Gravity's Rainbow: A Reader's Guide

A video for readers of Gravity's Rainbow who have finished this endless, imposing, impossible beast, and are looking for discussion points and brainstorming in general!
What are your thoughts on the book, and on the issues I address in the video?
Let me know in the comments!

You migth also like my Video-Reader's Guide to Infinite Jest:

Bibliography
The ideas I talk about in this video come from these very interesting, very insightful books, here listed with links to buy them on Amazon (yep I'm an affiliate):
Herman - Gravity's Rainbow, Domination, and Freedom

Follow me on GoodReads!

[travisdunlap]

Ive never been affected by a book the way I was with GR. I did not love the experience of reading the book for long stretches. But once I was done, once I could see the whole thing, I loved it and missed its presence in my life. I had to resist the urge to immediately start over again.

[evanfont]

If i had to pick one "wtf am I reading?" moment from GR, it would have to be the seemingly random flashback to Katje's ancestor and his role in the extinction of the dodo bird. That was when I realized this was the weirdest goddamn book I've ever read. Oh, and Gregori.

[thomasvieth]

In 1984 I bought a record by Laurie Anderson, who had been featured on German radio some years before. Her record had a song on it called "Gravity's Angel" which she sang with Peter Gabriel. I then went to a university in 1987 (being 27 at the time seemed rather old), and I went through the English section of their central library in Bochum, Germany. I went through the shelves to see what I could check out to read. And I came upon the title "Gravity's Rainbow. I said to myself, where do I know this from. My brain went into action and soon I made the connection to Laurie Anderson. An I thought, what she likes couldn't be bad. I was hooked to Pynchon's writings ever since. Though, my favorite now is divided between "Against The Day" and "Mason & Dixon". I find it strange that it has never occurred to anybody to liken the latter to John Barth's "The Sodweed Factor". Also a wonderful book.

[asherdeep]

Damn, you finally made this video! :)

I recently read his V. and was admiring how much in control of his text he is. You know when you're reading a dense passage and not quite understanding anything so much so that you think he's playing with you--the reader--just at that moment he shifts the scene and the tone of the piece so much so that you feel disoriented? Kinda like Suttree? Like the stuff with Pokler, or Katje and Slothrop.

And I didn't know about the circular structure, damn! I read a book about IJ where the author compares the disintegration of Hal to Slothrop, which was really interesting. This summer I plan to read stuff about Peenemunde, Wernher von Braun, V-2, Mittelwerk, Carl Jung, Freud and Norman Brown just because they're related to GR. :P

P.S. I remember, in 2014, when I knew absolutely nothing about literature; I'd read only three-four books by then; and I somehow came across your Top 10 of 2012 video, and I remember your describing GR as a "century-defining book, " and I bought book. I had no idea how to even read prose and underestimated GR's difficulty. It took me three months to finish the fucker and I hated it a lot of times along the way. I didn't understand more than half the book but I had the experience. I didn't know one could be that smart and goofy and serious and silly at once. I don't know whether it changed my life, but it definitely did broaden my outlook on life; and from about that point I started becoming a serious reader.

So my point being: thank you, Bookchemist. The books you've recommended me here have most of them have become my favorites, and I'll always be grateful to you for that. It's a testament to that fact that what you do with your channel is excellent. :)

[maggiecorrigan]

Thank you so much for your video. I took GR with me on my first trip to Europe this fall (I was traveling for over a month). It turned out to be a good choice for traversing "the zone" so to speak. I started it on the plane ride over the Atlantic and finished it on the return journey over the Atlantic. I think Pynchon would approve of the cyclical nature of my reading experience
I thought it was a devastating book, funny, obscene, romantic, absurd, I could go on and on. It's been hard to sift through some of the supplemental material though, and your video really helped me!
I was touched by some of the passages about love, I love the way Pynchon writes about sex and relationships. Even when it's really fucked up, its so immersive and fluid and it never feels forced or voyeuristic. It's one of the most amazing books I've ever read, and I'm really happy to find people who have read it because it leaves you with a lot of questions!
thank you for your video!!

[pavlos]

Man, the book ends in two words: "now everybody".It's as simple as that!Apart from that, I like your work and love the book, which being read in English - as it is not my mother language - was my biggest mental challenge so far!Keep up the good work.

[TommyRogic]

Just wanted to say thank you for introducing me to Pynchon, your enthusiasm through your videos made me pick up Gravity's Rainbow and as tough as it is, stylistically I absolutely love it. Have already ordered some of his other novels including 'Against The Day' - so yeah cheers. Keep the fantastic videos coming.

[jstahl]

The books about the Montauk Project are labelled "science fiction". But is that really the case?

I've yet to see any commentary about GR suggesting that it is actually a disclosure, and deep explanation about the topics most important about the nazis:
trauma-based mind-control amplified and streamlined in programs that developed into the MONARCH and MKULTRA programs, plus much more.

There is excellent material available regarding the nuts and bolts of programming (and more importantly DEPROGRAMMING).
But that material is usually kept far far away from academic circles. Those interested in that topic might be generally unaware of Pynchon's contribution.

I'll just say that I've read a lot to try to understand things like THE MONTAUK BOYS PROGRAM, and as soon as I began reading GR, the science lessons popped into dimensional explications that I was not expecting and was barely prepared for.

Why mind-control programming and deprogramming is not part of Psych.101-111 classes in every accredited university is a BIG FUCKING PROBLEM!!!
That we know the militaries and corporations around the world extensively study, employ, and structurally depend on compartmentalized people and departments -
why do we KNOW that explicitly, but leave the knowledge that would set people free from those traps, out of the academic officaldom?

What I'm writing here is the most dangerous topic to speak, or even think about!
But since it is about truth and the potentials for both human freedom, and human excellence through programming...
Dangerous shit can be lots of fun.
And truth is truly a force of nature, so it has its own gravitational impact and necessity - and cycles bound with time.

I bet that as the years go on increasing numbers of people will recognize that Pynchon delivered a deep-secrets science manual regarding the most radical considerations that developed in the nazi era of mind technology.

The Angelic Hierarchy is a rainbow in a silver-white realm.
Gravity's Rainbow is the substantialization of mind into matter. (As Above, So Below)
Why were the nazis interested in stuff like the Rainbow Body discussed by Tibetan mystics?!?

Gravity's field is brown.
The use of color throughout the book is not just poetics or "postmodernist" verbiage gone berzerkers.
His use of color is as precise as any manual about mind and energetic functioning.
(A rainbow involves much more discrimination than ROYGBIV.
Pale Orange is not rust nor a heavy orange.
Maybe Pynchon worked in one of the secret backrooms at Boeing... not Skunkworks, but something like that.
No one knows anything about him - he's very private.
So it doesn't hurt to speculate, and provoke questions that get people to face the real horrors, and real excelleneces (in the sciences) of fascism, the nazi era, and most especially DATA-BUNDLING.
Fascism is a matter of binding and bundling stuff together - in fascicles.)

[peterismaslencenko]

Just finished the book today, so it was very exciting to see this video pop up just in time for the event. I'm a rather casual reader, and could only follow the book vaguely, but here's some uneducated thoughts. Long comment incoming:

I'm glad you mentioned the pastiche elements. That octopus scene is indeed one of the best in the book, and it's kind of the first time I really consciously realized that what Pynchon was doing was transplanting different forms of entertainment into literary fiction. One moment you're reading a Serious Anti-War Novel, the next you're reading a 1950s B-movie or a fable or an episode of Looney Tunes. Sure, this is a core tenet of pomo in a sense, but I've never encountered this technique in quite such a muscular way, and it's very impressive. Builds a hilarious, intensely unique atmosphere.

Though the political aspect that you touch on - criticising our ever oblique masters for Their evils and corruption of our world - is indeed the driving force of the novel, if not Pynchon's whole writing career, my personal main take-away from GR (along with Lot 49 and Bleeding Edge), is, cheesy as it may sound, The Power of Love and Friendship. A running theme in this guy's books is human connection as a respite from a world that is beyond our control or understanding. The way to live is as fiercely romantically as Mexico, or as spontaneously and freely as Slothrop, because the love and empathy experienced that way is the one thing They cannot corrupt or take away from us. For me, the crucial passage of the book wasn't any of the Proverbs for Paranoids or political stuff, but this, when Säure is discussing Rossini vs Beethoven:

" 'With Rossini, the whole point is that lovers always get together, isolation is overcome, and like it or not that is one of the centripetal movements of the World. Through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs. All the shit is transmuted to gold. The walls are breached, the balconies are scaled - listen!' It was a night in early May, and the final bombardment of Berlin was in progress. Säure had to shout his head off. 'The Italian girl is in Algiers, the Barber's in the crockery, the magpie's stealing everything in sight! The World is rushing together...'"

What an ending. If the final actions against Gottfried (the trusting, ideologically bought-in follower, as I read it) are not the ultimate indictment of The Powers That Be, I don't know what is. Bleak as everything about the ending seems, though, to me the song and "Now everybody -" is not a final cynical joke, but another reinforcement of the edifying power of camaraderie and joie de vivre. The bomb hangs over us, we can't do anything about it, well, might as well hold the hand of the person next to you and sing, you know? It's super cheesy, but the more I read Pynchon (the Inherent Vice film contributed to this as well), the more I'm convinced he's a total sap. Which is lovely.

PS
You left a very nice, thoughtful response to my comment on the recent IJ video, and I feel crummy for not responding, not even a 'thank you'. So using the chance here - thanks. Just didn't have anything substantial to respond with, you pretty much schooled me on the subject of pomo, haha.

[brittabohlerthesecondshelf]

It's been ages since I've read Gravity's Rainbow and you definitely made me wanting to read it again.

[mikabjorklund]

Finished reading Gravity's Rainbow over 1½ years with a big break and many smaller ones in between. Never read any other postmodern or Pynchon novels before this. It was not difficult in the way I thought it would be. It was all readable (unlike Finnegan's Wake for example. Before ordering GR I feared I wouldn't be able to make sense of the book on the level of understanding the words, but that wasn't the case at all) and frequently very funny. It wasn't as plotless as I thought it would be, only very complicated. It wasn't even as dark and disgusting as I kind of expected. I don't know... I mean sure they eat poop in one scene, but that's hardly a reason to deny a Pulitzer. While I understand why some people would find the work depressing, I found the endless parade of comic scenes to be life affirming as well. The book is just so funny in parts. "The disgusting english candy drill" was by far the funniest thing I know of. Hilarious. Similarly the dark stuff was often just over the top. Franz Pökler though... that one long recollection about him and his daughter in the middle of the book was haunting.

So all in all, either it wasn't that difficult or most other difficult works are like this: They just require patience, and maybe a study guide to help along. I found reading "Some Things that 'Happen' (More or Less) in Gravity's Rainbow" after each episode very helpful in connecting some of the dots. So the book wasn't easy reading, I understand why it's regarded as difficult and there are parts in it that I don't understand. But it doesn't take superpowers. Humans can read it and find it enjoyable and moving.

One of the side effects of having read this one was that all sensible fiction became laughably easy to follow. I've had problems with concentrating on books, but after reading GR I breezed through Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials in little over a week. And that was like 1100 pages. I think GR did something irreversible to my brain!

Thanks for the tips in this and your other videos.

[BaronUnderbite]

also, you kind of spoiled the ending... not sure if that matters with this particular book, but wish you gave a heads up

[childeater]

Just started Vineland (uh oh!) but I feel like i'm due another read of Gravity's Rainbow - especially the 'Counterforce' chapter which, off the back of the chaos of 'The Zone, ' just becomes nigh on impossible to traverse! There are definitely things you don't forget from GR - the sublime Kentish sermon; also Pokler's sinister/heartbreaking trips to Zwolfkinder to meet his daughter, or what may or may not be a series of daughters, progressively older, to simulate 'the moving image of a daughter.' Unforgettable!

[tomriordan]

I finished reading Inherent Vice and I can see why you like late Pynchon. The next day I started right in on Gravity's Rainbow and I have been reading it along with the online wiki based on Weisenburger. I'm on page 47, so far so good!

[alvisinger]

Just finished it. Throughout the course of the book I found it difficult, original, interesting, provocative, infuriating, long, rambling, disorienting, devastating, profound, fun, funny, disgusting, headache inducing, silly, ridiculous, surreal, acutely factual, bleak, philosophical, jarring, deconstructionist, holistic, profane, upsetting, inspiring and upsetting.

I had deep reflections on the nature of the world to be told through grand narratives in terms of history, politics, science, identity and religion; and how domination involves imposing one narrative over others. How people don't choose their narratives but take pre-produced narratives and attach themselves to it to try and find a place in the world. How we often obscure the world by trying to explain it and understand it. How our understanding of WWII is ultimately a constructed narrative that highlights key events, makes political assumptions about nationhood and what facts should be considered important/prioritised (whilst forgetting other things entirely like the ethnic cleansing of the Herero, labour camps for children building rockets, or the alienation of mid-level bureaucrats). The naivety of objectivity, even in terms of a scientific ideal, as ultimately humans tend to subsume things into a narrative, to serve certain interests, to have a sense of organisation/bureaucracy that ultimately get out of control.

A couple of sections really stuck with me. When we share Margherita's consciousness and trauma as she has a break down in the toilet, Slothrop's reaction is to only focus on what she says about Imipolex G and descends into his own paranoia about Them. Very sad. Showed to me how we can be so subsumed in our own narratives we do not see other people beyond how they fit into our own story, even if they breakdown in front of us. Horst Achtfaden's justifications for not being guilty for being involved in the V2 project were also very interesting, and how he takes the language of rocket engineering to explain his own narrative. When he leaves and realises that there no longer be instructions from the megaphone was also very interesting, highlighting the desire to have a place in the world, serve a purpose and to divulge our responsibility for action to another. To be part of a System.

So many other great moments (Pokler and his daughter, Byron the lightbulb, Captain Marvy's end). Won't mention them all.

At the end of the novel all this was wiped out, almost like by a literary rocket and I felt weirdly empty about the 900 pages I had just read. I no longer wanted to analyse or learn lessons, and my brain hurt! It left an effect on me, but I would find it hard to describe. Interesting experience.

I'm not an academic and would have really struggled to complete the book, let alone get this much out of it, without these videos. Thanks a lot man.

[mandys]

I love the sense of the feeling of when he has to disguise himself- I feel the fear and excitement...I don't remember the extent of the costumes he wore, yet the feeling of being caught up in the action remains.

[MetFansince]

What impresses me the most is not only your devotion to literature, but your devotion to sweeping the floor.

[keithwittymusic]

GR was the first book I read when I decided to get back into fiction after spending years lost in the wilderness of Existential and Postmodern Philosophy. I remember really liking it (no matter how much it confused me), but also feeling that the book was so angry at times that it was difficult to end up loving. What I love about Bleeding Edge so much is Pynchon's move away from cold cynicism or irony, and while that exists in parts of GR, I've always felt that it was more of a series of case studies on some emotions rather than encouraging them. But the ending of the book would tend to point to my own misreading of the text in all odds. I really am not sure in the end. It's right near the top of my "read again" list (as I feel that I am better reader now than I was when I read it), but the more I read Pynchon the more I like his other stuff (with the exception of V. I really didn't like V. even a little bit). I prefer Lot 49, Mason & Dixon, and Bleeding Edge to almost every book on my shelf. All three of them are outstanding novels. With GR, after being certain it was going to finish in the top ten of my "Best I read in 2015" list, I realized I just didn't think it was nearly as good as Lot 49, and really nowhere even close to Mason & Dixon.

These "Reader's Guides" videos are really enjoyable, btw.

[dwayneeutsey]

Nice overview. You pretty much touch on my overall response to the book. I'd like to try one day to write up my take on GR, but I don't think I'll ever have the time to capture it.

[keithpeck]

I find there's a lot of part vs. whole metaphors in the book ... the description of the missile is one of these' a rainbow is white light decomposed into constituent colors ... so the notion that a missile's fixed course (hostory) can be deflected by the misbehavior of one component, thereby saving the lives of the innocent.