Rating: 
Summary: difficult. definitely difficult
Review: Gravity's Rainbow has to be about the most difficult book
I've ever read. A high school English teacher I had basically dared us to read it at the time. I bought a copy but put it
back down after about 10 pages. A friend tricked me into starting
it again. This time I got through. I can't say I understood
it all. I think I understood some of it. Maybe that's the most
I can hope for. If you like easy reads, you probably won't
like this book. If you like reading books that are a wee
bit on the challenging side, you might like it. If you like
books that you ought to brace yourself for, you'll probably enjoy this one. WWII, paranoia, odd plastics, rockets,
psychology, and much much more
Rating: 
Summary: Overlapping tales in WWII reveal life's hidden mysteries.
Review: Gravity's Rainbow is sort of a cross between Catch-22 and the X-Files, but without aliens. Which is good, because
things can be confusing enough. On the surface, the book is
four or five intertwined stories set in Europe at the end of
World War II. Each story in itself is alternatively funny,
intriguing and moving. The combination of these stories and
characters reveals a world below the surface, in which
fate, chance and human will play out in both immense macro issues and the most intimate personal ones. This is not light
reading but I've found it terrifically rewarding, especially at those moments in life when I've needed a fresh perspective
on things I couldn't quite define.
Rating:
Summary: Classical VS Modern Physics from a Historical Paranoic View
Review: The most brilliant piece of fiction I have ever read and re-read.
Combines the major physical and metaphysical breakthroughs of
the centry (classical vs modern physics, organic chemistry,
calculus) is a metaphysical background agains the historical
perspective of a WWII and post WWII Europe.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent writing. Weisenburger's "Companion" helps lots.
Review: I ran out and bought this book when it was first published
in 1973, and have read it more than 20 times over the years.
After all these years my jaw still drops in awe at the
amazing quality of the writing. Still, this work is difficult;
very few of the friends who've started it on my recommendation
have gotten very far. In 1992 I stumbled across Steven
Weisenburger's "A Gravity's Rainbow Companion" which explains
most of the myriad references (to literature, film, science,
mathematics, chemistry, et al.) and exposes the high-level
and detailed structure. ISBN 0-8203-1026-3. Get this too.
Rating:
Summary: Ficht Nicht Mit Der Raketmensch!
Review: My favorite book of all time. The guy who recommended this to me told me it was about "the absolute interconnectedness of everything," and after reading it three times (once out loud to my wife) I can confidently say that he was right. This is one of those books that resonates and echoes around in your head for a long, long time. And it comes complete with gorgeous, poetic language, psychedelic trippiness, belly laughs, paranoid, macabre fun, and the deepest insights into the human condition of any nov
Rating:
Summary: Fun with V-1s
Review: This book is about V-1 rockets raining down on London
during WW2, banana breakfasts, and Imipolex a mysterious
chemical with erotic side-effects. Be sure to use a dictionary when you read it because woven into the character
names and the text are all sorts of great additions to your vocabulary (ie. character Tantivy Mucker-Maffick).
I.G. Farben, an evil corporation involved on both sides of
WW2, was a real corporation, since cut into many pieces,
all flourishing and selling you pharmaceuticals every day.
Hasn't everybody read this book back in the 70's? Read V
first and the Crying of Lot 49 so you get used to Mr.
Pynchon's style and themes. Go for it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Simply amazing! This book may not be for everybody (although it should be), but those of you who don't find
the lack of a coherent plot and a clear protagonist impossible to deal with, will be richly rewarded by a novel
with more levels than the Sears Tower. Read it for its lurking evocation of a grand paranoia. Read it for Pynchon's stunning knowledge of math, science, history
and popular culture. Read it for Pynchon's astounding ability to weave characters, plots and dreams while maintaining his overriding concept; whatever that may be.
Read it because its funny. Just read the darn thing! I've only recently finished it and its quickly become one of my favorite books. I can't recommend it enough.
Rating:
Summary: Gravity's Rainbow
Review: Gravity's Rainbow.* Those two little words are enough to make even the most hardened of readers shake. There is a dullness to the eyes upon hearing Pynchon's name, an instantaneous reverie-inducing magic word of Kabbalah among the literary aware. Yet there are a few people, scattered amongst the ley lines of the world, a few here in Australia, a few more there in America, a handful in Europe, perhaps, maybe, two or three in China, I don't know: but they exist. Some people have read the book. Some people have even - gasp - re-read. And for these, Gravity's Rainbow is the Ultimate, the Absolute, the All.
Happily, as of the 23rd of January, 2005, I can count myself among the tiny but growing portion of people who have completed Gravity's Rainbow not once but twice. The first read through, it was a nightmare, a mish-mash of vivid, hyper-real images, of chaotic, disastrous encounters, of haphazard, unrealistic, unbelievable absurd and comic characters and situations, of sex, of drugs, of violence, of midgets, of plastics, of Rockets. It had everything, but I couldn't grasp the novel - what was it about? What was it trying to tell me? Why - why why why - was I forced to read countless diversions into African history, metaphysical ramblings about the sun, the Grid, the Gods, excursions into Pavlovian psychology, octopus attacks, sado-masochism, rocketry, physics, witchcraft, Nazi ideology, English sweets, American limericks, Japanese Haikus? The answer wasn't obvious, nor did I discover why, once the last page was finished. The why, the when, the where, and most importantly the how of the novel were not revealed.
But the second read through. Ahhh, wasn't that different. Familiar with the characters who were to play larger roles in the unfolding of the 00000, I was able to focus my energies to the right places, and 'merely' enjoy the rambunctious cavortings of the rest. I knew that trying to make sense of a man swimming about in a toilet looking for a harmonica wasn't integral to the story, so I could just enjoy enjoy enjoy - let the beauty of the words and the crazy wonder of the imagery fall over me. Brilliant, amazing sentences were mine to enjoy, to savour. And I did. Slothrop, Rocketman himself, I knew was to fade, and I could be with him until the Zone absorbed his ten thousand selves. Roger Mexico was mine until Jessica said goodbye. And maybe, if I was careful, I could get a glimpse of Byron the Bulb.
So. What is Gravity's Rainbow about? I suppose it is about a rocket. No, a Rocket. THE Rocket. The 00000. A-and, the Rocket is fired, an arrow to the heavens, where it falls, nobody knows. Tyrone wants to know, thought he doesn't know that just yet. Pointsman wants to know. So does Teddy Bloat, Katje, Tchitcherine, Enzian, Weissman, Duane Marvey, and of course, of COURSE They want to know. They want to know everything, They do.
Beyond that? Imagine every little scrap of history, mathematics, science, art, literature, social criticism and psychology rolled up into a little parcel, mixed about with a liberal dose of paranoid plot (see proverb 5), and sprinkled liberally - oh so liberally, five to a page, more! - amongst a 760 page book that arguable is all about a single rocket shooting into the air and falling to the ground.
(If I could, I'd insert a song here, but alas, my singing capabilities are a great deal lesser than my desire. Maybe next time through the Wheel)
The setting, ah yes, that fickle, meandering, evasive creature. WW2, sure, London, sure, the Zone, sure. But also Africa, Mauritius, Japan, Space, underground with the Titans, in the air with the custard pies, on the sea, dancing about with those midgets a-and over there, in the Grid, can't forget the Grid! We jump about, we jump here, we jump there, back and forth, around and around, in a sentence we jump, in a paragraph we jump, mid WORD we jump. But the thread is held together by the Rocket, that simple, phallic symbol we can all identify with, that we all want. It is ours, if we let it embrace us.
But really, what is it about? A Rocket, we've mentioned that. A critique on the social setting after the war? No, too superficially deep, if you catch my drift. They don't like that, no They don't. A love story between Mexico and Jessica? Can't be, that'd be silly. 500 pages between scenes hardly constitutes a love affair, but wait! the main character disappears in the Zone, so what can I say?
You like songs? So does Pynchon. You like mathematics? So does Pynchon. You like midgets, bondage, feces, sex, physics, chemistry, plastics, magic, history, psychology, mythology, foreign languages, conspiracies, Capital Letters, puns, narrator jokes, chorus lines, reefers, the word sez, recursion, coincidence, nightmares and girls? Yeah, so does Pynchon. Funny that. Open the book, pick a page, any page, doesn't matter which, you are bound to find at least half of those.
Sentences are so confident, so unbelievably aware of themselves as to strike awe. Any quote would be out of context, and thus meaningless. A .... serves to connect everything, it is all connected, all. Will Rocketman save us? He can't even save himself...
*For the more serious minded - I haven't summarised this novel. I can't, you can't, nobody can. I can't summarise Finnegans Wake, either. The novel is a journey through the idea of what literature could be if we just let ourselves go and write what is within us. Pynchon demolishes the concept of what a novel should be, he tears the towering edifice that began with Cervantes and ended with Joyce - even if only a temporary ending - and rebuilds it in his image. The modern novel owes as much to him as it does to any of the Great Authors, this novel is an amazing, incomparable epic of...of everything. Its scope is so vast, its range so sure, its breadth so detailed that...I can't even finish this sentence. An amazing achievement. A brilliant novel. A fundamentally essential author.
Rating:
Summary: This earns one crushed scorpion
Review: I first read this book when I took a long sabbatical from the University. I read the book mostly while I laid in bed with a large dictionary that smelled of turned pages since Mr. Pynchon's working vocabulary is really, really err...big. I refer to the scorpion because I read a interview with Edward Abbey and he mentioned reading this book while in a trailer in the desert, he was so absorbed that when a scorpion bit him on the ankle he simply squashed it and continued to read. Had it been me I would have squashed the scorpion and maybe not lied about the rest. I do recommend the book, a very challenging read so its not recommended for the faint of brain. Now I also recommend you stop reading this review because I feel another spell coming on, yep sure nuff. I don't know what it is about this book but it always reminds me of the time as a child I was at the car wash with my dad and my brother Charles Chadwick, Charles and myself were bored watching our dad wash the station wagon so we found something to distract ourselves (which usually consisted of my brother talking me into doing something stupid), the present story does not veer from this path. Being the younger brother and quite a tiny lad my brother (Charles Chadwick) convinced me that I could reach my skinny little arm up into the towel dispenser and extract some valuable paper towels for free, save my pop a quarter and we would all be winners.However I reached as far as I could and could find nothing and by the time I gave up my arm had swollen so much from all the blood pumping into my arm but the little slot had a devilish design that would not permit blood to flow back into my body, so to make a long story short my dad had to find the owner of the car wash who took a hack saw to his own towel for hire dispenser and extract my arm. I am forever grateful to that man and also my dad who for some reason was not mad, I reckon he recognized early on how innocent I really was and incidentally have remained to this day! I've also learned to pause and think whenever my brother suggests I do something heroic.I don't know why Gravity's Rainbow evokes these memories but it does, so maybe you should buy yourself a copy and remember something as fascinating as what I just related.
Rating:
Summary: Immortal light Bulb = Immortal literature
Review: Basically, the Rocketman gets all the chicks but does not know what the hell is going on, but the light bulb has seen it all. You will enjoy banana in various forms with Pirate Prentice, partake in a hot air ballon cream pie battle and enjoy a trek across "the zone". Argenitne Anarchist and German cimema bombshells, who knew industrialization could be this much fun? I tried to read this when I was 15 years old and it did not work. Came back to it at 34 years old and proceeded to read all published pynchon without coming up for air. I plan on reading this again if I survive the next 10 years.
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