/lit/ - Literature

>>6426843
Now let’s jump to the end of the book. Those final few sections meant to signify the fracturing of Slothrop’s mind have time lines that jump around. One even jumps to a few decades ahead to a bar I believe in Chicago. But the very final sections of the launching of the rocket…which rocket was this? Which V2? We know the Herero’s missile does not get launched within the time span of the book, or if it does then no one in that bar in Chicago really gives a fuck, and why should they? Was this the V2 that launched that Pokler was searching for? Or waiting on at the suspected target site? I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what the hell is going on…but I can’t figure it out. Pokler himself even has a jump in time lines. First appearing early on in the book only to be left to be forgotten until roughly halfway through, or further, and only slightly is his wife alluded to as being a Communist sympathizer - a very small detail, only a few sentences that make all the importance of understanding Pokler’s situation while working under the mountain.
Did that V2 that was launched at the end….did it misfire? Is that why the theatre at the end was destroyed?

Other time jumps on the top of my head include the woman who was talked about during a man’s story, I believe while on the Yacht (lol the orgy), and how she would hunt children in the night? I think?

Does anyone have a basic chronological understanding? I do need to re-read this book, I finished it in November of last year and still it sits on my mind.

Discuss?

>>6426843
>>6426848

I know these two posts are probably more than /lit/ reads on a monthly basis...but any input is appreciated.

I think you pretty much nailed it. The book "ends" when Pokler is sitting in the field and the rocket smashes through the theater and destroys the narrative completely. I need to re-read this book for a firmer grasp of events as I was extremely stoned last summer while doing so and was mostly focused on imagery and occult themes without bothering to do a lot of connecting at all.

>>6426962
When was that exactly? I remember it, but was it during his main section where he is working under the mountain to keep his daughter alive? And then he walks out into the camp, finally 'free' again, and sees the horror's of displacement? I wanted to re-read that section but I haven't found it believe it or not.

Pretty sure it was all a dream.

Don't take it too seriously, man.

I know history is rarely kind to harsh criticisms about super nebulous or "difficult" authors , but dig this --

This book is horrible. After reading The Crying of Lot 49, Slow Learner and now this, I'm convinced that Thomas Pynchon is a hack, and the reason we don't hear from him is because he has nothing to say and knows that if we gave him a microphone and fifteen minutes he'd be found out.

90% of the people who pick up this novel won't finish it, and 90% of those who do won't like it. But 100% of them will pretend they do because Pynchon has the rare reputation of being one of those authors you "have to read". We're all convinced Pynchon is the possessor of some private, hidden genius -- that buried somewhere between the rambling nonsensical plot and the long winded, super cerebral, jargon riddled diatribes on "the Rocket" and the sexual implications of its trajectory and its relation to the symphonic form is a message of some import.

But for all the hype, someone please point to a passage in this novel that overreaches or couldn't be approximated by the efforts of anyone else who lived a super reclusive, hermetic lifestyle, owned a library card, and was given nearly a decade (the length of time between the publication of this novel and the author's previous one), and around 900 pages to do it in.

Seriously though, don't read this book. Aside from the small flutter of accomplishment I feel at actually finishing it, I've found it to be little more than a super frustrating and ultimately hateful reading experience.

>>6426982
If you honestly think that, then you are too ignorant to understand exactly why Pynchon is great, and why Gravity's Rainbow is the most creative and well written books of the late 20th's century.

Honestly, just fuck off.

2/10

>>6426982
Nah, read Mason & Dixon.

>>6426972
I'm pretty sure it was at that point but it may also have been shortly after at some other vaguely defined point of his life. Like I said I'm pretty murky on how the events all relate to each other specifically.
>>6426982
lol I was just reading bad goodreads reviews earlier and saw this one. Pity so many of the 1 star reviews just aren't funny.

>>6427025
>Mason & Dixon
Read it. Torture and Pointless Bantaloguities.

>>6427003
>this punchon fanboy

The other day I was thinking on the book's opening.

>"A screaming comes across the sky."
What screaming? The screaming of a rocket, yes, a dreamt screaming of a dreamt rocket. But the V-2's are not heard in the sky. Is it the screaming of travel? Or the screaming which fills the air after explosion?
>It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it's all theatre.
If this is a dream and nothing more, is this Evacuation literally 'too late'? Has the damage already been done as the screaming fills the sky and The Evacuation consisted only of men already dead piling into cars to escape the inescapable? The reversal of cause and effect in full swing?
>A screaming comes across the sky.
Or perhaps it is the screaming of the people below. Voices, remarking a V-2 on the horizon as Prentice does in the book's opening pages. But then why is The Evacuation all theatre? Can one V-2 do so much damage to render such an Evacuation useless? It hasn't shown to in the rest of the book, nor real life, posed a threat so big the entire city is wiped out. Is this perhaps the screaming of a nuclear strike? Where an Evacuation truly would be all theatre? Certainly topical for 1973 and the years leading up to it. It never seemed much of a WW2 book to me, concentration camps holding primarily Germans and Nazism being more or less a farcical evil.

Lastly,
>A screaming comes across the sky.
I do not think it would be unfair to boil the book down into Sex and Death. Could this also be the scream of an orgasm? Certainly 'come' is a word with its connotations, a word Pynchon himself uses in such a sexual way.

If so, the first sentence, be it describing a V-2 or Nuke portrays Sex and Death as intertwined in the very opening sentence.

Well, I'm no expert, but some thoughts I felt like sharing.

Also - what the fuck is with Oneirine? I've reread that passage with Pig's boat a bunch of times and I still don't get what's happening?

How does drug use lead to ghost ships?

>>6428599
I never noticed the "it's all theatre" before.

It is, literally the evacuation of a theatre, no?

>>6428666
I understood it as there being an evacuation, but those carrying it out know that it's just for show. There is no escape at this point.

Haven't read this book and can't contribute but /lit/ needs more posters like you OP.

>>6426843

jesus, is that your picture, OP? Gravity's Rainbow is a pretty dramatic shift from the minimalism of Hemingway, Bukowski, and Tao Lin..

>"A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before but there is nothing to compare it to now." This starts us off in a time period. What we can deduce from this is that there is something flying across the sky, something like this has happened before, but this time it’s different, it’s new.

Amazing analysis. Your prowess astounds me.

>>6428666
No. I never took it that way.
Given the ending, it's possible though.

>>6428719
This is what I've gotten out of it.

>>6426982
M8 its a fun read. That nebulous "something imoortant is going down" tingle is one of pynchons great appeals. Someone described him as writing high brow conspiracy thrillers, which is about tight imo.

pynch is good not great.

Burroughs is the great post war writer in english

>>6429866
>pynch is good not great
>Burroughs is the great post war writer

>>6429866
How does it feel being an uncultured chimp?

>>6426982

>>6429921
>>6429896
Eady fam. I'm patrish as you like.

When you guys learn to read properly you'll look back and smile with wistful sagacity and say "well blow me down with an allusion to the Baedecker guide to Berlin, anon was right"

>>6429984
*Easy