About this title: Tyrone Slothrop is an archetypal innocent abroad, but in the worst possible circumstances: he's an American on a mission to locate V-2 rocket-launching sites in war-torn Europe. On a larger level, the novel illustrates the struggle between those who perceive and rebel against the war, seeing it as an overt movement toward the obliteration of the individual, and those who suppress individual identity to serve the war machine controlled by "Them." Which side Slothrop is on remains highly ambiguous. An encyclopedic work much like Joyce's ULYSSES, this is perhaps one of the two or three most ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Description: Reader copy. Paperback. cover and corner wear. bent page corners. red mark on book edge. soiled book edge. tears on spine. creased covers. different cover. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam
Date Published: 1984
ISBN-13:9780553246841ISBN:0553246844
Description: Acceptable. Overall below average used book. May have highlighting, underlining, notes, price sticker on cover, or be an ex-library book. read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Viking Compass
Date Published: 1973
ISBN-13:9780670003747ISBN:0670003743
Description: Good Condition. Thick trade sized paperback. Creasing and wear to edges; sound book. Soiling to foreedge and first couple pages else clean text. Solid book. Appears to be a BCE. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: 2 lbs 0 oz. Category: Science Fiction & Fantasy ISBN: 0670003743 Inventory No: 078343. read more
Edition: C374. Unstated, likely first in this edition.
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: A Viking Compass Book
Date Published: 1973
ISBN-13:9780670003747ISBN:0670003743
Description: Good. No dust jacket as issued. Spine concave curl with many light creases. Minor soiling across top page edges. Fiction, setting post-World War II, Europe: "A screaming comes across the sky...The evacuation still proceeds..." By author of "V. " and "The Crying of Lot 49". read more
Description: Very good. Penguin, 1987, 760 pages, trade paperback, tight and square, no owner's mark or underlining, light wear, pages tanned. read more
Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Publisher: Bantam Books
Date Published: 1974-03
ISBN-13:9780553147612ISBN:0553147617
Description: Very Good. PAPERBACK. Very Good-Condition. Binding tight, pages clean. Pages 12-23 lightly ragged at the far right edge. Light edge-wear, with some scraping at head of spine. Inner covers and pages tanned. Solid reading copy! read more
Edition: First edition. BMC
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books
Date Published: 1973
ISBN-13:9780670003747ISBN:0670003743
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. Audience: General/trade. Book is first paperback printing, but lacking the price on cover. very clean and solid, with some rubbing and light edge wear. corners lightly bumped. A good solid copy. read more
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Minor marking on back cover. Minor shelf wear. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 776 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
"i read this in my 20's and after finishing against the day earlier this year (which i LOVED), i thought it was time to go back and give it another shot. i was overwhelmed by the book the first time i read it.
before i go any furthere, i just want to say that pynchon makes me glad to be a reader. i was in a lull with books when i read against the day, and it really kind of reclaimed my faith in fiction. that's the highest compliment i could give a book, i think.
now that i've read a few of his books, i'm much more familiar with his style and ways of establishing exposition. it feels more comfortable this time around, but make no mistake: this is a rocky journey. the humor and classic pychonesque situations and scenarios are popping up in spades. it's the kind of novel where you can perceive clearly what is going on from moment to moment, but it's difficult putting it all together to experience the whole. also, i'm not quite half way through the book and i know he usually waits until you're at least that far into one of his books before the narrative strands weave together into a clearer picture.
more than half way through now. so glad i chose to re-read this one. it's amazing to me how deep pynchon's literary imagination goes. he's like a volcano, erputing constantly and just shelling us with images and interlocking pieces of an enormous puzzle.
just finished this wonderful and dazzling book. it almost feels like you need to turn around and read it again, quickly, before too much time has passed. pynchon gives you so much information - his literary brilliance moves through the pages like a flood...it's hard to keep all the pieces of the puzzle in order.
but from start to finish, gravity's rainbow is one of the most unusual books ever to deal with the second world war, and it does so in wholly irreverent and original ways. many of the central characters come and go, as they do in most of pynchon's work, but they stay with you throughout the long journey. you worry for them, applaud them, are amazed by their humility and humanity. an excellent book, but not an easy read in any sense of the word.
i originally gave this book four stars, but after reading it a second time, i give it five. it's an unforgettable novel that i'm sure will stay with me for some time."
"When I was at the Mets game last week, the crowd started doing the wave during the seventh inning, and everyone watched anxiously as it went from one end of Shea Stadium to the other and then cheered when it finally got to the end. This went on for most of the inning, growing in strength and crowd enthusiasm. Finally, the guy in front of me stood up and pointed at the field and shouted, "Oh my God! In the midst of our wave, there's a game being played!" That's kind of what I thought about Gravity's Rainbow. Somewhere in the midst of all this noise and digression and (let's be honest) showing off, there's a story, which can actually be hysterical and frightening.
Like The Crying of Lot 49, the only other Pynchon I've read (so far), Gravity's Rainbow reads like a paranoid, schizophrenic, Terry-Gilliam-esque slapstick nightmare. Unlike Lot 49, though, the prose here lacks any semblance of control, which is not necessarily a bad thing, except for the times when it feels like a bad Faulkner rip-off. In the midst of innumerable side stories about immortal light bulbs and toilet diving, to name just a couple, Tyrone Slothrop is stumbling his way through The Zone (Europe after World War II), searching for information about a mysterious rocket and wondering why every time he gets an (ahem) erection, death and destruction follow.
I know that a book like this needs to be read and then re-read (and then re-read and then re-read). Like Ulysses, I imagine I'll pick up on connections I didn't see this on the next time around, I'll remember more of the hundreds of characters, I'll appreciate better the mixture of "high art" and pornography; I get it. But I can't help but think that like Slothrop or Blicero or the myriad characters aboard the Anubis, Pynchon was also getting off on all the chaos, working himself into a frenzy, and more than once, overdoing it, making a mess all over the page."
"I'm about 200 pages shy of the end of this dirge, but I'm compelled to give my review now.
I know history is rarely kind to harsh criticisms about super nebulous or "difficult" authors , but dig this --
This book is horrible. After reading 'The Crying of Lot 49', 'Slow Learner' and now this, I'm convinced that Thomas Pynchon is a hack, and the reason we don't hear from him is because he has nothing to say and knows that if we gave him a microphone and fifteen minutes he'd be found out.
90% of the people who pick up this novel won't finish it, and 90% of those who do won't like it. But 100% of them will pretend they do because Pynchon has the rare reputation of being one of those authors you "have to read". We're all convinced Pynchon is the possessor of some private, hidden genius -- that buried somewhere between the rambling nonsensical plot and the long winded, super cerebral, jargon riddled diatribes on "the Rocket" and the sexual implications of its trajectory and its relation to the symphonic form is a message of some import.
But for all the hype, someone please point to a passage in this novel that overreaches or couldn't be approximated by the efforts of anyone else who lived a super reclusive, hermetic lifestyle, owned a library card, and was given nearly a decade (the length of time between the publication of this novel and the author's previous one), and around 900 pages to do it in.
Seriously though, don't read this book. Aside from the small flutter of accomplishment I'm sure I'll feel at the end of it, I've found it to be little more than a super frustrating and ultimately hateful reading experience."
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