/lit/ - Literature

>>13077516
start off with something easier.

>>12731236
you meant GR, right?

Reading Gravity's Rainbow and for the first time came across something i truly do not understand and can not find explanation for in any of the guide books.

I understand we're being properly introduced to Brigadier pudding through a flashback/memory-entry to his Ernest Hemingway-esque WWI Medical Officer father who suffered "ab-reactions" after being recovered in the ruins of the intense shelling of Belgium in Polygon Wood.

But what's this bit about the ginger-haired chap who slept with his hat on? Is this some sort of metaphor for the loss of true knowledge suffered through the infliction of PTSD (similar to the concept of "the reversal" mentioned previously regarding the bomb's blast sounding before the flash)? Is that a reach? Associating this one miscellaneous ginger/redhead with lost memory, fire on the brain? Or am I suppose to know who this is? It seemed odd and out of place.

I'm interested in others' thoughts. Here is the passage:

Old Brigadier Pudding can live with this spiritualist gang well enough, he's tendencies himself in that direction. But Ned Pointsman, with his constant scheming after more money—Pudding can only stare back at the man, try to be civil. Not as tall as his father, certainly not as wholesome looking. Father was M.O. in Thunder Prodd's regiment, caught a bit of shrapnel in the thigh at Polygon Wood, lay silent for seven hours before they, without a word before, in that mud, that terrible smell, in, yes Polygon Wood . . . or was that—who wasthe ginger -haired chap who slept with his hat on? ahhh, come back. Now Polygon Wood . . . but it's fluttering away. Fallen trees, dead, smooth gray, swirlinggrainoftreelikefrozensmoke ... ginger . . . thunder ... no use, no bleeding use, it's gone, another gone, another, oh dear . .

>>10339631

...and right behind them what comes crashing now into the pallid lights of the garden but— why the Sherman Tank itself! headlights burning like the eyes of King Kong, treads spewing grass and pieces of flagstone as it manoeuvres around and comes to a halt. Its 75 mm cannon swivels until it’s pointing through the French windows right down into the room. “Antoine!” a young lady focusing in on the gigantic muzzle, “for heaven’s sake, not now. . . .” A hatch flies open and Tamara Slothrop guesses: wasn’t Italo supposed to have the tank?—uh—emerges shrieking to denounce Raoul, Waxwing, Italo, Theophile, and the middleman on the opium deal. “But now,” she screams, “I have you all! One coup de foudre!”

> looks up coup de foudre on google translate

heh

>>9866749
>And other times where he changes timelines without a single hint and then later drops a tidbit of information that makes you realize you need to read the passage all over again still not completely grasping everything that was said but at least understanding where you are in the narrative.

are you reading a badly-scanned epub? pic related, it's the cover of the physical version i first read, and aside from the bit about the mobile city and Tyrone's father trying to kill him, it made sense to me.

>>8826320

I looking for rocket
him name quintuple zero rocket
who took my rocket?
I'll find my rocket

you knows it.

read each one. make annotations as you go.

what, you needed us to tell you that?

btw, superior

Tyrone Slothrop is the most level-headed and sensible character you will ever read.

>>5120893
nope.

get them all to sing along with "You'll never go wrong with a pig"

easy as pie.

i am going to hold a banana breakfast one day.

wait until the power goes out and the batteries in all of your USB charged devices all go flat.

then i'll just sit back here and laugh while reading GR in paperback.

obligatory

"you'll never go wrong with a pig, a pig,
you'll never go wrong with a pig!"

>>>/r/10922391

why the hell isn't this in here?

>>3268921
how i do it? i read the books at least a dozen times, so when some asshole collars me and says "HAY LISTEN TO THIS POEM I WROTE" and continues

"A screaming comes across the sky.
it has happened before,
but there is nothing to compare it to now,"

i can recognise the words, punch his teeth out and snarl "don't rip off Pynchon, cocksucker."

start off with something easy, then work your way up to the confusing postmodern stuff like Hemingway. this is a good one to begin with.

this

you need to start with something fairly simple and straightforward, like Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow", then work your way up to the complex shit, like Ernest Hemingway.

this one's easy, everybody's read it and there are notes all over the place.

just use the word "Funfachtnullpunkt" at least three times.

this is my favorite book.