I can’t even begin to encompass what Gravity’s Rainbow’s about – I know that there’s at least one companion book out there (costing more than the novel itself) to explain it all to you. I didn’t purchase it, as a) I’m a skinflint and b) I like to approach a book at the first reading without context, to experience it as a new meeting of minds. My purchase came with some hype: “The most profound and accomplished American novel since the end of World War II” is the proud boast on the back cover of my copy. I feel a bit like the child who pointed out that the Emperor had no clothes on when I say, as I think I must, “No it’s not.”

It was published far back in the mists of time, i.e. 1973, an era when drugs were cool and books about drugs were just the hottest thing out there. I remember letting Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, published at about the same time, percolate into my then teenage brain and thinking wow, this is deep because I don’t understand it. Could it be that Gravity’s Rainbow has the same effect on the reading public? Not that it’s about drugs, directly, you understand. My point, I think, is that getting all awestruck about a book just because it’s difficult to grasp is an erroneous approach.

Well I’m four paragraphs in, and still haven’t said what GR’s about. How Pynchonesque of me. Well, it’s about the V2 rocket, WWII, the Allied occupation of Germany after the defeat thereof, the beginnings of the Cold War in the contest between the USA and Russia to scoop up as much Nazi technology as possible, paranoia, mind-conditioning, espionage, sadism, masochism, power… The themes of Rocket, Sex, Excrement, and Death recur as relentlessly as pornography.

The obvious penis/rocket metaphor is given human shape as Slothrop, a character with so little personality that even the author is compelled to remark on that at one point. Conditioned in infancy, Slothrop is believed by those who control him to be able to indicate an incoming V2 by having an erection; he is therefore trained and sent out into the Zone (which seems to equate to Germany under Allied/Russian occupation but also has a symbolic value) to find a very special version of the Rocket by following his, well, not his nose. And the trouble with Slothrop is, the novel’s much more interesting without him, so you get a brilliant beginning, a long Slothrop Desert in the middle, and a somewhat interesting last section when Slothrop has sort of faded into the scenery. I got so tired of Slothrop’s penis at one point in the Desert that I stopped reading the novel for two weeks.

I haven’t read any other books by Pynchon, so I don’t know if the writing method employed in GR is typical of him, or confined to this book. He tends to shift suddenly from one subject to another, launching himself off a random reference into a new tangent at variable rates of frequency. In the first, and by far the best, third of the book, his tangents have a way of coming full circle, but once Slothrop is released across Europe, Pynchon’s train of thought wanders off with him and never returns, although the last part of the book is, mercifully, a bit more coherent. It also contains plenty of doggerel, snatches of song, and arcane references to secret societies and mysticism.

Still, as disjointed as the narrative may be, there are certainly plenty of unifying images: erections, the Rocket, excrement, inventively imaginative public toilets, drug dealers, prostitutes, and bad taste. Pynchon excels at the latter, and I must admit that the scene where Slothrop, in a hot air balloon, is being chased by a planeload of American military singing filthy limericks is one of the high points of the book. The scene where the characters begin making up disgusting, alliterative foods (menstrual marmalade, ringworm relish and the like) at dinner until the guests begin to vomit is decidedly Monty Python. There is also a very dark side to Pynchon: racism, homoeroticism with a homophobic edge, coprophagy, sadism and pedophilia are not left out of the mix. My local library declines to stock a copy of the novel, and when I tried to get an inter-library loan, it never arrived. If I were Slothrop, I would think that They are exercising censorship…

Set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II, the novel centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military, and, in particular, the quest undertaken by several characters to uncover the secret of a mysterious device named the "Schwarzgerät" ("black device") that is to be installed in a rocket with the serial number "00000."
Frequently digressive, Pynchon subverts many of the traditional elements of plot and character development, and traverses detailed, specialist knowledge drawn from a wide range of disciplines. The novel has been praised for its innovation and complexity, though the acclaim has been criticized by some. ( )

One of my favorite books of all time. ( )

Demands reader exuberance ( )

I don't know why all epic books have become epic comedies (oh wait, it's cuz of Ulysses) but this book manages to be hilarious and redefine the impact of WWII on the 20th century. Pynchon's masterpiece. V feels like a warm-up to this. ( )