Gravity's Rainbow

By: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design

Narrated by: George Guidall

Length: 37 hrs and 21 mins

Publisher's summary

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 20th 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.

©1973 Thomas Pynchon (P)2014 Penguin Audio

Hotrible narration, staccao, badly paced,.

The narrator ruined the whole story. Big gaps of silence, followed by rushed phrasing. Difficult to understand.

The Great American Novel

To me this is the pinnacle of American literature. It’s bizarre, profane, profound, hilarious, sad. Performed perfectly. Great version of an immense novel.

Pure genius.

One of the great novels of the 20th century, read beautifully by George Guidall. Listening to GP brings out qualities I missed when reading it. Highly recommended.

Bewildering and wonderful

The narrative can be hard to follow and the content can be hard to listen to, but the prose are consistently fascinating and the story is worth your time and attention.

Gravity’s Rainbow

If you ‘re a fan of the the book, this performance will not disappoint in the least.

Narrator

The narrator does get rolling sometimes which can make already difficult book even more difficult, but having to rewind occasionally is a small price to pay to have a narrator who has complete command of the material

best musical I've ever read

I haven't found any other version of Gravity's Rainbow, but this one was as good as it could have been. I find that his old, grandpa voice adds to the humor.

he also sings some the songs and reads the poems in the more proper ways they should be sung or read, which I think is incredibly valuable compared to just reading the text

Excellent

What made the experience of listening to Gravity's Rainbow the most enjoyable?

I have Guidall's original recording of GR. Both are excellent. He doesn't try to act the characters too much...something which I find annoying in many other audiobooks. He also has a good sense of how to narrate this book.

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

People compare GR to Ulysses...I don't see that. Ulysses is a different beast of a book with a different writing style. Don't let the comparisons scare you away, or make you think you need to read Ulysses first to "get" this book.

Any additional comments?

My advice to those working your way through GR is to read a section first, then go back and listen to the section while reading along. You'll be amazed at how much you pick up and understand during that second pass. Also, this isn't a book to plough through over a weekend. Its going to take some time, so work slowly...you'll be rewarded. There is a reference guide to GR which you may find helpful but I don't think it's necessary. Just have fun.

Postmodern masterpiece

This is definitely in the front rank of all the postmodernist books. If you are a fan of postmodernism, you will definitely enjoy this. If you are not a fan of postmodernism, stay away. If you don't really know what postmodernism is, this is not the book to start with. I suppose I should say a little about the subject of the book. It's about the human experience as condensed and distilled into the paranoid journey of an obscure American wandering through Europe in the days just before and after the end of World War II.

This is a difficult book for audio because it's hard to keep up with the author's constant shifts in scene, exposition, stream-of-consciousness, and so on. I would not recommend audio for one's first time through this book. On the other hand, much of Pynchon's prose benefits from being read out loud, and I don't just mean the songs and doggerel. It helps to have as good a narrator as George Guidall. Another thing that makes this challenging is all the topical references to World War II-era pop culture and earlier. It helped to have a written concordance to refer to, of which there are several for this seminal work. Still, it is possible to follow the overall flow of the story and the characters without knowing all those details. It is an amazing book despite not having much in the way of emotional involvement. Just don't press me to explain what it all means.

Pynchon's work is known for his quirky characters, and this book has more than its share. They are not deeply drawn, and few of them are possible to relate to in a meaningful way. His protagonist is little more than a picaresque symbol on which to hang all the complicated episodes, plots, and subplots. One thing that makes Pynchon rewarding is the complex structure; and all the clockwork parts do hang together in their peculiarly messy way if you can make the effort to follow along. Not only is he incredibly inventive as far as plots, episodes, and narrative structure, he is also densely allusive with hints from pop culture and the historical context. The other thing that makes Pynchon rewarding is his prose style. While it's not for everyone, it is clever, literary, fluid, and brilliant. It's sort of like that overinventive college buddy we all had who could keep everyone laughing with his verbal precocity for hours. Try to imagine that for 700+ pages. If that sounds appealing, this may be the book for you.

This book was WAY over my head.

I'm sure it is a literary masterpiece, but I could not keep up with the plot or characters. I only made it two hours in.