I’ve never read it but I’m betting that anyone who is a fan of it would tell you to just read it through once, without even attempting to understand the meaning of every sentence, then read it again.
Ditto. Not surprised that you’d see a connection with a film, I happen to get reminded a lot of Pynchon when I watch movies now. Couldn’t help thinking of Slothrop and what’s her face while watching North by Northwest.
You might want to get something like this to help you sort it all out.
This is for a class?
Good luck with the book report/term paper. Come back when you have to read Joyce’s Ulysses or anything by Samuel Beckett.
Mike Spence is right. It’s too damned funny a book not to just kick your feet up and enjoy it the first time around. Don’t worry, its ending, like that of “Finnegan’s Wake,” sets you up for an immediate second round.
Matt Parks’ link is a good one. That book will give you a lot of help, if you want to give it a shot. Hang in there.
I’ve read it once and it instantly became my favorite novel. Even though I think there are many things I didn’t completely understand, one thing that I took out of the novel was its dealing with paranoia (that’s obvious of course). How every event seems interconnected but it isn’t.
And wasn’t the book indirectly making a statement on the counterculture movement?
Just read it. If you’ve been paying to history and culture you’ll get the drift. Sure, some of the references are rather recondite, but that’ll come later. If you stop to read up on every single thing Pynchon drops that is unfamiliar to you, it’s going to hinder the reading experience and may result in you putting the book down. Believe it. Underline those things for later and KEEP GOING! Then you can hit up Weisenberger’s companion book. You will read GR a second time.
I made it about halfway through earlier this year but just could not finish it. I loved The Crying of Lot 49 and V though.
Try Against the Day. It’s as epically epic as Gravity’s Rainbow, but a lot easier to read.
Then try Gravity’s Rainbow again, because it actually gets easier after a certain point and Pynchon’s writing as a whole gets easier the more familiar you are with it.
Meanwhile….
Having Gravity’s Rainbow connected to Southland Tales makes me want to die a little inside, even if the OP did say “Like ST, only good.” This zombie thread reborn so soon after Douglas Reese actually posted a defense of that intolerably crappy film.
—PolarisDiB
Oh really? I thought Against The Day was even more complicated than Gravity’s Rainbow! I guess I might have just assumed that because it’s slightly longer, though. Thanks for the tip, Dib!
It’s longer but more streamlined. Don’t get me wrong, Pynchon is my absolute favorite author ever, but he did learn how to make himself better understood over time. His last two books are downright beach reads in comparison to Gravity’s Rainbow and Mason & Dixon (the latter being the only book of his I think is not worth the time unless you’re a completionist reader.)
—PolarisDiB
Harumph harumph! Mason & Dixon is my favourite novel ever. I actually found Inherent Vice harder to follow than Gravity’s, but that might be because I was reading it in fits and starts, with lots of long gaps between readings. Or maybe not.
I may try out Inherent Vice next, since I really like Pynchon’s style and humor, and it’s not as long as Against the Day.
I just finished Part 3 last night. First read it in September after V. Got Mason & Dixon and Against The Day coming for Christmas. What a guy, Pynchon.
Specific Questions:
SPOILERS
Are Slothrop’s women in London real?
If the 00000 was already fired, wouldn’t the S-Gerät have been destroyed? Gottfried?
Who is going in the 00001, and where is it being fired?
What’s the Kirghiz Light?
Is Slothrop nuts? From the beginning?
Isn’t Gravity’s Rainbow one
Las’ night ah wuz readin’ this Fine Ass Book,
which frequently enthralls;
Runcible Spoons, Hot Air Balloons,
Major Marvy losin’ his Ballz.
Well thur’s Tantivy Mucker-Maffick,
He’s Slothrop’s good ol’ Friend,
Tchitcherine an’ Seaman Bodine,
Will they make it to th’End?
Well Gravity’s Rainbow iz one Fine Ass Book,
Gonna love it till the day ah die.
I’m feelin’ insane, so ah’ll read it again,
“A Screaming Comes Across The Sky”…
To the OP
""Help with the book Gravity’s Rainbow!"’
Just read the Cliff Notes….. Kids today.
YOU read the CliffNotes!
I am too lazy to read Cliff notes… Ever watched Miracle Mile?
No I haven’t… was it good?
Not great but OK for cable…. A character is reading the Cliff notes for GR. Which have never been published.
That’s a good joke… there aren’t actual CliffNotes, but there are many guides to it.
But that is all right. The journey is the pleasure.
@Francisco J. Torres
A way of driving people nuts. What’s interesting is that ‘putting things together’ is what the book is about. I’ve only read GR and V, but as far as I’ve heard ‘putting things together’ is more ingrained in GR as a theme than in his others. Maybe that’s why it’s his ‘signature’ novel; because form and substance are at their most intermingled. Of course conspiracies are everywhere. But like I said, I’m a novice, I don’t know.
“’Of course conspiracies are everywhere”’
That sounds like a summary of The Crying of Lot 48!
Peter H.
I got this book and started reading it and it is so hard. What is it trying to say? That technology is bad. It has alot to do with Phalic symbolism but what is it trying to say about sex? What’s the symolism of the rocket? Arrghhh!
Also I noticed it’s kinda like Southland Tales only not crappy.