Gravity's Rainbow

De: Thomas Pynchon

Narrado por: George Guidall

Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the twentieth century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

"Time to touch the person next to you"

Don't expect Thomas Pynchon's picaresque, burlesque WWII epic Gravity's Rainbow (1973) to tie up all loose plot strands and resolve the fates of all loose characters. Expect an experience that comically and disturbingly involves you in the intertwined urges of Eros and Thanatos and the creative and destructive missions of civilization. The book is an encyclopedic riff on paranoia, sex, death, rockets, history, politics, religion, racism, war, cartels, chemistry, plastics, science, probability, drugs, music, movies, zoot suits, the dodo, American culture (and Western civilization in general), and much more, and the connections between everything.

The novel is divided into four parts. The first part centers on London in the later stages of WWII and introduces Pynchon's point of view characters working for or around PISCES (Psychological Intelligence Schemes for Expediting Surrender), a cryptic British organization operating out of an insane asylum called the White Visitation. The protagonist is the happy-go-lucky US Army Lt. Tyrone Slothrop, whom the Brits are observing because his sexual assignations with women seem to predict the landing sites of the German V-2 rockets that land and explode before you can hear them approach. (Or are his one-night stands only sexual fantasies!?) Part Two moves things to France, as Slothrop becomes aware of the ways in which They have been manipulating him since infancy and starts trying to get out of Their clutches. Part Three enters the Zone, comprised of the minor zones into which America, the UK, and Russia have carved up the freshly capitulated Germany. Here Slothrop is on a quest for the Unholy Grail, a mysterious uber-rocket with a "black device" payload and the serial number 00000, as the allies are racing around snapping up German rockets and scientists. Part Four introduces a valiantly ineffectual Counterforce, comprised of Their rejects and runaways who are trying irrationally to muck up Their rational plans.

Those bare bones ignore Pynchon's extravagant character creation, plotting, and digressing, not to mention his brazen vamping, culture vulturing, grossing out, and turning on. This is a dense, outrageous, imaginative novel. In addition to some healthy sex scenes, like between Slothrop and the German witch Geli Tripping, and some comical scatological ones, like one involving an outraged Roger Mexico and a cabal of oil executives, there are plenty of cringe-inducing sequences not for the squeamish. There is, for instance, a surreal sequence of Slothrop traveling down a toilet (ala Alice down the rabbit hole) and sex scenes involving bestiality, incest, pedophilia, coprophilia, necrophilia, polymerphilia (?), and more. All part of Pynchon's program to explore to the depths and heights the interface between life and death.

Slothrop is a fun, fluid, frustrating everyman hero, descendent of Puritans, victim of Pavlovian conditioning, prey to paranoia, a man whose identity becomes increasingly fragmented and dispersed the longer They experiment and spy on him and the longer he wanders the Zone posing as a British war correspondent, Errol Flynn, Rocketman, a Russian officer, a local German pig hero, a-a-and even (jeepers!) Fay Wray. While pursuing the 00000, Slothrop gets side-tracked by an aging German drug dealer giving jobs to Rocketman, a Russian officer bent on killing his half-brother South African Schwarzkommando leader, an aging German soft-porn star wanting to be whipped, a cell of Argentinean anarchist gaucho wannabes wanting to be free, a ship of fools orgying down the river, and a fat eight-year-old German boy looking for his lost lemming Ursula, to name just a few of the many colorful eccentrics. The characters are caught up in the struggle between the Elect chosen few and the Preterite passed-over masses, with moments of humor or doomed love providing respite. Although Pynchon understands the winners, his heart is with the losers.

There is much wonderful writing in the novel. Many great set pieces, like some conscripted "piss-swollen men" singing a sublime evensong, Katje recalling playing Hansel and Gretel, Death paying Roger Mexico and Jessica a little call at their romantic hideaway, Tchitcherine witnessing a Kirghiz male-female insult singing contest, Slothrop escaping from some limerick-singing, blood-thirsty American soldiers in a hot air balloon laden with custard pies, or loathsome Major Duane Marvy getting his just deserts. And many vivid and apt descriptions:

--"roadsides of poor rotting horses just before apricot sunrise."
--"big globular raindrops, thick as honey, begin to splat into giant asterisks on the pavement, inviting him to look down at the bottom of the text of the day, where footnotes will explain all."
--"Forget-me-nots boil everywhere underfoot, and ants crowd, bustling with a sense of kingdom."
--"The water is clear, running lively, cold. Round rocks knock together under the stream. A resonant sound, a music."

If you lose focus for a moment and fall briefly out of Pynchon's spell, you might get lost for paragraphs at a time. Most of his digressions are funny and relevant (like a community of Dobermans and German Shepherds trained to kill strangers on sight), but a few seem excrescent (like Byron the Bulb). And, to confide, when I finished the novel I did feel more relief than regret.

George Guidall superbly reads the audiobook with a wry and moist enthusiasm, without contorting his voice for different characters. Sometimes, as with Basil Rathbone in a doper western movie, I wish he would do British accents. But he voices a great sneeze, American chuckle, perky band of Mickey Mouse fat cells, and every other outre job with aplomb.

At one point the audiobook repeats from the last 35 minutes of the audio download part three until the first 47 minutes of the audio download part four (82 minutes). It makes what is a long audiobook even longer and should've been cleaned up.

If you are interested in the great American novel, the matter of circa WWII, the rise of the rocket, the history of Them, surreal madcap scenes of a scatological and or sexual nature, and comically devastating satires of western civilization, you should like Gravity's Rainbow. But be prepared to feel like Dorothy out of Kansas or King Kong out of his jungle.

A true masterwork of postmodern literature

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Yes, wholeheartedly. It's a great way to experience a classic work.

What other book might you compare Gravity's Rainbow to and why?

Pynchon belongs with Pynchon. There's no other way to put it.

Which scene was your favorite?

You can't go wrong with Pirate Prentice's famous Banana Breakfast.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No. It insists upon being taken in only in smaller bites. Each passage is thoughtful and wants you to pause, chew, and savor.

Any additional comments?

It's weird, yeah. Pynchon is weird. But give it some time to sink in. Let the humor wash over you. Get carried away on the prose. Don't try to grasp the meaning of a passage or story all at once. Let enlightenment sneak up on you.

It's more fun that way.

not worth the pain

I had high hopes what I started reading this because it was supposed to be a brilliant work of art. A tour de force that belongs on everyone's bucket list. That could be, but to me the occasional bits of interesting prose or information was not worth the plodding, grinding dialogue. each sentence probably took an insane amount of time to construct, and they were beautifully written. Despite the great voice narration, the drudgery of plowing through hour after hour after hour of that kind of dense prose, combined with way way too many characters to keep track of, left me mentally tired and dragged out by the end. I'm not averse to large, complex books either. The Years of Rice and Salt was also long and dense, but the story line made the journey worth it. I just can't say the same for Gravity's Rainbow. I guess I'm just a literary cretin.

Awesome Book!! Use Sleep Timer!

Pro Tip: Use Audibles built in sleep timer and set it for "End Of Chapter" at the beginning of each chapter, it makes the book a LOT easier to parse, and you can catch yourself drifting early in case you need to rewind and zone back in.

This book was truly fantastic. If you love hard science fiction (I mean HARD science fiction no skimping on the calculus <3 ), intricate and thorough discussions of gratuitous sex of virtually every conceivable variety, and a moderate challenge then this book is definitely for you.

He is very faithful to the intention of the books writing style so you have to really focus while you listen, (Mr. Python chose to write the book like this because the time after a huge war is a generally confusing time with a lot of major changes and shifts in psychology, and he wanted the book to represent that).... but if you had to pick someone to listen to for 40 hours, George Guidall would be the only tolerable choice.

Perhaps the Great (in?) American Novel

have read it at least ten times listening showed further nuances. Should be required reading.