Gravity's Rainbow [NOOK Book]

"A screaming..........."

Bought this book in paperback back in the seventies, back when I was all into Phillip K Dick and Hunter Thompson. It's Catch 22 on acid. I've read it through twice with added ocassional visits over the years. It's a peek behind the curtain of the post WW2 world order, but it's the zany cast of characters with their hilarious names that sticks with you over the years. There is just one bizarre scene after another, after another. It would make the most fantastic mini series if only Pynchon weren't such a curmudgeon. You can pick it up and start on virtually any page. It's the perfect "desert island" book. You can finish it, BUT you'll never be quite finished WITH it. It's difficult to get into, impossible to get out. It's so much more readable than "Finnegan's Wake". Pynchon is the anti Ayn Rand. You'll never look at a multinational corporation in quite the same way again. They don't write them like this anymore. It's wicked fun. It's a challenge. Imagine how smug you'll feel. Not for the lazy or the slow witted.

6 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

Strange and poor writing. Beware.

Before you buy into the hype of CNN or the previous reviews, do yourself a favor and read the first 15 - 30 pages of this book before you purchase. You¿ll save yourself $20. This is the most incoherent gibberish I have ever read. Correction, tried to read. Forget understanding the book, I couldn't understand some paragraphs some groups of words... This book is written in ridiculously descriptive, nonsensical, overly punctuated, incomplete sentences. It seems to me that this book is liked by those who need to latch onto something because they have nothing else to latch onto and so they pontificate about these 760 pages of babble, taking self pride in acting like they are privy to some genius art form that others just can comprehend and appreciate. Honestly, if you told me this book was written by a heavily medicated crazy person sitting in a padded cell with a typewriter I would believe you. It is like the author tries to duplicate the quick-fire thoughts that constantly run through your mind about everything and it just doesn¿t translate well to paper. Proceed with caution because this book is not for everybody.

5 out of 18 people found this review helpful.

One of the Great American Novels

Though this award winning book (national book award) is certainly one of the best novels any American has ever written, it is also, for novice readers, one of the most difficult (although equally rewarding) journeys you will take reading. The plot (if you want to call it that) spits in and out of realities and un-realities; unexplained or over-explained plot threads arrive without warning and can fade away just as fast; there are a multitude of different multi-faceted characters; and so many references and factoids that you simply will not get -but that is the point. It is controlled chaos this book, it is as if while you read, if you plow through it, the kaleidoscopic images are printed directly onto your brain, and they will stay there with you forever... it is also wildly funny and witty most of the time, and smart and sick and sophisticated, it is weird and terrifying; and the prose of Pynchon, with its paranoid exasperated tones, and wry sadistic hilarity, are constructed so beautifully and originally and expertly, you may find yourself going back and reading passages over and over for the sheer weight of them; Pynchon's words have this mass to them, this heavy multi-layered quality, an indefinable richness... Be patient with Gravity's Rainbow and stay the course, you'll come out of the missile blown haze a changed person, like with any canonical work... This is certainly a candidate for "the Great American Novel" on that short list with Moby-Dick, The Scarlet Letter, Blood Meridian, As I Lay Dying, The Great Gatsby, The Catcher in the Rye, Huck Finn, maybe some others...

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

A reviewer

I picked up GR in preparation for a 20-hour journey from Minneapolis to Hong Kong. Shy of digging a hole and rationing meals to every 100-page mark, there really is no better way to commit yourself to Pynchon. In a pinch, I'd call him a sloppy genius. In a 780-page oeuvre, I'd borrow from his synesthetic narrative some image, discrete and cyclical, some paradox, afterthought and, at once, summing of all existential questions. The book is heavy and dense, literally. Pynchon's themes will at first seem disparate- his scope and style lend themselves to a chaotic appearance- but as you pass milestones in GR and (please, please, please) revisit notable passages, you'll come to see that he leaves no loose ends. He casts no character, no idea, no symbol by the wayside, surely not for good. GR seems to me like poetry written in blank verse. That verse just happens to come in torrential blocks, and to drain the better part of its reader's will power. The novel tackles huge ideas in abstraction. It's insufferably dense, tedious, and self-indulgent, but, in the end, the gems you'll have to cherish will more than justify the effort of slogging through.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

Not exactly light reading

This is one of those books that I enjoy reading, partly for the challenge of it. Each time I come back to different parts of it, I think understand a little more of what the author was getting at. Even without that, the book is enjoyable for the quality of the writing, the humor and the weirdness.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

It will blow your mind...

Gravity's Rainbow is such a twisted, seering tale with a complex cast and a crazy storyline. If you can get through it, its well worth the effort. Its rare that an author can blow your mind, and Mr. Pynchon is rare indeed.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Wonderfully extravagant, adroit with description, robust with life

Thomas Pynchon has created perhaps the greatest novel in American history. His vivid, surreal portrayals of Europe and WWII give the reader a sense of adventure as well as confusion. His darkly comic tone serves to draw the reader away from conventional literature and toward a new era of chaotic writing, where the seemingly infinite amount of characters all come together in a gratifying sense of accomplishment as the reader explores. We owe it to Thomas Pynchon for giving this incredibly large, witty, and most of all original piece of literature, for it instills a sense of phantasmagoria in us.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

You Never Did the Kenosha Kid!

When reading gravity's rainbow, dont try to understand it. Just don't. The plot is tough to follow and many loose ends never come together, while meaningless scenarios and characters drift in and out constantly. I am sure there is a meaning to it all but unless you are studying it for school(god help you), don't try to understand it. Just enjoy Pynchons amazing writing style. The scenes he describes can be hilarious or disgusting and sometimes he will just break out into song or a movie script. It is fantastic just excellent. Of course i intend to read it again and try to comprehend it, but to the first time reader...just accept it as it is. You shouldn't be dissapointed

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Stroboscopic Reach

What is most amazing and perplexing about the finess and ease Pynchon masterfully writes with is the fact that the book appeals on many different levels. It is his blend of the epoch of intelectualism with the popular culture that is so enthralling to read. If you have just heard about pynchon lately or of his opus, Gravity's Rainbow I suggest acclimating yourself by reading some of his short stories, V, or Crying of Lot 49. I am 15 and discovered Pynchon first in the form of Vineland.If you look at the other reviews around mine, you might see a plethora of different reactions. Great literature( Gravity's Rainbow included)should provoke a range of reactions. From violently throwing the book aside, to conversly, enjoying it ceaselessly and becoming a life long fan.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

It was a struggle...

...but I made it to around page 400 of this book. Not that it was bad. Some parts of it were genuinely interesting, entertaining and amusing. But this is the sort of book that's so incredibly dense with hidden meanings and elaborate word games that most of us will never understand it. It is a task for a higher intelligence than mine to make sense of this gargantuan macrocosm. I'd recommend it to fierce literary warriors who enjoy punishment.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

I didn't imagine such matters could be put into words

From the beginning one is drawn in to the story's world mystified at first, then laughing, then intent, then baffled, and from there, in a word - awed. And don't be misled - the book is extremely enjoyable and readable. Only if one were to take it seriously would it wear on one's brain. Gravity's Rainbow would have found little favor with Plato, and I don't think it would be on many religious study groups' recommended reading lists. There is much in it which offends and disappoints, so much depravity, so much truth, normally tucked away neatly hidden in our subconsciouses - but Mr. Pynchon is completely unabashed about bringing it to the surface. That he can and does put it into words is what amazed me while reading the book. Gravity's Rainbow, story and all, is more a macrocosmos than a story, a macrocosmos which the author magnifies, sometimes randomly it seems, offering mad glimpses both into beautiful things we would be glad to linger on, and disturbing things we are socially indoctrinated to shy away from. I don't think the purpose of the story is to tell a story so much as to portray the world - it just happens that the figures of Tyrone Slothrop and company provide the best medium. This complex, mystifying world is viewed from a million different angles, explained a million different ways, experienced, understood, comprehended, rightly or wrongly according to theories and feelings which may be ages old, forgotten, current, disgusting, racist, inclusive, ordinary, bizarre, and incomprehensible; remarkably, there is sense to it, but it is naturally impossible to follow at times, like trying to understand or explain the world. People can sometimes deal with their own worlds, but if they were to begin receiving simultaneous sensory input from another's sensory organs besides just their own, they would begin to see just how hard it can be to keep track of things, and respect Thomas Pynchon all the more for what he is able to do with his writing.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

The Strange Kit: Prologue

Is in res 8. Srry books got mixed up.

LOSER

Ha

Lauren

I have brown eyes and brownish hair and im athletic and slender. Im 15 1/3 and i am 5'6"

Cole to All gals who replied

Srry. Found one.

Cali

Im blonde with blue eyes, im 5'7", 14 years old, skinny, athletic, an a freshman in high school. I live in miami.

One of the great American novels of the Twentieth Century

The Nook edition is my fourth copy of Gravity's Rainbow; I have read the novel more twenty times and have had to replace copies because of sheer wear.
Whilst requiring a good deal of concentration and some eclectic knowledge base, the ability of a reader to research on the internet such things as foreign phrases, name origins (and meanings!), and historical references actually makes the work more accessible than it was when it was first written.

Goldendstar

Kk

0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Shugerstar

Petalkit:her eyes flashed. Trot......result...

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Pay No Mind to Jason's Review

This is a special book. Sure it's hard to read, but as you learn how to read it, you'll come to understand narrative, prose, and the post World War II world in ways you hadn't imagined. Fifteen to twenty pages isn't enough to get into this novel. It took me 180 pages before I was over the hump. Now the ludicrous satire and flood of detail are too much to put down.