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3.95 AVERAGE
3.95 AVERAGE
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Relentlessly dark and pornographic. Some great passages denouncing war and man's immorality to man but quite a slog. I don't care for the whole bawdy WW2, pop culture, old movie thing. I liked Mason and Dixon much better. In fact reading Gravity's Rainbow tanked my ability to read anything more difficult than some great space operas for awhile.
I don't really know what to say about this very long, very strange novel. It has many beautiful descriptive passages, although sometimes what is being described is extremely unpleasant. At times, it's very funny in an offhanded way, due to the absurdity of some of the action. The narrative centers around the character of Lieutenant Slothrop (and his penis) and his European wanderings in the latter stages of World War II and the early postwar period, but there is a vast collection of minor characters many of whom I found difficult to keep track of. The fact that several of them are referred to by multiple names doesn't help. It's hard to be sure how much of the action is intended to be taken literally, and how much is the fantasies or delusions of the characters. Thematically, it touches on a range of topics such as colonialism and the miltary-industrial complex. Definitely an odd book.
i tried so many ways of reading this for so long and still couldn’t get through it. reading it at bedtime each night, then reading in concentrated hour bursts, trying the audiobook, then the audiobook AND reading, and it just never worked. i couldn’t get on this dude’s wavelength.
there are brief moments when i see the fun and the interest, but the comma ridden random sentences with no context to ground me really wore on.
there are brief moments when i see the fun and the interest, but the comma ridden random sentences with no context to ground me really wore on.
I have three copies of this book, all read at various times of my life with notes in the margins. I studied Pynchon extensively in college, a fact which always amazes me when I look at my reading habits now. Still, it's a significant read in my development, and sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I'd continued down the po-mo road in my graduate studies. I still love flipping through the copies I have and seeing how my thoughts about the book changed over time. I should do it again.
Just a shade under three years for me to read GR.
A friend of mine told me that doing shrooms just once “opens a window that never closes” on one’s outlook on life. While I’ve never personally done shrooms, I imagine that this book opens a similar window on reading, as shrooms does to life. As such, I probably don’t need to read it again, even though I’ll be tempted to after a few years.
The book is filled with hilarious and discordant moments that flit in and out. Hazily, out of these quirky scenes and bizarre hallucinations emerge a wacky and paranoiac story involving rockets and erections (as Zia alluded to, what else are white men supposed to write about?) Despite the subject matter, the writing is profound. Pynchon is quite erudite in his telling and I’m confident this is the main reason people slog through and make it. And, now that I did, I suppose I can freely engage in the collective tumescence Pynchon readers seem to have for this book: a la Tyrone Slothrop to the V-2 rocket. I certainly will be reading many other perspectives on the book in the upcoming months.
Some of the more memorable moments involve Slothrop’s ridiculous costumes, like his shirt, his rocket man costume where he kicked a dude in the balls, and his pig costume he wore across northern Europe trying to flee. A few other notable moments are the pie fight in hot air balloons, the Byron the bulb story, the various encounters with Major Marvy (“Major Marvy sucks!”), and the “fucked up” pinball machines where their balls live in exile from a since passed planetoid.
Not entirely sure about the trade-off vs time spent here nor why I persisted for nearly 3 years but the preceding paragraphs in this review probably explain why.
3/5 because I don’t know how a human brain comes up with something like this.
A friend of mine told me that doing shrooms just once “opens a window that never closes” on one’s outlook on life. While I’ve never personally done shrooms, I imagine that this book opens a similar window on reading, as shrooms does to life. As such, I probably don’t need to read it again, even though I’ll be tempted to after a few years.
The book is filled with hilarious and discordant moments that flit in and out. Hazily, out of these quirky scenes and bizarre hallucinations emerge a wacky and paranoiac story involving rockets and erections (as Zia alluded to, what else are white men supposed to write about?) Despite the subject matter, the writing is profound. Pynchon is quite erudite in his telling and I’m confident this is the main reason people slog through and make it. And, now that I did, I suppose I can freely engage in the collective tumescence Pynchon readers seem to have for this book: a la Tyrone Slothrop to the V-2 rocket. I certainly will be reading many other perspectives on the book in the upcoming months.
Some of the more memorable moments involve Slothrop’s ridiculous costumes, like his shirt, his rocket man costume where he kicked a dude in the balls, and his pig costume he wore across northern Europe trying to flee. A few other notable moments are the pie fight in hot air balloons, the Byron the bulb story, the various encounters with Major Marvy (“Major Marvy sucks!”), and the “fucked up” pinball machines where their balls live in exile from a since passed planetoid.
Not entirely sure about the trade-off vs time spent here nor why I persisted for nearly 3 years but the preceding paragraphs in this review probably explain why.
3/5 because I don’t know how a human brain comes up with something like this.
adventurous
challenging
dark
funny
informative
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It needs a reread but can I ever be bothered to put myself through this again? Pynchon is a masterful storyteller but this book is also problematic in some ways (though I sense that the feeling of discomfort was Pynchon’s intention). This book is almost more about sex than it is about war.
Exceptionally long and challenging and way above my head for broad swathes. Entertaining in spite of length and confusion, and fifty years of literary commentary since publication helps to smooth over some of the gaps in understanding. Rewarding, but a total head-spinner, I think I'll be reading something a bit more straightforward and short for the foreseeable future
Ouch. I had a very tough time with this one,and it took me the better part of a month to read it. Thomas Pynchon is about as readable as James Joyce. I'm starting to realize that there's a huge chasm between good storytelling and what's considered to be good writing. It's unfortunate that they're not always paired up.