Thomas Pychon's Gravity's Rainbow [Discussion, Interpretations, or Reviews]

[xephangraves]

Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow is one of the most challenging science fiction books I have ever read, it is a complex layered, multi-dimensional story that seems to encapsulate some of my recent experience into the realm of its phenomenology, it is a very obvious break down of narrative, of context of the world as some sort of structure of meaning in and of itself, but is in a sense, a dreamlike illusion that is bursting at the seams, it captures the feeling of modernity as a matrix like illusion from which the characters are liberating themselves from; please check it out and join me in the banana breakfast of our time.

Lets talk about this book yall

 

[Venusian Broon]

Hi Xephangraves, welcome to Chrons!

I do adore Gravity's Rainbow. It was as you stated challenging, yet I found it mesmorising and I devoured it. Currently I would (still) say it is in my top 3 books of all time.

However I'm interested in why you've described it as science fiction. I personally didn't see it as SF when reading, but please try and convince me! (SF is my preferred stomping grounds when going for genre btw)

Cheers

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

@Venusian Broon :

Gravity's Rainbow is widely accepted these days as SF, and regularly taught in college SF classes. It has quite a lot in common with near-contemporary products of the New Wave, such as Aldiss's Barefoot in the Head, Delany's Dhalgren, and many pieces published in New Worlds.

As to what makes it SF? Consider:

Spoiler

-- a character whose periods of sexual arousal predict where in London the V2 rockets will strike. The connection of this power to the secret experiments of the scientist who developed the mysterious plastic compound Imipolex.
-- a psychic octopus.
-- A black contingent of the Wehrmacht who worship the V2 and plan to use it in an act of racial (self-) genocide.
-- Rocketman (if you will)
-- Raketen-Stadt
-- the overall atmosphere of (secret) alternative just
etc

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

I love it, though I haven't read it from beginning to end since I was 21. (I am, ahem, significantly older than 21 now. And even than twice 21.) I remember struggling with the first 200 pages of so for maybe a month, until suddenly something clicked and I raced through the remaining 600 or so pages (I was reading it in the old, gold-cover mass market paperback) in the next five days, often laughing like a maniac.