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39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Best Novel Since "Lolita" and "Ulysses", September 7, 2007
"Some joker put hashish in the hollandaise, causing a run on the brocolli." Just another event in the life of Lt. Tyron Slothrop, who was attending the wild party in question in the Herman Goering casino as part of his search for the Schwatzgerat--the V2 rocket (serial no. 00000) which carries the mysterious Imipolex G device--all over wartime Europe, while the British secret service, and assorted others, search for *him*.
Why? You'll have to read the book. Along the way, he meets--among many others--a British captain with black-market connections that allow him to have fresh bananas in London's wartime winter in return for homegrown "magic mushroom" drugs; an African tribe whose members serve in the SS as V2 crews; an insane American Major whose solidiers sing diry limmericks about the V2's various components; an Italian nobleman--and a British Brigadier--with odd sexual practices (even by Pynchon's standards); and that's just the start of it.
The adventures of Lt. Slothrop in this mad looking-glass world are funny, amusing, bizzare, and complex. What's more--and this is what makes the novel a masterpiece--Pynchon integrates so many actual facts into his fictional world that it makes it and its inhabitants have much more versimilitude than the people described in most *non*-fiction works about WWII. Slothrop is more "real" than the Hitler we read about in most biographies of the man; his friends and enemies more real than, say, the defendants in Nuremberg are in most books about the trial.
If Pynchon speaks, say, of a car used by a lieutenant in a specific sub-department of the German Army in 1944, you can be damn sure that particular car model was in fact used by just such lieutenants at the time in reality; that pynchon took into account the wartime shortages that made the car's quality to deteriorate from 1944 to 1941; and that the lieutenant's resentment of this would be relevant to the plot.
To be sure, the lieutenant might then want to kill Slothrop in order to fulfill an anient prophecy based on Mayan star charts (which you can bet are also accurately portrayed); or to have a homosexual affair with him; or to do any number of bizzare or absurd things that one would expect in the looking-glass world where the novel is set. But that is just what makes this novel so great: Pycnhon doesn't research to teach us facts about WWII--even if a lot of the facts he puts in the novel are probably unknown even to WWII history buffs (like myself). He *uses* his research to create his funny, bizzare, and incredibly engaging world.
Read it--perferably, with a glass of wine (or something stronger) at your side. You will laugh, chortle, be shocked, and be amazed. Rarely had a better novel been written.
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70 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Rocket Arcs, the Fight Rages On, the Challenges Remain, August 6, 2007
Ever since I discovered Thomas Pynchon, in college in 1982, I have fought the battle between the two camps on this book ("greatest ever written" vs. "fraud") on the side of Pynchon, where I still stand today. Many of my friends, having heard me talk about this novel, have attempted it and given up. Not necessarily because of its difficulty, but more because of what they want in a book, or don't want, or because they were not interested in what Gravity's Rainbow does, offers, and succeeds at. I don't disparage anyone who does not like Pynchon, but you must conceed the notion that just because you don't like something doesn't mean it is bad. I can't stand rap music, but I would never tell anyone it has no validity for them, and I freely admit that I don't know what makes rap good. Therefore, we all need to be careful in judging Pynchon, and especially Gravity's Rainbow as bad when we just don't like it. For those it speaks to, it has no peer.
As a fiction writer myself, this book first served as an inspiration to me. Few writers since Shakespeare have Pynchon's vocabulary and word craftsmanship. He can write a sentence that you can read over and over and marvel at in its genius. Put a lot of those sentences together and you get a tome of genius. The most important moment for me when reading this novel for the first time was when I was reading along, and I stopped and actually said to myself "wow, I didn't know a novel could do that." This declaration was repeated many times before I reached the end, and it is that amazing realization that makes this novel so great, and so important to human letters. Even the naysayers, those who attempt to find flaw with this novel, those who hate it and find it unreadable, would be unable to point to another novel like it. No other novel takes you where Gravity's Rainbow does, no other novel challenges you in the way this one does. For me, a challenge is what makes a novel special. I don't mean a challenge to understand it, but a challenge to imagine the world it describes. A challenge to look into yourself and find the things that this novel thrives on, and the challenge of letting your mind float across language that the brilliance of which could not have been imagined before you read it. Gravity's Rainbow takes you to places and inspires thoughts that no other novels do.
Now, that being said, let's have a caveat. Gravity's Rainbow was written by a man with a wide range of knowledge, a large vocabulary, and a prodigious thought process. You'll need a dictionary close at hand and you should use it without shame. You might want to read one of Pynchon's shorter books to work your way up to this one, just to get the feel of how he operates. Lots of players spend time in the minors before they are ready for the major leagues. When I first read this novel I had read V and The Crying of Lot 49 before attempting it. I also had a literature class in which we discussed Pynchon and his themes (paranoia, conspiracy, what lies beneath the surface) Most of all, don't take anyone's word for anything about this book. Just read it and let the words do their work. Make of it whatever you want, and if you don't like what's happening to you as you read it, just stop. You're no less a person, no less a reader, no less an intellectual, it just wasn't for you, and this novel is not for everyone. That's one comforting thing about it, it makes no bones about the fact that it just isn't for everyone. Few things of quality are. For me this has always been the greatest novel I've ever read, but that may not be true for everyone. To those who tread the Pynchonian path and, like me, find a home there, I welcome you.
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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ambivalent on This One, April 2, 2008
I read this book twice in the early 80's, and now I'm at it again to see if I still think it's that good. I've always had my doubts, and Pynchon's work after this didn't help them any. I have to give this novel four stars or how could I justify reading it three times? It must have something! On the other hand, I can understand why most people I give it to throw it aside after ten pages. It's certainly an "important" novel, and it's something special, but definitely for a niche audience.
Much has been made of Pynchon's prodigious knowledge, of technology in particular. I think this is vastly overrated, having been educated as an engineer in the interim since my first two readings. His profundity seems to wear thin quite quickly and become tiresome and sophomoric. I'd say the first part of the novel that takes place in London is by far the best - it's mysterious, weird, touching and sometimes poignant, and creates a marvelous atmosphere. Should have stopped there?
On the plus side:
- Some hilarious humour
- Some wonderful prose, really complex and deeply woven allusions and imagery. His description of the architecture of the White Visitation in the first section is a good case in point, contrasting the impulses that lead to the creation of Gothic cathedrals with the latter impulse to Gothic Revival.
- Very imaginative premise
- Can be vastly entertaining as a rambling picaresque novel
- A challenge to read that can reward with some duzy sentences!
- Some interesting takes on American culture and history, e.g., his interweaving of Puritan cultural themes.
On the negative side:
- Characters that are pretty much cardboard - no depth, after London, he doesn't seem to have much sympathy for them
- Extremely annoying habit of nudging the reader with his elbow to make sure we know he's "joking" even if we will never get the joke: italicized text, addresses to the reader, corny colloquial style
- Pointless and not all that funny songs interjected
- Tiresome fixation on paranoia and control as major themes, as if that explains anything about anything
- Boring wallowing in vulgarity as if we will be shocked - maybe readers in the 70s were, but it's pretty dated now
- Stoner humor: many passages are the type of thing that might be funny if you were high, and often the characters are, but I was not on this reading
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by Thomas Pynchon
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