Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow Part 1 by John David Ebert

[Chernobyl.hearts]

This novel changed my life, i see it as more of a personal guide than a novel, it’s so good.

[catadromous]

An incredible book! I remember being quite confused the first time I read it, but in spite of that enjoying the marvelous writing throughout. Now I reread it every couple years. I don't think there is an episode in GR where Pynchon is not operating on AT LEAST three or four different subtextual levels at once. He is an absolute master, a writer's writer, who pushed the bounds of what a novel could and can be. I wonder if books will ever be this good again? Thank you for these commentaries.

[raphbiss]

Thank you John, I really can't think of another place, really anywhere, where you can get such erudite, concise, and all around brilliant commentary

[marinellamaccagni]

What an awesome analysis! You have blown my mind away. You made my day! Thanks!

[blastdog_]

The cyclical parabolic arc describing world ages can also be seen in Giambattista Vico's New Science with the divine, heroic, and human eras. Vico was huge for the development of Joyce's FW, so I figured I'd mention it. Thanks for all your hard work, John.

[BemusedHumanist]

The novel changed my life. I was an English major when I read it when it first came out. Roger Mexico using the Poisson distribution to tally the V-2 bomb hits on London (actual data) led me to the study of statistics, my profession.

[cdane]

I’m turning 41 this year, and just reading Pynchon for the first time with GR. Halfway through and I love it, enough so that I have already purchased M&D and AtD. But there’s no denying that GR is difficult, and a lot of it is hard to grasp. I know I will be reading it again and I will grasp more the 2nd time around.

But I’m finding it profound. Profane and purposefully absurd too, but definitely profound. I also find certain pages of it simply beautiful. Sad and beautiful.

I’ll be watching your videos as I work my way through the books. I appreciate you making them.

I’m curious if you would mind giving your personal ranking of all of Pynchon’s novels?

And I’m also curious to know if his other novels are as difficult as GR?

[DeuxRexunifier]

Holy shit. The master exegete has returned ready to slaughter all the other pseudo-content creators.
In less than a year we will have 20 videos explaining Finnegans Wake and all the western canon that is necessary before understanding it ... and it is going to be amazing.

Thank you very much for the work you are doing, John !!

[kevinhill]

John, thank you for this video. Take care of yourself and please keep up the great videos. You are inspiring!

[Robert-sisu]

Awesome I just read this! Now I just want to read it again

[mishunman]

Lewis Mumford’s “Pentagon of Power”: the utopian promise of a New World, its subversion by ancient predilections for cruelty, and the tithes we pay to Technology, seems to inform the theme of the text more than any secondary source I’ve found.

[carriebrooks]

Something interesting. In an essay titled "closer my couch than thee" Pychon talks in theological terms about the history of laziness. One major points in the dialectic of laziness is Ben Franklins "poor richard's almanac" which he considers a pseudo-secularized diest praise of diligence that he considers to be met in response by Hermann Melvilles "bartlby the scrivener", I think the epigraph is an allusion to this line of thought as a consistent theme throughout the book is either the drive to further engage in the hidden project around the war and the rocket or to disengage with it and live a worldy life (mexico and jessica, leni and franz) for example.

[juankgonzalez]

5:50 but there's actually a correspondence here, just not what one would expect: Virgo opposes Pisces in the zodiac

[BerndSchnabl]

I am pretty sure, you are mistaken about Einstein .... Relativity does not REVERSE cause and effect !!! The insights of the theory of special relativity confirmed the assumption of causality, but they made the meaning of the word "simultaneous" observer-dependent. In the theory of general relativity, the concept of causality is generalized in the most straightforward way: the effect must belong to the future light cone of its cause, even if the spacetime is curved.

[clocksfinle]

alright. this oughta be good around the time we get to brigadier pudding's lovely encounter early on in section 2

[RobertAlanHardy]

You got me right away with the Frank Miller reference :-)

[charlesgillingham]

Awesome, man, back on that horse! Or I guess rocket, in this case. Another Pynchon book I've read.

[yazanasad]

Is banana chosen for phallic imagery? Is it just sweet sickening?

[rivinish]

Just curious, how should one read the book and the commentary by Weisenburger? Commentary first, then the book? Or simultaneously to the book?

[joemurray]

Never read the book but what makes it so great? Simply because it is complex?