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I'm halfway through this book and I really want to talk about it. Gravity's Rainbow is a playful adventure novel that's really fun to read. The price of admission is the first hundred pages, after that the first-act hook happens. The first part is hard (I gave up there and it sat on my shelf for a long time) but it's not a slog--just a slow read, because you enjoy reading every page twice. I haven't finished any novel in years, so I vowed to read this one and I'm glad I did. The way I got over the initial hump this time was to experience it as dreamlogic, let the words go through me without judgment or worrying about comprehension. The here-and-theres are great more than the plot so far. The digression into the one topic you actually know as backstory for a tangentially related unimportant character. The economy of words that packs three pages of a film script into a three-word phrase. The three-word phrases are what I really love! One that comes to mind is a description of unnamed background characters playing pinball "throwing body-english," which is brilliant. It's a kinetic image, a metaphor to another game, the invention of a technical term I will use while playing pinball, it's presented as if it were throwaway, but it's not even though it doesn't matter at all to anything that's happening on that page. Gravity's Rainbow is also just so goddamn playful and bawdy, so hilarious. I love that and it's absolutely necessary for the book's success. But I can't review it, I haven't even finished it yet! Just post stuff about the book. General discussion don't worry about spoilers, but maybe use spoiler tags for big stuff if there are any real big surprises in the end. No big deal either way.
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Jul 25, 2014 06:53
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Gravity's Rainbow is the greatest novel of the 20th century. I made a gravity's rainbow thread when I was an idiot 19-year old that is pretty spoiler-friendly & has probably the most embarrassing OP I've ever written, if you're looking for vintage SA GR chat. Where are you in the novel?
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Jul 25, 2014 09:03
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A Rambling Vagrant posted:Gravity's Rainbow is the greatest novel of the 20th century. I would argue against this but mostly on principle, as I would argue against anybody's pick for this (including my go-to, Pale Fire). Certainly GR does the best job of any novel I can think of in theorizing and depicting the links between military ops, mega-corporate technology, pop culture, and the avant-garde—in other words, the whole trajectory of the 20th century. I'm also baffled by how I would go about teaching the thing, should I ever get the chance.
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Jul 25, 2014 13:38
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Well now you've made me go and get my annotated copy, so I guess we're gonna do this
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Jul 25, 2014 14:11
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Aking for no Gravity's Rainbow spoilers is weird to me.
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Jul 25, 2014 15:51
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This book is good.
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Jul 25, 2014 15:57
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My favourite bit is at the start where Slothrop falls in a toilet and is about to be raped by Malcolm X but he escapes and then it cuts away to a cowboy and his norwegian/black lover and the phrase callipygian rondure is used.
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Jul 25, 2014 16:00
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It's been six years since I read it but I think my favorite part was the big aerial pie fight and a brief paragraph about how people don't want surprise. ...Yes there is something sadistic about recipes with "Surprise" in the title, chap who's hungry just wants to eat you know, not be surprised really, just wants to bite into the (sigh) the old potato and be reasonably sure there's nothing inside but potato, you see, certainly not some clever nutmeg "Surprise!", some mashed pulps all magenta with pomegranates or something....
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Jul 25, 2014 19:00
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I'd love to see Gravity's Rainbow: the musical
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Jul 25, 2014 21:05
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What was the moment you knew you were going to love this book? Section 1 had a lot of good moments, but overall I was lost and confused. However, right away in section 2 there's the bit with the octopus and I couldn't stop laughing.
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Jul 25, 2014 21:38
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blue squares posted:What was the moment you knew you were going to love this book? Section 1 had a lot of good moments, but overall I was lost and confused. However, right away in section 2 there's the bit with the octopus and I couldn't stop laughing. Either when Slothrop dives into the toilet and encounters a giant wall of poo poo, or "You never did, the Kenosha kid." Pynchon is the writer with probably the strongest grasp of language, up there with Nabokov (makes sense, Pynchon took his class in college), and certainly has the most unique use of it. There's nobody better at making the ordinary seem extraordinary. The Kenosha kid bit is a lot of fun, and demonstrates this mastery. I read GR last summer, so won't be doing it again, but the book is incredible. It's disorienting, but that's part of the appeal - it opened my mind to the true expanse of the possibilites of literature.
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Jul 25, 2014 22:19
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In light of words like "disorienting" and "dreamlogic" already being tossed about, I guess this is as good a thread as any to commandeer as the General GR Analysis Thread and Banana Breakfast. Now then. One of the key things to keep in kind about GR is that while characters, motivations, and storylines may fragment/recombine/disappear, the timeline of the main plot remains relatively straightforward (despite sub-narratives frequently appearing as analepsis) and is integral to TRP's thematic concerns in the novel. From Weisenburger's excellent annotation & guide (2nd ed.): quote:In my view, the most significant revelation of the annotations is that Gravity’s Rainbow unfolds according to a circular design. Across the novel’s four parts, historical events intersect the Christian liturgical calendar, suggesting possibilities for return and renewal, but possibilities that Pynchon’s satire hopelessly equivocates on. This means that readers might have a novel as elegantly modeled as Joyce’s Ulysses and have their deconstructionism too. Indeed, one might well read Gravity’s Rainbow as a satire on the very desire for grand plots or metanarratives, a desire the narrative unmasks as the terrible dynamic of a culture huddling on the brink of nuclear winter. Apologies for the lengthy quote, but I realized there was no point in rehashing what Weisenburger's already said so well. Future excerpts will be tighter in focus, when we begin next time with Part 1: Beyond the Zero.
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Jul 26, 2014 01:36
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I read a thing that brought up the idea that the entire book is a transliteration of a movie. I can't remember the exact details but it sort of makes sense tho the book I was reading only brought it up to talk about how stupid it is.
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Jul 26, 2014 10:16
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The style of the narrative mirrors Slothrops experience of other people's lives.
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Jul 26, 2014 18:58
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Mescal posted:I'd love to see Gravity's Rainbow: the musical Somebody made an album of the songs! Available for download http://thomaspynchonfakebook.org/
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Jul 26, 2014 21:51
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A Rambling Vagrant posted:
A little ways into the third part. CestMoi posted:Aking for no Gravity's Rainbow spoilers is weird to me. Eh, no big deal like I said--but I feel like there's gonna be a big reveal. Right now it's a detective story without any big mystery other than the details of TS's origin story. blue squares posted:What was the moment you knew you were going to love this book? Section 1 had a lot of good moments, but overall I was lost and confused. However, right away in section 2 there's the bit with the octopus and I couldn't stop laughing. I'm right there with you on that. thehoodie posted:Either when Slothrop dives into the toilet and encounters a giant wall of poo poo, or "You never did, the Kenosha kid." Pynchon is the writer with probably the strongest grasp of language, up there with Nabokov (makes sense, Pynchon took his class in college), and certainly has the most unique use of it. There's nobody better at making the ordinary seem extraordinary. The Kenosha kid bit is a lot of fun, and demonstrates this mastery. That's a part I didn't get--I don't understand what was happening in the Kenosha Kid part at all.
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Jul 27, 2014 03:27
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Someone is giving Slothrop drugs and interrogating him. What he tells them is not very useful.
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Jul 27, 2014 09:01
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It's a great novel. Someone made illustrations for every page: http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/zak_smith/page%20index.htm
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Jul 27, 2014 19:23
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thehoodie posted:Either when Slothrop dives into the toilet and encounters a giant wall of poo poo, or "You never did, the Kenosha kid." Pynchon is the writer with probably the strongest grasp of language, up there with Nabokov (makes sense, Pynchon took his class in college), and certainly has the most unique use of it. There's nobody better at making the ordinary seem extraordinary. The Kenosha kid bit is a lot of fun, and demonstrates this mastery. https://twitter.com/YouNeverDidThe
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Jul 28, 2014 04:01
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Mescal posted:That's a part I didn't get--I don't understand what was happening in the Kenosha Kid part at all. Ostensibly it's what the above poster said, but really it shows how fragile language is. The same words completely change their meaning with a slight change in punctuation. Couple that with the book's concern with deconstruction of meaning - or more accurately, the paranoid creation of meaning, and you start to access the the core of the book, in my mind: the relationship between language and meaning. Particularly in a novel, this relationship is unavoidable, and the world of the book itself is created through language. Pynchon's use of the Kenosha Kid shows that he understands that, and enables the reader to trust his more subtle manipulations later on in the book. Also, it's fun as hell.
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Jul 28, 2014 04:15
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Part 1: Beyond The Zero As is evident from Pirate's dream in the opening sequence, Pynchon is already developing the theme of scientific amorality and the responsibility that science has to the afterlife (the Von Braun epigram is an unusually explicit choice, but obviously very apt for episodes that concern German rocketry). Characters are anticipating various forms of redemption during the Christmas season (the entire action of Part 1 takes place over nine days of Advent in 1944), although the modern and the technological are the engines of this redemption, as Pynchon is already revealing how the arc of the 20th-century has striven to erase the transcendental from human experience, replacing it with the death-drive that characterizes late capitalism. Episode 1: The first five episodes take place on December 18, 1944. We begin with the Banana Breakfast, one of the great opening scenes in American literature. Pirate Prentice (whose name recalls the "apprentice to a pirate" line from Gilbert & Sullivan's Penzance) dreams of the evacuation from London of its preterite souls, Calvin's "second sheep", who pass under “the final arch,” symbol of “a judgment from which there is no appeal”, the first instance of death and decay as represented by the parabola. Hilarity and showtunes ensue. Notes (selected from Weisenburger, my additions in italics -- all page references conform to the standard "V” for the Viking/Penguin (1973), “B” for the Bantam (1974), and “P” for the Penguin Great Books of the Twentieth Century (2000)): V3.34, B4.3, P4.10 Absolute Zero The centigrade temperature of minus 273.15 degrees, at which matter possesses the least energy; thus a physically inert condition. In Pavlov’s neuropsychiatric writings, however, the term assumes a parallel meaning Pynchon will soon reference: “An unreinforced conditioned reflex without any repetitions . . . ends in every case in extinction, [returns] to an absolute zero” (Lectures 2:121). Here, it signifies total nonresponsiveness to external stimuli, thus a psychologically inert condition, the imagined death in Pirate’s dream. (Now we see another meaning for "beyond the zero", when a Pavlovian subject goes past the conditioned reflex and begins to respond only to the lack of stimulus, as the Book is said to describe.) V6.26-27, B7.8, P6.40 - 41 it’s a vapor trail Pynchon’s source for this detail is the Times of London. V-2 rockets were launched on London from The Hague, 195 miles distant. Nevertheless, from their rooftops and upper windows Londoners might have observed the white starburst of a launch and the vapor trail of a rocket climbing over the North Sea. Many of the missiles were launched at dawn, when the low winter sun would brilliantly illuminate their exhaust. For example, a letter in the Times of December 12, 1944 (5, col. 7) describes just such a “bright trace” and subsequent days’ editions printed several letters from others who described what Prentice sees on this day. (Notice that this is the only detail that gives away the date of the episode, which is otherwise critical to the timeline being oriented around the liturgical calendar. Pynchon will frequently disguise his chronology this deeply.) V6.33 - 35, B7.17-19, P7.7-9 the sun . . . striking the rocket’s exhaust . . . making them blaze clear across the sea ...Later in part 1 (V100.36), Pynchon notes that the rockets were launched from The Hague on London at a compass bearing of 260 degrees WSW, a detail he found in Kooy and Uytenbogaart (Ballistics of the Future 285). In mid-December, when Pirate observes this dawn firing, the sun would be nearing its lowest southern latitudes, approximately over South-West Africa (now Namibia), the topos for many of Pynchon’s Herero references. The sun would be ascending at a bearing of about 170 degrees ESE, or perpendicular to the rocket’s line of trajectory and forming, incidentally, a cross in the sky. Now since a rainbow of illuminated light moves in a direction opposite to that of its source—that is, since the rainbow falls as the sun rises—then this imagined rainbow would be high overhead relative to any observer who might be standing one-half to one mile east-southeast of the rocket’s airborne vapor trail. Such an imaginary observer would see a circular rainbow and not the arch we normally witness, one-half of which plunges into the earth. Pynchon reminds us of this fact as GR draws to a close: “Of Course It Begins Infinitely Below The Earth and Goes On Infinitely Back Into the Earth” (V726.19-20). (Note the circular symbology of the rainbow, already here in contrast to the rocket's parabola.) mdemone fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Aug 2, 2014 |
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Jul 29, 2014 00:05
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Hot poo poo, mdemone. Keep it up!
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Jul 29, 2014 01:45
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I'm about a fourth of the way through. I'm probably going to have to read this thing three or so times to finally understand it. I'm not used to this post-modern bullshit. But I'm glad to see there's a thread on here about something that isn't genre fiction poo poo. gently caress that noise.
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Jul 30, 2014 01:45
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I absolutely need to read GR and it's been on my "to read" list forever. Several years ago I read Vineland and really loved it. How does it compare to GR?
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Jul 30, 2014 06:50
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Kelfeftaf posted:I'm about a fourth of the way through. I'm probably going to have to read this thing three or so times to finally understand it. I'm not used to this post-modern bullshit. The postmodern bullshit style is a readability asset because it's a long novel. It mirrors the human thought process. Doesn't get taxing in the way that this-happened-then-that-happened prose does after a few hundred pages.
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Jul 30, 2014 07:02
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Gravity's Rainbow is my favorite...thing, pretty much. It kicked my rear end the first few times I tried (and failed) to read it, but I've finished it three times now, once with the companion, and it never fails to reveal new depths and never loses any of its excitement. Might have to read it a fourth time... I've strongly considered getting a GR-related tattoo, I just haven't conceptualized a design that I'm satisfied with.
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Jul 30, 2014 09:03
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metricchip posted:I absolutely need to read GR and it's been on my "to read" list forever. Several years ago I read Vineland and really loved it. How does it compare to GR? Gravity's Rainbow is next level poo poo. I really liked Vineland but I think it's probably his most contentious novel, especially considering it was GR's follow-up almost two decades later. Definitely more difficult than Vineland, but much more worthwhile.
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Jul 30, 2014 23:51
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The important thing to remember about GR on a first run through is that nobody is quizzing you on this stuff. Just let the confusing parts wash over you, enjoy the incredible prose, savor the highlights, and worry about piecing together the complex narrative later. If you get through it, you will want to read it again.
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Jul 31, 2014 04:07
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If you enjoyed GR, I recommend V. as a follow up. It has shadows of the ideas later expanded upon in GR and a lot of similarly hilarious and disturbing episodes.
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Jul 31, 2014 06:53
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Thanks to this thread I started GR. I've just finished Part 1. I loved the toilet and wine jellies sections. Poor Slothrop 
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Jul 31, 2014 21:13
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Episode 2 Later that morning (on 12/18/44), Pirate's Banana Breakfast is interrupted when he is called away to London by a rather peculiar means. His career as a "fantasist surrogate" now emerges more clearly, when an Adenoid of enormous size threatens the city during a nightmare of mucoidal proportions (belonging to Lord Blatherard Osmo, whose throat is the actual site of the monster in question). The long digression into the Eastern Question of 1914 allows Pynchon to develop some background on both Pirate and the enigmatic power he serves. Notes: V11.35, B13.5, P12.10 Iasi . . . men of the League During the 1930s Romania found itself caught between Germany and Russia, with their crumbling Nazi-Soviet Pact. Corneliu Codreanu organized his League of the Archangel Michael and its military wing, the Iron Guard, a Fascist brotherhood based in the city of Iasi. Iron Guardsmen wore green shirts and carried little bags of Romanian soil—symbolizing their love of the fatherland—tied to thongs around their necks. Under Codreanu, Romania maintained an alliance with Hitler through August 1944, when Britain and France assisted the deposed young king, Michael, in a successful coup. Still, the political situation remained unstable and was a frequent topic of discussion in the Times of London throughout the fall and winter of 1944 - 45. The Russians had been fomenting an underground struggle, and in March 1945 a Communist faction directed by the Russian commissar Andrei Vyshinski seized control. Here, the significant points are that in 1936 Pirate was having, or “managing” (V12.3), the fantasies of a fictional Romanian anti-Fascist and royalist and that it all satirizes those in the British Foreign Office who, as Hitler’s power grew, kept applying scenarios from the previous war. V13.1, B14.17-18, P13.15 the mark of Youthful Folly This is Meng, fourth hexagram of The I Ching; or, Book of Changes. The upper trigram of this figure depicts a mountain, the lower one a pool of water. Here is Richard Wilhelm’s interpretation (20): “Keeping still is the attribute of the upper trigram; that of the lower is the abyss. Stopping in perplexity at the brink of a dangerous abyss is a symbol of the folly of youth. However, the two trigrams can also show a way of overcoming the follies of youth. Water is something that of necessity flows on. When the spring gushes forth, it does not know at first where it will go. But its steady flow fills up the deep place blocking its progress, and success is attained.” The figure of this hexagram and its symbolism will later apply to Tyrone Slothrop (V378.12n). V13.30 - 31, B15.13-14, P14.6-7 during his Kipling Period, beastly Fuzzy-Wuzzies . . . Oriental sore The term “Fuzzy Wuzzy” was British military slang for the Sudanese insurgents who became infamous during campaigns of the 1880 - 90s for their ferocity in battle, their expert use of both American-made Remington rifles and native-made spears, and their strategy of poisoning water wells before British troops arrived. In “Fuzzy Wuzzy,” one of his Barrack-Room Ballads (1892), poet Rudyard Kipling refers to British troopers’ begrudging respect for them: "So ’ere’s to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your ’ome in the Soudan; You’re a pore benighted ’eathen but a first-class fightin’ man; We gives you your certificate, an’ if you want it signed We’ll come an’ ’ave a romp with you whenever you’re inclined." Dracunculiasis is a swelling caused by an infestation of Dracunculus worms in the leg and arm muscles of those living in tropical environments, like the Indies. Oriental sore: a skin ulcer occurring in the Indies, also known as the Aleppo boil. In 1935, the time of these oriental fantasies of Pirate’s “Kipling Period,” the famous poet (b. 1865) was a year away from his death. V14.30 - 31, B16.23, P15.8 It was a giant Adenoid The fantastic creature disappears from GR after this analeptic appearance, but a thinly disguised Richard M. Nixon, as “adenoidal” theater manager Richard M. Zhlubb, will reappear in the final, proleptic moments of the narrative (see V754.34). In typical monster-movie fashion, this creature is “as big as St. Paul’s,” the London cathedral atop Ludgate Hill measuring 250 by 515 feet. Lodged in the pharynx of Lord Blatherard Osmo, this roving Adenoid satirizes the nasal characteristics of upper-crust British speech; at least, it satirizes how that speech sounds to preterite ears. Since medical references to “adenoids” nearly always use the plural, Pynchon probably refers here to Charlie Chaplin’s role as the Jewish barber and then dictator of Tomania, “Adenoid Hynkel,” a thinly veiled Adolph Hitler in The Great Dictator (1940). Indeed the film’s closing speech, in which Chaplin drops the Hitler-mask and appeals directly to viewers, rather deftly capsulizes GR’s core themes: quote:The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators [will] die and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish. V14.34 - 36, B16.28 - 30, P15.12-14 Novi Pazar . . . this obscure sanjak Before World War I, Novi Pazar existed as a small sanjak or principality sandwiched between Serbia and Montenegro in a mountainous region with few passes. The 1878 Treaty of Berlin empowered Austria-Hungary to garrison the area, while specifying that civil administration was to remain in Turkish hands. In 1908 Austria-Hungary announced plans to run a rail line through the pass at Novi Pazar. It would have been commercially insignificant but militarily critical in providing a crucial land bridge to Macedonia and Bulgaria, thereby completing the encirclement of Serbia. These strategic problems were central to the “Eastern Question,” occupying the major European powers from 1908 until the outbreak of war in August 1914. Then plans for the railway were shelved, so Pirate’s image of getting to the sanjak via the legendary Orient Express is romantic fancy.
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Aug 2, 2014 00:31
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Really interesting stuff. Is this straight from the companion book or something you did?
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Aug 2, 2014 00:38
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The annotations are selected from Weisenburger, and the synopses are my own, although they will rarely go beyond simple summaries. I'm adding my own thoughts where appropriate to the notes, although the first several episodes are straightforward enough that I'm saving most of my critical analysis for later sections, when the poo poo really Hits The Fan. Basically, once we meet Katje and Blicero, Pynchon's thematic concerns really start to take center stage. Also note that Weisenburger locates and examines the source of virtually every reference in the novel, and as such I'm omitting the large majority of the companion, only choosing the notes that are crucial to character or theme.
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Aug 2, 2014 01:07
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mdemone posted:Also note that Weisenburger locates and examines the source of virtually every reference in the novel, and as such I'm omitting the large majority of the companion, only choosing the notes that are crucial to character or theme. Has there been any substantial pushback against the Weisenburger companion? I'm thinking in terms here of the big Joyce guides, like Gifford's Ulysses Annotated, or McHugh's Annotations to Finnegans Wake, which are still widely acknowledged as very useful or even indispensable to the study of those works, but at the same time have had their shortcomings picked apart in minute detail.
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Aug 2, 2014 19:56
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mdemone posted:This is the shape of Gravity’s Rainbow: a mandala, its four quadrants marked by crucial dates on the Christian liturgical calendar, that traces a motion in which the circle of redemptive death, or foolishness (read it however you will) is nearly closed. It reveals a design formed as much by traditional, orderly patterning as by contemporary, purely coincidental events. The liturgical structure seems to focus the novel around a theme of salvation, a redeeming earthly savior. Equally as well, the pagan coincidences suggest that the whole enterprise is a poisson d’avril, a red herring, a fool’s quest. And one can find nothing in the novel to resolve this antinomy. Everywhere in Gravity’s Rainbow the parabolic arch symbolizes disease, dementia, and destruction. Its counterpart is the circular mandala, a symbol of opposites held in delicate equipoise. This quotation describes GR's structure as circular, but isn't it as close to being the "arch"? If the action takes place between December 1944 and September 1945, where are September-December 1945? It's as if the circle is missing a part, so this antimony goes down to the structure as well.
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Aug 3, 2014 13:19
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elentar posted:Has there been any substantial pushback against the Weisenburger companion? I'm thinking in terms here of the big Joyce guides, like Gifford's Ulysses Annotated, or McHugh's Annotations to Finnegans Wake, which are still widely acknowledged as very useful or even indispensable to the study of those works, but at the same time have had their shortcomings picked apart in minute detail. Not that I know of. Weisenburger really does stick to the facts, for the most part. His critical notes don't extrapolate too far beyond the text (and the timeline is impossible to ignore), so I would think it difficult to throw too much shade on him. Thematic analysis on GR would be much more susceptible to this kind of skepticism, but Weisenburger wisely avoids it in general, apart from the occasional statement of the obvious. Of course there have been many other works/essays along these lines, but if anyone knows of a particularly good or insightful one, I would be obliged. Thanks for the McHugh reference, I had missed that one. Instead I've been using Campbell's skeleton key, but drat if it isn't a tough slog anyway. I figure at a few pages a month, I might finish the Wake before I die. House Louse posted:This quotation describes GR's structure as circular, but isn't it as close to being the "arch"? If the action takes place between December 1944 and September 1945, where are September-December 1945? It's as if the circle is missing a part, so this antimony goes down to the structure as well. No, the quadrants are divisions in the liturgical calendar, and don't add up to one year. I'm ambivalent toward Weisenburger's "mandala" idea, anyway -- clearly the relevance of the liturgical dates to the corresponding action is the important part, and parabola/arch vs. circle/rainbow is useful as a tool to analyze imagery, far more than as a design of the timeline per se. Note: I'm entering the fall semester, so I may slow down in transcribing & analyzing, but I do really want to keep up with this one over the long haul, so please bear with me. I'd love to get conversations started about pieces of the text, here and there, so obviously feel free to jump ahead of me and discuss whatever you want. I'll probably have more to add to that kind of discussion as well, since the first half or so of Part I (Beyond the Zero) is so straightforward. If anyone has thoughts about Part IV (Counterforce) I would especially like to hear them, as I have struggled with thematic connections in that section of the text, throughout repeated readings. ...and a final Q: what do you all think of Pynchon's refusal to accept or even acknowledge the National Book Award for GR? Is it standard recluse/hermit behavior or a reflection of what he intended the text to mean to his readers, or something else altogether, perhaps a meta-critique of fiction as such during a century that saw the decisive victory of the death-drive? mdemone fucked around with this message at 01:04 on Aug 4, 2014 |
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Aug 4, 2014 00:50
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mdemone posted:No, the quadrants are divisions in the liturgical calendar, and don't add up to one year. I'm ambivalent toward Weisenburger's "mandala" idea, anyway -- clearly the relevance of the liturgical dates to the corresponding action is the important part, and parabola/arch vs. circle/rainbow is useful as a tool to analyze imagery, far more than as a design of the timeline per se. I meant that the quadrants imply a full "circular" year but only show us three seasons, making an "arch". So though Weisenburger calls the structure a mandala, it could be either. quote:...and a final Q: what do you all think of Pynchon's refusal to accept or even acknowledge the National Book Award for GR? Is it standard recluse/hermit behavior or a reflection of what he intended the text to mean to his readers, or something else altogether, perhaps a meta-critique of fiction as such during a century that saw the decisive victory of the death-drive? I think you're misremembering. He accepted the NBA and mentions it in his author bios. He declined another award, but if he acknowledges the NBA that looks more like standard recluse/hermit behavior than a statement or critique, to me.
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Aug 5, 2014 18:06
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I think I've got like 130-140 pages into this and I just couldn't continue. I really enjoyed it and gently caress parts of it really stuck with me like the toilet diving scene, the weird blob story at the start and the gay nazi rapist, but drat I don't know if I could soldier through the entire thing. Someone told me to read it as if it was being spoken and that helped and I will try again at some point.
hemale in pain fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Aug 5, 2014 |
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Aug 5, 2014 23:02
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I had to make a ritual of reading it to get through. You really just need to let the narrative wash over you. 98% of the book'a subtext isn't going to register and you pretty much just need to accept that. It feels like the proper way to read the book is to continue reading it in the form of literary analysis like the stuff posted earlier in this thread.
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Aug 7, 2014 01:57
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I'm now exactly halfway through. I wasn't marking my pages, so I keep reading passages over not realizing I've read them. It goes back to Slothrop's fun adventures right on time over and over, then those pages go real quick until another digression. The silly stuff and the boner jokes and songs really make it fun and possible to read for me. I highlight and mark it up a lot and don't care if I tear and tape pages and damage the book--it makes it feel like it's mine, dammit. Though it's hard and slow, the magic phrases and unconventional storytelling have kind of made me love fiction again.
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Aug 7, 2014 02:33
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