Gravity's Rainbow Reading Group: #05

[Anonymous No.10578245]

"Oh fuck, the thread archived" edition.
Let's keep the discussions going, folks. I know there's more than enough of us to keep these threads alive.

In the previous thread: >>10566245
>This book is amazing
>This book is puerile
>More good discussion

RESOURCES:
>Annotations and detailed notes on each page
https://gravitys-rainbow.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
>Section Summaries
https://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/rainbow.html
>Link to a PDF of the book we're going off of:
http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=7D4A0845A31FFBD230D4910CECDEA255

[Anonymous No.10578253]

We're still using this schedule. To get the ball rolling:

Guys if you think
>What the fuck was that part about
Then post it as a question here so we can get something discussion going.

[Anonymous No.10578447]

>>10578253
what kind of baby bitch schedule is this? i started the book two days ago and i'm already 100 pages in

[Anonymous No.10578579]

No clue where you guys are in the book but I love GR so I have a few questions:

Is there any significance to Pointsman stepping in/getting his foot stuck in that toilet? And

What did Slothrop mean when he said "that's where I broke the speed of sound"?

[Anonymous No.10579488]

>>10578245
Tfw you try to get people to discuss the book but no one will discuss it and when you try to bump it from being archived there's a gateway error.
This thread is doomed

[Anonymous No.10579912]

Just hit 600pages in the vintage edition, feels good. And yes I know it's an ugly cover.

Which allusion/reference has pleased you the most? I personally liked seeing the Romanian iron guard get some mention

[Anonymous No.10581398]

>>10579912
The reference to Don Giovanni was nice. Now that I know what the Shirley Temple references are about they're kind of interesting, too.

[Anonymous No.10581519]

>>10578253
>Cuxhaven
what did he mean by this

[Anonymous No.10581533]

>>10581519
Looks like you're gonna have some guests, anon.

[Anonymous No.10581547]

What is the pre-req reading for Gravity's Rainbow?

[Anonymous No.10581566]

>>10581547
Pynchon-wise, I recommend V. as a prerequisite. A lot of people say The Crying of Lot 49 is a good Pynchon gateway because it's short and straightforward, but I think V. is a better intro because its style is closer to GR's. As for non-Pynchon resources, there's lots, but I don't know where to start.

[Anonymous No.10582342]

Let's have a quick headcount.
>Where are you in the book?
>Are you enjoying it?
>What are you having trouble with, if anything?

[Anonymous No.10582366]

>>10582342
>620
>I was in a rut but am enjoying it now again
>I feel like I am missing most of the meaning. I knoe whats happening on a plot level but I feel like I am missing a fuckload.

[Anonymous No.10582415]

>>10582342
>440
>Yeah, I'm not well read so this is quite a new ride for me.
>I am having trouble following the overall narrative, but am using the annotations provided which are very helpful.

It is like I have an understanding of the novel from a 'bottom-up' perspective - I can follow each section, and understand thungs thematically but struggle to put each non-linear plot-line together into a cohesive narrative. As I said, I am quite new to 'literature' so a novel leaving so much up to the reader is foreign to me.

[Anonymous No.10582684]

>>10582342
>Page 389 of 776
>I'm liking this a lot, yeah. For me, this has the charm that V. had but better. It's a lot funnier and a lot smarter than I thought it would be, but not nearly as impossibly difficult as I thought.
>Connecting the dots, remembering certain characters and their nicknames, making total sense of the non-linear storyline, understanding major references and allusions. All that aside, though, I'm still getting a lot out of reading this. I already know I want to read this again in the future.

>>10582366
I feel like a lot of stuff is going over my head, too, like 'big picture' overarching things, how certain characters are connected, stuff like that. But when I flip back to skim certain parts, I remember the characters and what happens in each episode just fine.

>>10582415
Same here. I'm new to literature of this scale.

[Anonymous No.10583517]

I’m so far behind but I’m still enjoying myself

[Anonymous No.10583547]

>>10583517
How far behind are you? Seeing as there's not a whole lot of discussion, there's not a lot motivating me to keep up to the schedule, though I'm only a couple days behind. Not sure how many of us are left.

[Anonymous No.10583903]

>>10583547
I have only just started the second part. Just read about the octopus.

[Anonymous No.10584098]

>>10583903
Gotcha. Your reading place looks v comfy, by the way

[Anonymous No.10584419]

>>10584098
Rural train in country side Japan. Not bad really.

[Anonymous No.10584439]

>>10584419
alexa how to live on train
alexa google how to train japan

[Anonymous No.10584601]

>>10579912
I like it all very much, but was pleasantly startled when it started talking about, at least I think, all sorts of russian things and russian people and names, that was very interesting and fun-ny

[Anonymous No.10585172]

[Anonymous No.10585417]

>>10582342
> On schedule
> I'm liking it a lot. It's funny, challenging and interesting.
> Same problems as you other guys. As a nonnative English speaker, I just enjoy the ride and it's not bugging me that I don't get everything. That's what rereading is for. The ottosell site is helping though.

[Anonymous No.10586209]

>>10581566
start with the beginning

[Anonymous No.10587089]

>>10578245
I've found Waldo on that image, but I'm yet to find Pinecone, and I'm ready to give up.

[Anonymous No.10587630]

>>10587089
Pynchon is Waldo though, look again.

[Anonymous No.10587647]

>>10587089
Right under the woman in the dressing room

[Anonymous No.10587687]

Anubis scene was pretty classic. This and the Pökler sections reminds me of Lolita.

[Anonymous No.10588386]

Has anyone read Vineland? I picked up a copy a while back and hope it's not nearly as bad as everyone says it is.

[Anonymous No.10589581]

>>10588386
It's still good but the middle is a drag. I'd say it's worth your time but expect it to be to much.
(It's better than BE but worse than IV)

[Anonymous No.10590203]

has anyone tried out the GR companion? i got it becuase i planned on rereading GR but so far its just been pointing out things like vacuum cleaner brand names and stuff

[Anonymous No.10590696]

>>10590203
I haven't used it, no. Is that the one that has every character name explained or is that a different book?

[Anonymous No.10591632]

[Anonymous No.10591687]

I'm behind but I tend to read in big chunks so am gonna try get up to schedule tonight and over the weekend.

Still really enjoying it. Realise discussion has slowed and I'm sure there are a fair few drop outs by now but I'd encourage people to persevere to the end.

Then at the very least you can feel superior to 90% of people on /lit/, which I'm sure you'll agree is really the most important thing.

[Anonymous No.10592136]

>>10591687
That's the spirit. I plan on finishing the book regardless of how these threads go. I'm about a day behind schedule but I still plan on sticking around for discussions and all that.

[Anonymous No.10592219]

>>10591687
>feel superior to /lit/
I am persevering, but if anything this book has reminded me how stupid I am.

[Anonymous No.10592830]

[Anonymous No.10592847]

>>10592830
I'd really like to look at the Japanese translation to see what it's like but it's expensive as fuck and I'm pretty sure it comes in multiple volumes

[Anonymous No.10592959]

Here's a really neat passage I just read that ties into the idea that the □□□□□□□ at the beginning of every section are film sprockets. Lots of stuff about movies and cyclical structure has been hinted at at this point in the book.:
"So it has gone on for the six years since. A daughter a year, each one about a year older, each time taking up nearly from scratch. The only continuity has been her name, and Zwölfkinder, and Pökler's love––love something like the persistence of vision, for They have used it to create for him the moving image of a daughter, flashing him only these summertime frames of her, leaving it to him to build the illusion of a single child. . .what would the time scale matter, a 24th of a second or a year (no more, the engineer thought, than in a wind-tunnel, or an oscillograph whose tuning drum you could speed or slow at will. . .)?" (429)

>>10592847
Multiple volumes? I thought having the book in Japanese would condense it a bunch, but what do I know.

[Anonymous No.10593122]

"Wind has shifted around to the southwest, and the barometer's falling." (Part 1, p.20)

"In the spring, when the winds at Peenemünde had shifted around to the southwest, and the first birds were back, Pökler was transferred to the underground factory at Nordhausen, in the Harz." (Part 3, p.433)

Just before this passage, Pökler is sitting in a trench waiting to observe the fall of an A4. Specifically, he's watching for a problem with the rocket's internal pressure:

"The Rocket at that point was plagued by an airburst problem in its terminal phase––the vehicle blew apart before reaching the target. Everyone had an idea. It might be an overpressure in the liquid-oxygen tank." (Part 3, p.431)

The whole "wind had shifted around to the southwest" struck me, as did the parts about pressure (barometric pressure, pressure in the liquid-oxygen tank). Is there any connection here or am I going insane?

[Anonymous No.10593731]

>>10593122
I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this. What other connections, theories, or themes have you noticed? I'm slowly piecing things together but I definitely don't think I'll understand everything once the book's over.

[Anonymous No.10594060]

>>10592830
top 100 (maybe 75) book covers ive ever seen

[Anonymous No.10594071]

>>10590203
I re-read recently using the companion and highly recommend it. It makes the general plot seem trivial and lets you focus on the discourse

[Anonymous No.10594645]

[Anonymous No.10595316]

Thomas Pynchon holding up a peace sign behind the door of his home in Manhattan Beach, California, 1965.

[Anonymous No.10596097]

[Anonymous No.10597094]

[Anonymous No.10597215]

Man, I miss the first few threads where everybody was excited to read and people talked about the book a bunch. I wonder how many people we've lost since then.

[Anonymous No.10597221]

Does reading comprehension (the english word) just a meme? As long as you consume the text you still get fragments of power

[Anonymous No.10597780]

>>10597221
>fragments of power
What did you mean by this?

[Anonymous No.10598459]

is anybody still here? :(

[Anonymous No.10599581]

[Anonymous No.10599617]

>>10597215
Be the change you wish to see in the world you lazy bum

[Anonymous No.10599732]

>>10578245
For those who have bought a physical copy of the book on Amazon, I read a review saying the Penguin Books edition had typos and missing words, is this true? I was eager to get this version but now idk

[Anonymous No.10599755]

>>10591687
>>10592136
Really enjoying the book but am on a week and half schedule at the moment, so no time to power through a few hundred pages in a couple days. I'll be here till the end, but will probably miss a lot of discussion. I never got to that break down of how "The Image" and "Society of the Spectacle" come up and how they relate to the structure and overall themes. If you've read these books I'd think it would be obvious where he's referencing at least one of them. I forgot to find the quotes, but the idea of the spectacle is addressed early on. I'm still in the 200's. >>10578253
>>10593731
The SG-1 thing keeps making me think about Nazi's and UFOs, and I can't help but wonder why someone would write in the way he does to throw you off into some speculation about real or fake history. It's gimmicky like a cartoon, and kind of detracts from any impact the theme is suppose to have, but it's also fun, so fuck it I guess....

---

I don't want to talk more until I read more.

[Anonymous No.10599997]

>>10597215
I've been here since day 1 and have kept up. I rarely post though - mostly cause I have found this book really challenging and have very little of value to say.

[Anonymous No.10600683]

>>10599732
The newer prints are corrected most likely

[Anonymous No.10601068]

>>10599997
I've been here the beginning too but I'm about four days behind now.

[Anonymous No.10601857]

I usually read a couple books side by side but since starting GR I’ve put everything else on hold. I picked up a copy of Don DeLillo’s White Noise last week so hopefully once this is done I’ll give it a go. How does DeLillo compare to Pynchon? Apparently they’re buddies and have been known to have lunch together.

[Anonymous No.10603328]

[Anonymous No.10603377]

A passage that encapsulates how I feel when I try to dig into the deeper meaning of this book.

"If there is something comforting––religious, if you want––about paranoia, there is still also anti-paranoia, where nothing is connected to anything, a condition not many of us can bear for long. Well right now Slothrop feels himself sliding onto the anti-paranoid part of his cycle, feels the whole city around him going back roofless, vulnerable, uncentered as he is, and only pasteboard images now of the Listening Enemy left between him and the wet sky." (441)

[Anonymous No.10603890]

>>10582342
>550
>yes
>what was with that chapter where pirate and katje confess? or possibly lament together?

[Anonymous No.10603990]

>>10603890
Whereabouts is that? I probably haven't gotten there yet. I'm on page 464

[Anonymous No.10604665]

>>10578579
>"that's where I broke the speed of sound"
I remember this. I'm not sure about Slothrop breaking the speed of sound, but the V2 travels fast enough to break the sound barrier, which is why you only hear it after the explosion has happened.
>Pointsman stepping in/getting his foot stuck in that toilet
Couldn't tell ya. I figured it was just a goofy scene. Maybe it has something to do with the Toiletship in Ep. 13 of Part 3, but who knows.

>>10579488
Good to know I'm not alone in feeling this way. Trying to bump with discussion as best I can.

[Anonymous No.10605214]

>>10578245
yo haven't been on /lit/ in a while, saw this and just wanted to say that GR is awesome best book I've ever read, going through a reread right now

Part 4 has some incredibly terrifying passages, Byron the bulb was one of my favorite parts of the novel, in some ways I think that part pretty much essentially describes what the entire book is about

[Anonymous No.10605782]

[Anonymous No.10606254]

>>10605214
I haven't finished it but I already know this is going to be my favorite book. I think I'll reread it on its 50th anniversary in a few years.

[Anonymous No.10606461]

i say we let it die lads - let's stick to peterson videos and shitposting about plebs who only read harry potter

[Anonymous No.10606537]

>>10606461
I'm surprised these threads have survived as long as they have, to be honest, but I'd still like to try to keep them alive. They're not nearly as active as the first few threads were, but there's still people here and there that contribute. I'm still finishing the book, obviously, but it's always nice to have company.

[Anonymous No.10606648]

Still hanging in, didn't get to read much last week but I'm hoping to finish the last 300 pages this week

[Anonymous No.10606680]

"it means this war was never political (...) it was dictated instead by the needs of technology"

Proto-Landian?

[Anonymous No.10607220]

Is Bianca supposed to represent something? Why does react to her the way he does?

[Anonymous No.10607620]

>>10603990
About page 540.

[Anonymous No.10607671]

>>10578245
Ok let's do it.

[Anonymous No.10607831]

>>10592830
V.

[Anonymous No.10607837]

>>10607831

[Anonymous No.10607847]

>>10607837
I don't know why but I like the japanese covers.

[Anonymous No.10607856]

>>10607847

[Anonymous No.10608215]

>>10607856
>>10607847
>>10607837
>>10607831
>>10592830
pure kino, this inspires me to write more and better

[Anonymous No.10608491]

>>10607831
>>10607837
>>10607847
>>10607856
Nothing to discuss? Post kino bookcovers and rare Pynchons instead. Found this one today. He's wearing a beer bottle as a tie.

[Anonymous No.10608545]

>>10597780
The words that give strength to the universe. Nabokov knew about them with his white tower, Dumas with his Chateu d’If, and it seems like Pynchon is probably aware of them as well. So as long as you keep consuming, you get closer

[Anonymous No.10609374]

I only just started on part 3

[Anonymous No.10610511]

boop

[Anonymous No.10610689]

[Anonymous No.10610943]

Does anybody else make up melodies for the songs and then end up getting them stuck in your head?

[Anonymous No.10611894]

>>10610943
Make up melodies? Yes. Usually I can make a solid tune while reading based on whatever pointers Pynch gives, like ‘jaunty tune in 3/4’ or whatever. I never remember them though.

[Anonymous No.10612905]

[Anonymous No.10612941]

>>10608491
I love this picture. I wonder if Pynch actually fucked a lot?

[Anonymous No.10613182]

this is the most patrician book ever. definitely my favorite still in part one

[Anonymous No.10613516]

>>10613182
yeah right bud, most patrician book ever is by Dickens, Austen, or some fancy high class high society effeminate french man

[Anonymous No.10613849]

>>10613516
wut?

[Anonymous No.10614183]

[Anonymous No.10615706]

b

[Anonymous No.10615718]

>>10605214
Byron the Bulb? Yeah, it's about planned obsolescence.

Fascinating concept.

[Anonymous No.10616377]

[Anonymous No.10616398]

just bought GR off ebay. english version, even when its not my first language. i think of it as an act of bravery, i hope to read it all.