines in English very well, the over the top good-looking single brunette in it, who also struggles to say her lines well or has to be dubbed over?
Yes, I watch those films, I understand them for various reasons, they are charming in their own way, it's nice to see parts of Southern Spain that I know well being used in the background.
But I can only watch them alone, and I have to be in the right mood. There is also an association for me with the past, with friends who used to force me to watch those films, and there was nothing else to watch. Those times it wasn't funny and I used to feel sorry for the films, the makers, myself, now it's ok, but it also feels like a kind of Stockholm syndrome, no? We need to make sense of our past, in that case perhaps of the time that we tried to read GR the first time and went mad, came back, and suddenly the book made sense somehow.
But it's hard to get other people to understand sometimes, no?
All together now BOOM! Hahaha
I'm reading Harvard's rainbow and I would have liked a spoiler disclaimer for the end of the book... 😥 great video, btw.
damn i really wish i didnt watch this. that ending would've been nice to discover organically but i shouldve known better lmao
The thing I find maddening about Pynchon is his (deliberate) carelessness in the use of pronouns. The reader is frequently left bereft, in the impossibly long paragraphs covering so much stuff, as to who is being written about and it's the feeling of being further lost because of this is frustrating and needless. I don't the think any of Pynchon's books would lose their wonder if he were to throw us this one sop of compassion to our plight when reading him; but then, compassion is not a word I would normally associate with his works.
Try Against The Day, lots of compassion there.
Finished it today. My general impression is that it's an overrated book. I can see the literary genius behind many segments; many paragraphs were so full of life and essence that I lost my breath. Buuuuut---
I just think that, for a 760-page novel, there had to be more long-term density (i.e., without needing secondary lit). On a page-by-page level I found lots of treasures, yet in the end, they seemed not worth the effort. [I had already seen some core ideas of GR in the works of Jean Beaudrillard for instance, a pretty creative post-modern French philosopher]
Comparing to TCL49, the other Pynchon novel I read, GR seemed too wasteful (yeah, I preferred the former). Parts 2 and 3 could disappear, I guess.
Comparing to the other "Great American Novel" I read, Infinite Jest, GR lacked density of plot and character, of human touch (DFW was right! LOL); it (GR) has so many ideas that they don't have time to crawl inside our souls.
About the ending, it's very good indeed. I had a different view: the rocked was falling in an LA theatre, not a London one. Blicero/Weissman and Gottfried seemed to represent some kind of master/slave dialectics (LOL; cf. They v. Us through the novel); Gottfried falling in LA meaning that the New Order, post-war, would be directed through the US by Hollywood and all that American soft power...
Wow! So much said, and so little information offered.
He probably didn’t finish the book 😅😅
As someone who’s old enough to have lived through the cold war and was registered for selective service when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, I can PROMISE you we DO NOT still live in anywhere bear the kind of existential fear that we once did. That’s self important rationalization for trying to justify postmodernism. You’re a child.
Love your remark 😂
Can someone please explain to me why anyone would award this book anything? It is the literary equivalence of Dadaism ("Oh look, it's a urinal, no it's a book, no it really is just a urinal").
After reading over 300 pages, I've come to suspect this text is really the transcript from a 9 year old boy on crack delivering a 7 hour dissertation on the aberrant sexual behaviors of Londoners during the Blitz of WWII. If Thomas Pynchon had had a credible editor, this whole 700'ish page atrocity against trees would have been reduced to a 12-page pamphlet and then immediately thrown out.
Is it worth continuing onward (I know it can't get worse), or should I just skip the remaining 400 something pages and see if I can mulch the entire heap into garden fertilizer?
PS - I am considering reading pages at random rather than in numbered order, as I suspect this strategy might produce a more coherent story line. Thoughts?
The book was incomprehensible and nihilistic. It's 760ish pages of pointlessness. Pynchon is obviously an extremely intelligent man but I think he has the most pessimistic view of humanity I have ever seen. You learn nothing from this book. It reflects almost nothing true about humanity or history. Read literally anything else and you'll learn more than you will learn from this book.
If the book was incomprehensible to you how do you know Pynchon is “extremely intelligent”? It’s like reading a math paper you don’t understand and calling the author a genius, which is absolutely meaningless imo 😂😂