Is it ever possible to fully grasp Gravity’s Rainbow?

[Anonymous No.11947488]

How many times have you read it? It took me a month to read it the first time. An i feel like it is going to take longer for each subsequent read through. FUCK! Is the rest of my reading life just rereading Gravity’s Rainbow?!

[Anonymous No.11947498]

>>11947488
I read the Wikipedia summary twice and I think I got it desu

[Anonymous No.11947499]

>He fell for the Gravity's Rainbow meme

[Anonymous No.11947505]

pynchon sucks

[Anonymous No.11947545]

>>11947505
This, I've read bleeding edge and Inherent Vice and I find him worse than Stephen King

[Anonymous No.11947549]

>>11947505
I honestly find him to be a pseud. I also don't like the sexually explicit material in the books. It's a distraction that can throw people off the right track.

[Anonymous No.11947559]

>I’m a freak for loving this heavily acclaimed, award winning book that still sells copies more than 40 years after it was published
What a weird guy haha

[Anonymous No.11947560]

In the meme trilogy IJ btfo Gravity's Rainbow.

[Anonymous No.11947574]

>>11947549
You'll understand once you're older

>>11947559
>heavily acclaimed
Couldn't even win the Nebula, lol

[Anonymous No.11947578]

>>11947505
He's alright

[Anonymous No.11947584]

>>11947545
Those are his worst books though and nothing like GR, V, or M&D.

[Anonymous No.11947590]

>>11947584
Don't forget ATD

Lot49 slaps, too

[Anonymous No.11947595]

I understood it the moment I put it down and never picked it up again. It's a huge letdown and a crappy book.

>there are two more turds, smaller ones

[Anonymous No.11947596]

>>11947595
Sure you did

[Anonymous No.11947609]

>>11947574
I'm already "older" and this instinct has wasted much of my life. I don't want to put fuel on the fire by reading licentious literature. The moment arousal happens, prefrontal transmission slows down which almost always leads to release. All of which disrupt flow states and the intellectual state of mind that reading puts one in.

[Anonymous No.11947616]

>cringy zoomers on /lit/ who can't handle a moderately difficult a nd lengthy book
Stick to Stoner, brainlets.

[Anonymous No.11947626]

>>11947609
>Im already "older"
Physically, maybe. Just because people are depicted having sex doesn't mean you're supposed to start whacking it. If you truly understood the book you'd pick up on the fact that it's ironically hedonistic

[Anonymous No.11947643]

>>11947609
I feel the same way. I started reading GR when I was in my prime reading years. For about two years in my mid-twenties I basically held up in a room and read nonstop. I had the reading comprehension of a professor.

Gravity's Rainbow had all the markings of a book that I would have loved. WW2 backdrop, thought provoking scientific asides, a reeling, chaotic pomo plot, evocative nuclear-radiation-glowing prose. Still, it left me cold.

His run-on paragraphs and plodding, structureless plot left me tired. The weird aspects of the story, like Pynchon's characteristic weird character names, threw me off. The characters were like comic book figures. I couldn't tell if it was trying to be humorous or serious or literal or figurative.

If I didn't understand it it, it was not in a bad way. I didn't understand it in the same way I might not understand an asylum patient who paints the walls of his room with his own excrement, or the way children might sometimes behave.

[Anonymous No.11947672]

>>11947643
Yeah but the plot isn't structureless so maybe you just didn't think about it hard enough

[Anonymous No.11947688]

>>11947672
It sure seemed structureless. Perhaps it was so paced out that you only saw the plot points take shape after reading deeper into it. It just trailed off after reading about some episode of a character in a bathroom. I wanted to use it as a door stop after that.

I also happened to jump a head a little bit to see if it got better, and came across the literal page where the infamous two turds line shows up. That confirmed it was a sucky book in my mind

[Anonymous No.11947697]

>>11947688
Wait, did you even read all of it?

[Anonymous No.11947708]

>>11947697
No, the whole point I was making is that I decided that it sucked too much to keep reading and started reading something else. I strongly dislike that book. Maybe I'll give it another chance.

[Anonymous No.11947709]

>>11947626
Any arousal is deleterious and distracts. It automatically decreases working memory. It's like a temporary lobotomy. It doesn't matter if it's acted upon or not.

[Anonymous No.11947712]

>a cow sez moo
kino

[Anonymous No.11947714]

>>11947643
Good post.

[Anonymous No.11947716]

>>11947709
Sounds like somebody needs to get laid. People do sex my dude.

[Anonymous No.11947720]

>>11947714
No it isn't, he didn't even finish it

[Anonymous No.11947721]

>>11947609
>The moment arousal happens, prefrontal transmission slows down which almost always leads to release.
Man, this is such a trip of a line. First it says that nearly every single time you feel aroused you feel the need to crank one out, or let it distract you in a damaging way, I can't imagine how difficult being a teenager must've been for you. Secondly it means that you got aroused by Pynchon's comical and bizarre sex scenes, I never even got the feeling while reading that they were supposed to be arousing. Lastly it implies that you use scientific studies to explain your own sexual feelings and have generalized your own (abnormal) experiences onto everyone in the world.

[Anonymous No.11947727]

>>11947708
Well, no shit you couldn't see the plot structure.

[Anonymous No.11947729]

sloth or entropy

[Anonymous No.11947741]

>>11947727
Even so that was only one of my complaints against it. I'm not sure a coherent plot would save this messy slog. A book should be a pleasure to read, not a self-impressed empty intellectual exercise. If I was his editor I would have taken a chainsaw to it.

[Anonymous No.11947750]

>>11947741
It is a pleasure to read

[Anonymous No.11947751]

>>11947741
good thing you weren't his editor then

[Anonymous No.11947812]

>>11947488
this guy can’t even say he likes a book without covering his ass
this is what irony does to you

[Anonymous No.11948834]

>>11947643
You sound ultra boring. It's supposed to be funny...

[Anonymous No.11948853]

what is a "bad Twitter ratio" and how does it relate to Gravity's Rainbow?

[Anonymous No.11948855]

>reading anything by that pervert pynchon

[Anonymous No.11948856]

>>11948855
ok grandma

[Anonymous No.11948863]

>>11947616
But Stoner is a work of art.
This love of big books that you boomers have reeks of dick measuring and insecurity. Ulysses is fine, sure. But GR? IJ? The Recognitions & JR? It takes 100 pages before one realizes they’re complete and utter trash. Unfettered pseudery. You gag on it. Your stomach turns, your eyes roll, you gasp and fart. You know the book is shit but you spend a month reading each and every one of the 1,000 pages so you can go on /lit/ and brag to strangers. Then you put the book on a noticeable shelf (she will never notice it). But afterward, you are positive in your heart of hearts you got absolutely nothing out of those books. It’s pure ego and it’s pathetic.
Retards

[Anonymous No.11948869]

>>11948863
no

[Anonymous No.11949291]

>>11948869
yes

[Anonymous No.11949300]

>>11947559
Have you even read the book? He’s most likely saying that because of the content Pynchon wrote into it

[Anonymous No.11949304]

I could explain the Hermetic base of the whole book, but I don't feel like throwing pearls to swine.

This thread is full of people angry that the book defeated them.

[Anonymous No.11949316]

>>11948863
>Unfettered pseudery. You gag on it. Your stomach turns, your eyes roll, you gasp and fart. You know the book is shit but you spend a month reading each and every one of the 1,000 pages so you can go on /lit/ and brag to strangers. Then you put the book on a noticeable shelf (she will never notice it). But afterward, you are positive in your heart of hearts you got absolutely nothing out of those books. It’s pure ego and it’s pathetic.

Shitty prose, embarrassing loser strawman, unFetTEreD hypocrisy by claiming you don't own an ego.
Dunning-Kruger to a key. You don't even know why you don't like GR. You don't even know why you like Stoner. You couldn't explain it other than your weird, neurotic projections.

[Anonymous No.11949319]

>>11947488
he likes it because it subverts expectations

[Anonymous No.11949322]

>>11949291

cope harder :)

[Anonymous No.11949325]

>>11949300
It's better than 50 shades...

[Anonymous No.11949341]

>>11947721

Exactly what I was thinking, damn.

[Anonymous No.11949363]

desu the first 100 pages of GR are great then it goes to shit

[Anonymous No.11949388]

>>11949363
High syncretic art is usually set aside for the higher echelons of society. Not for your typical 100-110 IQ College Bro.
This is probably your whole vibe desu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Br4VWVECqI

[Anonymous No.11949406]

>>11949304
dm me

[Anonymous No.11949417]

>>11949325
>genocide
>sex slaves
>mind control
>overt cock worship
>literal shit eating

[Anonymous No.11949453]

>>11949417
nigga you miss circular orgy and dude inside his own cock fucking a girl that looks 11/12

[Anonymous No.11949460]

>>11947714
Not a good post at all.

>>11947643
You sound like an embarrassing individual to be around. No one is impressed that you became a NEET with a fully-functioning, and mature adult brain, and read novels. I doubt you have the comprehension of a professor. Everything has structure. Linear time, as modern science tells us, is an illusion.

If you look at the world today, an interconnected globe full of tech built upon generations of various ideas, tuned over time, where every day the vastness of all info is full of tragedy and fools, massacres and comedians, where the lines between good and evil become blurred to an extreme, and you tell me that GR left you cold? Most likely because you've lived in a Pynchonesque modern world all your life.

[Anonymous No.11949472]

>>11949417
Not because of the actual acts depicted you moron.

[Anonymous No.11949513]

>>11947741
Anon I don't think you read the book, any of it. A highly visible plot line emerges in the very beginning of the damn book. The very first scene with Teddy Bloat's character, coming around page like 25. He's photographing Slothrop's map of London. That didn't seem significant to you? All the discussion of cause and effect, of cause converging to effect and eventually preceding effect, of the sound of a rocket proceeding the explosion of the rocket, of Slothrop's sexual endeavors coinciding geographically with future rocket landings, of the fact that a rocket is shaped like a phallus, the duality between Pavlovian thought and Freudian thought--none of this seemed like it was beginning to resemble a coherent basepoint for a plot? Everything that I just mentioned is made explicit by Pynchon in the first 75 or so pages. Page 49 in Penguin edition:
>Imagine a missile one hears approaching AFTER it explodes [Pynchon's emphasis]...the blast of the rocket, fallen faster than sound--then growing OUT OF IT [Pynchon's emphasis] the roar of its own fall...
Next paragraph:
>Pavlov was fascinated with "ideas of opposites"
I know you didn't read past page 100, but it's made evident very early on that a good portion of the book is going to have to do with rocketry, Slothrop's errections, and some omnipotent "They" existing in the ambient space of the setting who have a vested interest in understanding/controlling Slothrop's sexuality and its connection to The Rocket. I'm not trying to say that GR is an easy book, but if you couldn't discern one of the most distinguished plot lines (and let me repeat: Pynchon makes the things I mentioned as clear as day) of the book then you really weren't giving the book any attention.

[Anonymous No.11949521]

>>11949460
>Linear time, as modern science tells us, is an illusion.
Citation needed

[Anonymous No.11949526]

>>11949388
the fact that you know of that video and have it saved tells me that its your vibe bitch

[Anonymous No.11949546]

>>11949521
Have you literally never heard of fucking Einstein?

>NPCs are real
>The appropriate and cast jeers at things learned men deem valuable
>NPCs hold no real knowledge on subject other than a surface level primer
>This improves their self-confidence meter

[Anonymous No.11949549]

>>11949472
>GR is less edgy than FSoG
>>give proof that GR is edgier than FSoG
>bro it’s not the content that makes it edgy
Retard

[Anonymous No.11949556]

>>11949526
>the fact that

[Anonymous No.11949561]

>>11949556
>time to green text and throw memes

[Anonymous No.11949564]

>>11949546
Einstein proved that time can be warped but he never proved it wasn’t linear

[Anonymous No.11949567]

>>11948863
based
>>11949316
cringe

[Anonymous No.11949571]

>>11949549
>>GR is less edgy than FSoG
That's not what I said and edgy doesn't equal bad. Just because GR offended your delicate sensibilities doesn't make it a bad book.

[Anonymous No.11949573]

pynch sucks, my dudes

[Anonymous No.11949588]

>>11949571
Also FSoG is about normalizing an abusive relationship unironically so I'd say it's edgier if inadvertently anyway.

[Anonymous No.11949593]

>>11949564

[Anonymous No.11949595]

>>11949513
This is all so fucking tedious though.

[Anonymous No.11949596]

>>11949571
>That's not what I said and edgy doesn't equal bad.

>>Have you even read the book? He’s most likely saying that because of the content Pynchon wrote into it
>It's better than 50 shades...

>Just because GR offended your delicate sensibilities doesn't make it a bad book.
Never said it did

[Anonymous No.11949600]

>>11949593
>heh-heh I replied with a retarded wojak
>t-that’ll sure show him

[Anonymous No.11949605]

>>11949596
It's better than 50 Shades and it's more "acceptable" to enjoy GR because it treats SM with a healthy attitude and isn't literary mush.

[Anonymous No.11949618]

>>11949605
No it isn’t. Among the general populous FSoG is much more commonly accepted than GR. Hell, most people don’t even know what GR is, much less a V-2

[Anonymous No.11949631]

>>11949618
I don't care about the acceptance of some random NPC off the street...

[Anonymous No.11949647]

>>11949631
Well the point is that he’s expressing his opinion on twitter where he’s sharing his opinion to brainlets. It doesn’t matter what you personally think it’s just fact that GR is overwhelmingly seen as a book for freaks because of its content. I’d agree with you if he was talking to intellectuals but he’s literally posting in twitter

[Anonymous No.11949659]

>>11949647
>GR is overwhelmingly seen as a book for freaks

except it isn't, most of Twitter doesn't even know what it is.

[Anonymous No.11949686]

>>11949659
Well, out of the people who know it of course

[Anonymous No.11949696]

>>11949686
still wrong

[Anonymous No.11949957]

>>11949595
What about that sounds tedious?

[Anonymous No.11949994]

>>11949957
>rockets are like a guy's dick innit

[Anonymous No.11950010]

>>11949994
its just toilet humor with life-and-death implications. GET proves me right

[Anonymous No.11950090]

>>11949546
>>11949564
>>11949593
>>11949600

holy shit simultaneity is relative, not time you absolute mongoloid pseuds

[Anonymous No.11950093]

>>11949316
>t. fell for the memes
Also my prose is Ishiguro-tier and I will win the Nobel

[Anonymous No.11950179]

>>11948863
this

[Anonymous No.11950203]

>>11948863
Lmao don't act like you've read any of those books but Stoner you fucking loser.
>spends a month on a book
That's not reading. You can't read these books like Stoner, brainlet.

[Anonymous No.11950207]

>>11949304
post a pynchon hermetic reading list desu? good starting essay?

[Anonymous No.11950214]

>>11948863
>Ulysses is fine, sure. But [other big books]
cringe

[Anonymous No.11950238]

>>11950093
lmao your writing probably sucks.

t. actual published/award winning writer

[Anonymous No.11950245]

>>11950238
>>11950093
ur both shit

t. pynchon

[Anonymous No.11950387]

>>11950238
we all know you’ve written nothing.

[Anonymous No.11950422]

>>11950090
>simultaneity is relative, not time you absolute

You're literally wrong. You don't even know what relativity means, retard.

[Anonymous No.11950429]

>>11950387
peh, yeah, kid... i could DROP my IG rn, and prove you wrong, you sniffling nerd. I'm probably more better looking than you too.
heh, guess talent and facial structure just means g o o d DNA.

[Anonymous No.11950448]

>>11950429
do it then brainlet
you probably write like a troglodyte

[Anonymous No.11950835]

>>11949994
There's more to it than that though

[Anonymous No.11952892]

>>11948863
Stoner is a fine book.

[Anonymous No.11952922]

>>11948863
>Then you put the book on a noticeable shelf (she will never notice it)
Geez anon you didnt have to be so savage.

[Anonymous No.11952932]

>>11947488
This explains pretty well why The Last Jedi was actually great. I never cared about Star Wars but I were dragged to see The Last Jedi with my girlfriend and his little brother and I loved while they didn't like it very much. I guess it's one of those cases where it's a great film but not a great [insert franchise] film.

[Anonymous No.11952950]

>>11952932
>my girlfriend and his little brother
What did he mean by this?

[Anonymous No.11952978]

>>11952950
>her little brother*
English not first language. She's a GIRL.

[Anonymous No.11953208]

>>11947488

I found inherent vice to be comfy. Anyone have any words on M&D?

[Anonymous No.11953366]

>>11947721
>implying and putting your own assumptions and narratives in this much
"Yikes"
>Man, this is such a trip of a line. First it says that nearly every single time you feel aroused you feel the need to crank one out, or let it distract you in a damaging way, I can't imagine how difficult being a teenager must've been for you.
No. It neither says nor implies this. Again:
>The moment arousal happens, prefrontal transmission slows down which almost always leads to release.
Invariably it does. Whether that moment, the evening, or sometime later that day. It isn't an abnormal response for prefrontal neurotransmission to decrease in such an instance from an evolutionary perspective, so that the decision to procreate and hence continue the species won't be contemplated or even denied if given the chance. And of course, sexual stimuli, if passed over will be peculating in the subconscious possibly leading to increased sexual thoughts and so on later on. Anything other than the briefest moment of arousal will produce cowper's fluid and if not acted upon results in vasogenstion.

It actually was the reverse, being a teenager was much easier. My sexual frequency was lower and I did not masturbate as much, due to my days and mind being busier which prevented initial habituation. As habituation to pornography took place and substitution of it with coitus, and the ever increasing variety and quality of the stimuli available, the frequency too increased to daily by the end of my teenage years and even more frequently as the 20s progressed. The libido is no longer a mysterious force that is poorly understand. It is increasingly being seen as having a behavioral aspect, rather than being an individual quirk or purely hormonal driven.
>Secondly it means that you got aroused by Pynchon's comical and bizarre sex scenes, I never even got the feeling while reading that they were supposed to be arousing.
By the time I began reading Pynchon, I was mostly chaste. These decisions reflect a proactive measure to offset even the remotest chance of arousal occurring. I didn't read the sex scenes. I'm not sure if arousal would have ensued or not, I simply did not want to take the chance.
> Lastly it implies that you use scientific studies to explain your own sexual feelings and have generalized your own (abnormal) experiences onto everyone in the world.
Or perhaps it implies I have a medical background and am well attuned to physiological actions in the body due to mediation, self-awareness, etc, and noticed that the state of arousal always inclines itself to distractability and that sexual activity itself is a net negative, to which avoiding arousal is advantageous.

[Anonymous No.11953506]

>>11953366
Oof.

[Anonymous No.11953547]

>>11953366
How can you speak to the eroticism of a passage you haven't even read?

>better not do that, might get a boner and ruin your intellectual potential!
Okay, tesla :)

[Anonymous No.11953553]

>>11947505
>he sucks cuz i dont understand

[Anonymous No.11953580]

>>11947505
>said plebs ever