Gravity’s Rainbow has made me fall back in love with…
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Gravity’s Rainbow has made me fall back in love with fiction
I used to read so much fiction when I was in high school, but that pretty much stopped when I got to college sadly. Not for any particular reason, except that I began to find other stuff more interesting. Most of what I read in school were downloaded pdfs of academic works, history or philosophy, or otherwise non-fiction. The only form of fiction I’d read typically came in the form of plays.
However, a couple years after leaving college, and with more time on my hands, I decided to finally step it up and start reading some fiction. I’d purchased a copy of *Gravity’s Rainbow* when I was a junior in high school (learned about Thomas Pynchon from an episode of *The Simpsons* and was fascinated). At the time, I read about 10 pages of it and decided I’d tackle it at a later date. So I figured, now was as good a time as ever.
This book has a reputation for being difficult, and after reading, I can’t say it’s completely unearned. I knew there were a number of companion guides to help with the book, but I wanted to eschew any scholarship directly related to Pynchon, at least for the first time reading. Instead I decided to take notes while reading, performing my own research on any historical or cultural references that were unfamiliar to me. Which were numerous.
What surprised me the most about this book is how captivating it was. Despite being so densely loaded with information, I found the central intrigue of the first section, >!the mysterious rocket-erection conspiracy!<, to be so strange and hilarious that I had to follow it to the conclusion. I just had to keep reading and ruminating on all the weird, esoteric imagery.
However, I soon found that what I thought was a typical 1970s conspiracy thriller was actually much deeper and stranger and more disturbing. Soon I realized that, just like the characters in the book, my single minded obsession with finding that one answer was missing the forest for the trees. It felt intentional to me, every time I thought I had a major revelation, here comes Pynchon coming out of the page and whispering “You don’t even know the half of it…”
I love when an artist can play around with irony and sincerity in such an interesting way. The scene with the laboratory mice is really what made me fall in love with Pynchon. >!He switches mid-text from a (relatively) straightforward narrative prose to a surreal parody of Broadway musicals before switching once again to a sobering rumination on death and cruelty, all in the span of two pages.!<
This is such an incredibly relevant novel too, just as much now as it was in 1973. The line near the end about “the successful academics, the Presidential advisers, the token intellectuals who sit on boards of directors” hit so hard. The lingering legacy of fascism and genocide and control and power that existed long before the War, and has persisted in the decades following. “Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation”.
Definitely gonna need some more time to decompress my thoughts on this book because I only finished it yesterday. It really is so staggeringly large in scale, yet it never felt dull or turgid. The true breadth of the narrative and themes are only really revealed when the novel comes to a close. However, I am grateful for this book in rekindling my love for fiction. Since I started the novel two months ago, I’ve been more receptive to different works of fiction, and have read a few short stories in the interim. I have already purchased Thomas Pynchon’s debut novel *V* and plan to read that one next. Sometimes it really does take one good book!
#entertainment
source
I used to read so much fiction when I was in high school, but that pretty much stopped when I got to college sadly. Not for any particular reason, except that I began to find other stuff more interesting. Most of what I read in school were downloaded pdfs of academic works, history or philosophy, or otherwise non-fiction. The only form of fiction I’d read typically came in the form of plays.
However, a couple years after leaving college, and with more time on my hands, I decided to finally step it up and start reading some fiction. I’d purchased a copy of *Gravity’s Rainbow* when I was a junior in high school (learned about Thomas Pynchon from an episode of *The Simpsons* and was fascinated). At the time, I read about 10 pages of it and decided I’d tackle it at a later date. So I figured, now was as good a time as ever.
This book has a reputation for being difficult, and after reading, I can’t say it’s completely unearned. I knew there were a number of companion guides to help with the book, but I wanted to eschew any scholarship directly related to Pynchon, at least for the first time reading. Instead I decided to take notes while reading, performing my own research on any historical or cultural references that were unfamiliar to me. Which were numerous.
What surprised me the most about this book is how captivating it was. Despite being so densely loaded with information, I found the central intrigue of the first section, >!the mysterious rocket-erection conspiracy!<, to be so strange and hilarious that I had to follow it to the conclusion. I just had to keep reading and ruminating on all the weird, esoteric imagery.
However, I soon found that what I thought was a typical 1970s conspiracy thriller was actually much deeper and stranger and more disturbing. Soon I realized that, just like the characters in the book, my single minded obsession with finding that one answer was missing the forest for the trees. It felt intentional to me, every time I thought I had a major revelation, here comes Pynchon coming out of the page and whispering “You don’t even know the half of it…”
I love when an artist can play around with irony and sincerity in such an interesting way. The scene with the laboratory mice is really what made me fall in love with Pynchon. >!He switches mid-text from a (relatively) straightforward narrative prose to a surreal parody of Broadway musicals before switching once again to a sobering rumination on death and cruelty, all in the span of two pages.!<
This is such an incredibly relevant novel too, just as much now as it was in 1973. The line near the end about “the successful academics, the Presidential advisers, the token intellectuals who sit on boards of directors” hit so hard. The lingering legacy of fascism and genocide and control and power that existed long before the War, and has persisted in the decades following. “Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation”.
Definitely gonna need some more time to decompress my thoughts on this book because I only finished it yesterday. It really is so staggeringly large in scale, yet it never felt dull or turgid. The true breadth of the narrative and themes are only really revealed when the novel comes to a close. However, I am grateful for this book in rekindling my love for fiction. Since I started the novel two months ago, I’ve been more receptive to different works of fiction, and have read a few short stories in the interim. I have already purchased Thomas Pynchon’s debut novel *V* and plan to read that one next. Sometimes it really does take one good book!
#entertainment
source
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