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Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
 
 
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Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) (Paperback)

by Thomas Pynchon (Author) "A screaming comes across the sky..." (more)
Key Phrases: pig suit, pig mask, The White Visitation, Frau Gnahb, Sir Stephen (more...)
4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (277 customer reviews)
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Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) + A Gravity's Rainbow Companion: Sources And Contexts for Pynchon's Novel + V. (Perennial Classics)
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Tyrone Slothrop, a GI in London in 1944, has a big problem. Whenever he gets an erection, a Blitz bomb hits. Slothrop gets excited, and then (as Thomas Pynchon puts it in his sinister, insinuatingly sibilant opening sentence), "a screaming comes across the sky," heralding an angel of death, a V-2 rocket. The novel's title, Gravity's Rainbow, refers to the rocket's vapor arc, a cruel dark parody of what God sent Noah to symbolize his promise never to destroy humanity again. History has been a big trick: the plan is to switch from floods to obliterating fire from the sky.

Slothrop's father was an unwitting part of the cosmic doublecross. To provide for the boy's future Harvard education, he took cash from the mad German scientist Laszlo Jamf, who performed Pavlovian experiments on the infant Tyrone. Laszlo invented Imipolex G, a new plastic useful in rocket insulation, and conditioned Tyrone's privates to respond to its presence. Now the grown-up Tyrone helplessly senses the Imipolex G in incoming V-2s, and his military superiors are investigating him. Soon he is on the run from legions of bizarre enemies through the phantasmagoric horrors of Germany.

That's just the Imipolex G tip of the shrieking vehicle that is Pynchon's book. It's pretty much impossible to follow a standard plot; one must have faith that each manic episode is connected with the great plot to blow up the world with the ultimate rocket. There is not one story, but a proliferation of characters (Pirate Prentice, Teddy Bloat, Tantivy Mucker-Maffick, Saure Bummer, and more) and events that tantalize the reader with suggestions of vast patterns only just past our comprehension. You will enjoy Pynchon's cartoon inferno far more if you consult Steven Weisenburger's brief companion to the novel, which sorts out Pynchon's blizzard of references to science, history, high culture, and the lowest of jokes. Rest easy: there really is a simple reason why Kekulé von Stradonitz's dream about a serpent biting its tail (which solved the structure of the benzene molecule) belongs in the same novel as the comic-book-hero Plastic Man.

Pynchon doesn't want you to rest easy with solved mysteries, though. Gravity's Rainbow uses beautiful prose to induce an altered state of consciousness, a buzz. It's a trip, and it will last. --Tim Appelo

Product Description
In the mid-1960s, the publication of Pynchon's V and The Crying of Lot 49 introduced a brilliant new voice to American literature. Gravity's Rainbow, his convoluted, allusive novel about a metaphysical quest, published in 1973, further confirmed Pynchon's reputation as one of the greatest writers of the century.

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Product Details

  • Paperback: 768 pages
  • Publisher: Penguin Classics (June 1, 1995)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0140188592
  • ISBN-13: 978-0140188592
  • Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (277 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #32,602 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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A screaming comes across the sky. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
pig suit, pig mask
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
The White Visitation, Frau Gnahb, Sir Stephen, Seaman Bodine, Laszlo Jamf, Major Marvy, Psi Section, Roger Mexico, Lyle Bland, Peter Sachsa, Central Asia, Captain Blicero, World War, Kirghiz Light, Tyrone Slothrop, Pirate Prentice, Empty Ones, Max Schlepzig, Osbie Feel, Brigadier Pudding, Teddy Bloat, Buenos Aires, Carroll Eventyr, Casino Hermann Goering, Edwin Treacle
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Gravity's Rainbow (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics)
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277 Reviews
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294 of 300 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Advice For a First Time Reader of Gravity's Rainbow, February 2, 2003
By William P. Mcneill (Seattle, Washington USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Gravity's Rainbow is a book you either love or hate, and if you hate it it's probably because you couldn't finish the ... thing. Though by no means impenetrable, the novel is daunting enough to merit a list of tips for those wishing to tackle it for the first time. Below is my advice on how new readers can get over the hump. Trust me, it's a small hump, and the masterpiece that lies on the other side is worth the effort.

1. Read V first... Pynchon's V is shorter and more accessible than Gravity's Rainbow, but addresses the same themes in a similar style. If you enjoyed V, you will have built up a reserve of goodwill for Pynchon that will carry you through the initial rough patches of Gravity's Rainbow. This advice was given to me years ago, and I'm glad I took it.

2. Accept that you won't understand everything...Don't be concerned if you can't follow the many digressions or keep track of every minor character that pops up. As with other famously difficult novels, Gravity's Rainbow's real payoff comes in the rereading, so you shouldn't feel obliged to linger over each passage until it makes sense. Pynchon isn't trying to lord it over you by writing a book this dense; it's just his way of giving you your money's worth. Just follow what you can the first time through, which fortunately is a lot.

3. Accentuate the accessible...Gravity's Rainbow's unreadability is over-hyped. Yes, there are many jarring digressions, but threading through them is a fairly conventional detective story. Sure there are lyrical passages that take off for the stratosphere, but they are grace notes in a melody of otherwise breezy narrative prose. So on your first time through, it's enough to follow the main plot (will Slothrop find the mysterious Rocket 00000?) and enjoy Pynchon's jokes, which are laugh-out-loud funny.

4. Don't give up too early...I don't want to say that Gravity's Rainbow gets off to a slow start, but it has a lot of scene-setting to do, and the engine that really drives the book along only gets revved up in part 2. Part 1 is a well-executed minor key portrait of wartime London, but part 2 is where the drugs kick in, so stick with the novel at least that far.

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170 of 187 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A Challenge To All Lazy People, February 25, 1999
When I first read this book I did so without wanting to put any effort into it. I was lazy. I didn't bother to look up any of the historical, scientific, or pop cultural references. Moreover, if a difficult word popped up I didn't bother to reach for a dictionary to find out what it meant. Often I'd think to myself, 'Who is Clausewitz?' or 'What is a narodnik?', and then I'd move on without finding out what these terms actually meant ( even though I could have found an answer right away by simply typing any of these terms into an internet search engine ). The process was arduous, painful, and frustrating. I hated this book. I simply didn't know what he was saying because I couldn't put anything into context. The second time I read Gravity's Rainbow I purchased an annotated guide, while also making an effort to find some of the more obscure references myself. Though I can't claim to understand everything he was saying, I did grow comfortable scrabbling about Pynchon's exotic little universe. I came to respect the genius of this book, both in a thematic and artistic sense. I believe that one of Pynchon's goals is to dare the reader into reading this book. Simply put, he wants us to work. Kierkegaard said that being a Christian should not be an easy task. The same is true, I think, in literature. For, the safer literature gets, the more it comes to resemble TV. Yes, on the surface this book is difficult, even pretentious. But if you work at it, that is, actually make an effort to understand Pynchon's somewhat obscure references and his abstruse vocabulary, the results are most rewarding. Simply put, he's not going to spoonfeed literature to his audience. Nor, as a reader, should you want to be spoonfed.
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53 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars It almost makes lives seem worth living, November 18, 1999
By A Customer
Gravity's Rainbow probably gets a more outrageously diverse set of responses than any other book by a living author; it's supposed to be either a brilliant, compendious, funny, tragic novel about war, modernity and history or a stupid, slack, paranoid rant by a burnt-out (probable) druggy. The first time I read it it took me nine months, and when I'd finished I didn't know what had happened, but I knew I'd had the most amazing ride of my life along the way. The second time took me four weeks (it's a long book) and this time, it revealed itself as a masterpiece. (Well, Nabokov always said that you only read a book properly the second time around.) Ignore the begrudgers; never mind who Pynchon is supposed to be "better" or "worse" than; don't worry about not understanding all of it first go. Pynchon is one of the most intelligent and well-read novelists of all time, more so than you or I, but he has a rock'n'roll heart; nobody else can leap from zoot-suited craziness to rocket chemistry to diving down a toilet in search of a lost harmonica (twenty years before Trainspotting, kids) to minutely researched accounts of genocide and still keep littering his wildly elastic prose with daft little songs. There were probably people in ancient Greece who thought that Homer was an untalented driveller, too. Ignore them. Dive in. Enjoy. The last page is a killer.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Love it? Hate it?
I read Gravity's Rainbow slowly. For the last month, it's been sitting on my nightstand and I'd give myself a section or two before going to sleep. Read more
Published 3 days ago by Matthew J. Moehr

2.0 out of 5 stars I have no grudge....
This novel is simply one in the line of Finnegan's Wake. What I do is open the book at any point and start to read for a few minutes and then go back to a serious and more well... Read more
Published 17 days ago by crank

3.0 out of 5 stars Rockets miss sometimes
Being a general fan of the massive novel (I just love The Sot-Weed Factor, Ulysses, and Infinite Jest) Gravity's Rainbow should have been just up my alley. But... Read more
Published 18 days ago by Quillithe

5.0 out of 5 stars If Henry Miller met Werner Von Braun...
Yes, it's long. Very long. Yes it jumps around a lot, barrages the reader with scientific minutiae and sometimes doesn't develop its characters as much as it should (hey, there's... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Peter F. Swarr

3.0 out of 5 stars GR
I kept telling myself while reading GR that I would read it again some day. Upon finishing it I feel that I probably won't ever bother. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Frank Rizzo

5.0 out of 5 stars Just read it
Do you speak and read English fluently? If you do there is no reason you cannot read this book. It is a dense, intense novel which can be read if you are willing to sit down and... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Matthew Sanborn

2.0 out of 5 stars Mostly garbage
I think reviewing this novel would be more difficult than reading it was, so I'm not going to bother. Read more
Published 10 months ago by Ritesh Laud

1.0 out of 5 stars I want those hours of my life back...
This book was a thoroughly juvenile jumble totally lacking in cohesiveness, or -- if you are desperately (and pretentiously) trying to impress someone that you know deep down... Read more
Published 11 months ago by LAH

5.0 out of 5 stars Fear and Loathing in Peenemunde
This is the mother of all post-modern novels. Much has been said about Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow; even more written about it since it was published 35 years ago... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Richard O'brien

5.0 out of 5 stars Nothing but the best
This is Thomas Pynchon at his finest. Just to read the first several pages is a journey into literary perfection. It may be a tough read, so was Ulysees. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Billy Blackfeather

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