99 Novels: The Final Nine: Frequently Asked Questions About Gravity's Rainbow

[evelyn_b]

How can you still be reading Gravity's Rainbow? Haven't you finished it yet?

No. I am on page 620 of 887 as of this posting.

Other people like Gravity's Rainbow just fine, don't they?

Other people love Gravity's Rainbow. thedoubtfulguest shared this piece by Gerald Howard alongside several other writers, all of whom have had the thrilling experience of liking Gravity's Rainbow, who are able to describe it with love and understanding, and who compare it, with justice, to some books that I loved. There is interesting publishing history here as well as criticism. These Pynchon fans are smart people who are good at reading books and writing about them. I encourage you to go and read them now instead of listening to me whine.

I call them the Rainbros. It's not meant to be dismissive. I envy them their happiness.

So what's wrong with you, then? Why do you just keep staring helplessly at this masterpiece of 20th Century lit like someone left a dead rat with a ribbon on it under your Christmas tree?

I don't know! Because he was he, because I was I, man. It's just one of those things.

Are you just a prude who only ever wants books to be nice?

Deep down, probably, though I try to rein in that tendency when I can. Here I've been less successful than usual. I definitely resented having to read the chapter in which Slothrop has sex with a twelve-year-old three times over, first to figure out if it was maybe actually a dream (no luck), and then to get the full import of the admittedly beautiful closing paragraphs. I also resented that after approx. 3727 pages, I still didn't care about Slothrop enough to be angry or disappointed or dismayed by this choice of his. The frictionless chrome forgettability of every single character in this cast of thousands is probably part of the point (one reviewer suggests that I have misunderstood the book by "thinking about characters when [I] should be laughing at grotesques"); the selfish misuse of children by adults definitely is. I also slightly resent my total inability to care about these points as presented by Gravity's Rainbow.

So are the Rainbros all liars? Is this book actually garbage?

No, they're telling the truth. It's ambitious, polymathic, fearlessly strange and meticuously constructed. There are gems in this dream-sewer. That doesn't mean I have to like it.

Can you provide an example of the writing style?

Of course! Please be aware that the "writing style" of Gravity's Rainbow is always shifting and this example may not be representative. It does, however, have plenty of songs.

Final assembly went on in Stollen 41. The cross-tunnel is 50 feet deep, to accommodate the finished Rocket. Sounds of carousing, of voices distinctly unbalanced, come swelling up, reverberating off of the concrete. Personnel are weaving back up the main tunnel with a glassy and rubicund look to their faces. Slothrop squints down into this long pit, and makes out a crowd of Americans and Russians gathered around a huge oak beer barrel. A gnome-size German civilian with a red von Hindenburg mustache is dispensing steins of what looks to be mostly head. Ordnance smoke-puffs flicker on nearly every sleeve. The Americans are singing

ROCKET LIMERICKS

There once was a thing called a V-2,
To pilot which you did not need to-
You just pushed a button,
And it would leave nuttin'
But stiffs and big holes and debris, too.

The tune is known universally among American fraternity boys. But for some reason it is being sung here in German Storm Trooper style: notes clipping off sharp at the end of each line, then a pulse of silence before the attack on the next line.

[Refrain:] Ja, ja, ja, ja!
In Prussia they never eat pussy!
There ain't hardly cats enough,
There's garbage and that's enough,
So waltz me around again, Russky!

Drunks are hanging from steel ladders and draped over catwalks. Beer fumes crawl in the long cavern, among pieces of olive-drab rocket, some upright, some lying on their sides.

There was a young fellow named Crockett,
Who had an affair with a rocket.
If you saw them out there
You'd be tempted to stare,
But if you ain't tried it, don't knock it!

Slothrop is hungry and thirsty. Despite the clear and present miasma of evil in Stollen 41, he starts looking for some way to go down there and maybe score some of that lunch. Turns out the only way down is by a cable, hooked to an overhead hoist. A fat cracker Pfc. lounges at the controls, sucking on a bottle of wine. "Go ahead, Jackson, I'll give you a good ride. They taught me how to run these in the WPA." Bracing his mustache in what he figures to be a stiff upper lip, Ian Scuffling climbs on, one foot through an eye-splice, the other hanging free. An electric motor whines, Slothrop lets go the last steel railing and clutches on to the cable as 50 feet of twilit space appears underneath him. Uh…

Rolling out over Stollen 41, heads milling far below, beer foam bobbing like torches in the shadows-suddenly the motor cuts off and he's falling like a rock. Oh fuck, "Too young!" he screams, voice pitched way too high so it comes out like a teenager on the radio,

which ordinarily would be embarrassing, but here's the concrete floor rushing up at him, he can see every shuttering mark, every dark crystal of Thuringian sand he's going to be splashed over-not even a body nearby to get him off with only multiple fractures… With about ten feet to go the Pfc. puts on the brakes. Maniacal laughter from above and behind. The cable, brought up taut, sings under Slothrop's hand till he loses his grip on it, falls, and is carried gently upside down and hanging by the foot, in among funseekers around the beer keg who, used to this form of arrival by now, only continue their singing:

There was a young fellow named Hector,
Who was fond of a launcher-erector.
But the squishes and pops
Of acute pressure drops
Wrecked Hector's hydraulic connector.

Each young American in turn getting to his feet (optional), raising his tankard, and singing about different ways of Doing It with the A4 or its related hardware. Slothrop does not know that they are singing to him, and neither do they. He eyes the inverted scene with a certain unease: with his brain approaching the frontiers of red-out, there comes to him the peculiar notion that it's Lyle Bland who has hold of his ankle here. So he is borne stately into the fringes of the party. "Hey!" observes a crewcut youth, "i-it's Tarzan or something! Ha! Ha!" Half a dozen Ordnance people, juiced and roaring happily, grab for Slothrop. After a lot of twisting and shoving, the foot is freed from its wire loop. The hoist whines back the way it came, to its prankish operator and the next fool he can talk into riding it.

Isn't it time to admit you're just bad at reading?

Yes, but being bad at reading hasn't prevented me from enjoying many other books. I even enjoyed parts of Giles Goat-Boy, an almost totally inexcusable waste of my time! The Rainbow is a special case, and that's why I'm admitting defeat. I mean, I'm still going to read the last 200+ pages, but the dream of somehow coming to appreciate it has been thanked for its time and released Marie Kondo-style into the universe. Maybe in ten years I'll try again.

Would you rather still be reading Giles Goat-Boy right now? Be honest.

No, not even Thomas Pynchon can make me wish I were still reading Giles Goat-Boy. But I do find myself thinking longingly of blank walls I might be staring at instead.

Comments

[osprey_archer]

If you get nothing else out of this book, I believe that this post proves that you've raised loathing it to the level of an art form. How many books can be compared to "a dead rat with a ribbon on it under your Christmas tree?" How many books are so ghastly that you are driven to read reviews of them by other people in the vain hope that you, too, might come to feel a little vicarious enjoyment, only instead to be driven to calling those fans "the Rainbros"? How often in life do we get to appreciate the truly fine qualities of blank walls, which at least leave us scope for imagination?

200 more pages! *crashes cymbals of encouragement* You can do it! William Dean Howells awaits you at the end.

[kore]

(And a delightful comment too!)

[asakiyume]

(truth)

[evelyn_b]

Thank you for giving me the will (dadum-tssssh) to continue! I am definitely looking forward to meeting Mr. Dean Howells and his opinions. Maybe even the next time I get to the library! It could happen!

The Blank Wall Test originates (at least in my awareness) with Roger Ebert, who noted with awe the first time he saw a movie that was not an improvement on watching a blank wall for the same period of time. My blank wall tolerance is probably a little higher than Ebert's.

[kore]

Here from network, and this was a delightful post, even if I didn't feel finally vindicated that someone else has tried Gravity's Rainbow and been utterly unenchanted.

(I don't think you're a bad reader!)

[evelyn_b]

Thank you! Have you read Gravity's Rainbow? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Earlier this week I was desperately typing variations on "Does anyone dislike Gravity's Rainbow?" into my favorite search engine, looking for kindred spirits.

I'm a pretty lazy reader, but I usually have better luck with big difficult books, even if I don't pick up on all their big difficult nuances. I don't know if it's just that GR is on a whole new plane of difficulty (by one fan referred to, proudly, as "the Gulag of books") or if my dislike of it has created a self-reinforcing barrier to understanding, or both.

Thanks for stopping by! Feel free to stick around if you like! There's nothing here but books and sometimes complaining about books.

[thisbluespirit]

*pets*

And you're hardly a lazy reader! I mean, even in a world where I had way more concentration than I do, I would have got to about p200 and started skimming ahead to see if it ever improved and then dumped it! And I happily read my way through The Mysteries of Udolpho and wouldn't even have minded if it was longer!

You have just met your Nemesis. Give it all due respect and skim those last 200 pages as blithely as is possible while holding Gravity's Rainbow in your hands. Possibly take a picture of it so that you can put it up on the wall and point to your Nemesis when people ask?

I mean, that extract does not make me want to rush out and read it, rainbros be damned. There are MURDERS out there, with improbable crime and equally improbable detectives, and life is short. Go look at a nice blank wall and dream of better things.

Also well done! ♥

[evelyn_b]

Thank you for your encouraging words. Predictably enough, almost as soon as I had OFFICIALLY DECLARED my doneness with Gravity's Rainbow, I started to like it. . . maybe 3-5% better, but still. Maybe "like" is the wrong word and what I mean is "feel marginally less suffocated by." Nevertheless, your advice is good. <3

[asakiyume]

I went out on a date in college with someone who thought that book was the bee's knees, best thing ever, etc. I tried it and gave up on p. 1. So good for you for sticking with it? I think?

[evelyn_b]

I don't think I would have managed to stick with it at all if it hadn't been on a list!

People who love Gravity's Rainbow really, really love Gravity's Rainbow and I can't blame them; I too have read books that made me wish time-turners were real so I could talk about them 80 hours a day. If you can tolerate GR long enough to start understanding it there's plenty to talk about. But I also can't blame anyone for giving up on Page 1. The early chapters in particular can feel like trying to breathe clay.

[brigdh]

Aw, don't feel so bad about not liking a book! I haven't read Gravity's Rainbow but it does sound like the sort of thing I'd hate, so I admire you for making it through it at all.

[evelyn_b]

Don't worry, I don't feel too bad! I mostly feel like my failure to appreciate Gravity's Rainbow has been a valuable lesson of some kind. And now that I have only forty pages left (!), I'm looking forward to being done.