I think Gravity's Rainbow is vastly underrated.

[MTA]

I've never discovered such a profound work that tackles nearly every nook and cranny of the human psyche, except for Ulysses. And the wordplay is unrivaled.

Why do the scholars stick with Joyce and Faulkner, and not on Pynchon? Or am I just not seeing the big picture here?

[mayneverhave]

I have not read Gravity's Rainbow, however, I'm relatively sure it is in high critical standing. Look a bit harder for criticism.

That aside, if I had to guess it would be Gravity's Rainbow's publication date as compared with Faulkner and Joyce.

[Jeremiah Jazzz]

With time I believe Gravity's Rainbow will be up in the likes of Ulysses and Bely's Petersburg. A friend of mine was conversing with me of the novel in question. It sounds very funny and very thought provoking. I am sure when I am gray the novel will have the recognition we have found to be absent.

[sixsmith]

I don't think its underrated. On the contrary, its received wide critical approbation and is frequently twinned with Ulysses as a key work of the 20th century.

[weltanschauung]

agreed. this book is incredible, from psychology to probability to physics to literature to music. everything is in there, very well written, catastrophic claustrophobic paranoid mental confusion, its like a day in my head. magnetic dwarf reptile uber alles ftw!

[MissScarlett]

I agree. Gravity's Rainbow in amazing, but I don't think it's underrated. As someone has already pointed out, scholars and critics have all applauded it as a masterpiece. I love most of Pynchon's work. Mason and Dixon is a favorite of mine, though it's not of most people.

[mono]

In terms of both complexity and difficulty in reading, I certainly place Gravity's Rainbow along side most works by Joyce, yet he portrays a slightly colder and raw undertone, more like that of Dostoevsky; Joyce seems to hold back a bit more, writing more with the head than the heart. Sadly, I regret to say that I have not yet gotten to Faulkner (*hangs head in shame*).
I think it safe to say that one of the most stressful things an individual could encounter seems war; World War II would especially seem gruesome to encounter, and Pynchon himself surivived the frontlines of the European battles. Pynchon does a beautiful job in exploring every corner of the post-modern mind during such a stressful experience (pun intended, as he splits it into four 'squares'), whether when it comes to conspiracy, mythology, psychology, religion, and politics. The complexities of these subjects seems enough, but Pynchon composed Gravity's Rainbow in a style that personally reminds me a lot of the flight-of-consciousness authors, James Joyce among them. As mentioned earlier, however, Pynchon placed a lot of remarkable emotions while recalling World War II, and places even more in relating it to the current events of the 1970's, when he published it, such as the Nixon Watergate scandal.
Reading Gravity's Rainbow felt like pulling teeth, and it took me several months of putting it down and picking it up again to complete it, similar to Finnegans Wake and parts of Ulysses, but I intend on giving it another try, perhaps with a companion to see if I spot more a second time around.

[JBI]

Pynchon wasn't a WW2 Vet, he was born in 37.

[weltanschauung]

*pwnd!*

[mono]

Gotcha, thanks.
I suppose I meant to say that, upon further research, he derived many of his tales of World War II from a friend of his, one he met after serving in the navy, who battled in WWII.
Perhaps one can say much more of me admitting my ignorance upon the subject; unfortunate, I read the entire challenging book, wrote a little something about it, yet happened to forget a snippet of his biography, which one could easily find on Wikipedia, rather than delving into the challenge of dissecting Gravity's Rainbow. That some individuals must feel required to use illiterate, uneducated terms, mimicking someone found more likely at a World of Warcraft convention than a literature forum, seems unneeded, and resembles more ignorance than anything else; nonetheless, I admit my mistake.

[JBI]

Gotcha, thanks.
I suppose I meant to say that, upon further research, he derived many of his tales of World War II from a friend of his, one he met after serving in the navy, who battled in WWII.
Perhaps one can say much more of me admitting my ignorance upon the subject; unfortunate, I read the entire challenging book, wrote a little something about it, yet happened to forget a snippet of his biography, which one could easily find on Wikipedia, rather than delving into the challenge of dissecting Gravity's Rainbow. That some individuals must feel required to use illiterate, uneducated terms, mimicking someone found more likely at a World of Warcraft convention than a literature forum, seems unneeded, and resembles more ignorance than anything else; nonetheless, I admit my mistake.

I didn't mean to offend - I'll admit, I wasn't able to finish Gravity's Rainbow, though I mean to pick it up again soon I got 50 pages in, then got bogged in course reading and had to return it to the library. I meant no offense, and I think you know me well enough to know I didn't mean to "pwnd!", whatever that means.

[weltanschauung]

chill, mono.
sense of humour is priceless, i thought you had read gravity rainbow, didnt you learn, d3wd.

on topic:
"The hand of Providence creeps among the stars, giving Slothrop the finger. "
(page 461)


"Yes but Technology only responds (how often this argument has been iterated, dogged and humorless as a Gaussian reduction, among the younger Schwarzkommando especially), "All very well to talk about having a monster by the tail, but do you think we'd've had the Rocket if someone, some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn't wanted to chuck a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians? Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it'll make you feel less responsible--but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they are—"

We have to look for power sources here, and distribution networks we were never taught, routes of power our teachers never imagined, or were encouraged to avoid... we have to find meters whose scales are unknown in the world, draw our own schematics, getting feedback, making connections, reducing the error, trying to learn the real function... zeroing in on what incalculable plot? "
(page 521)

[Jeremiah Jazzz]

I ended up buying the book today! I suppose I'll go read it. See all of you in 4 months...

[mono]

I ended up buying the book today! I suppose I'll go read it. See all of you in 4 months...
Whew! 4 months - how ambitious!
Like I said, I hope to re-read sometime in the future, perhaps the distant future, considering the aches and pains it caused in my brain, while attempting to tackle its pages. Though it put it down and picked it back up a number of times, it must have collectively, counting both activing reading and breaks, taken just under a year to read for me; furthermore, comparing it to Finnegans Wake from a personal stance, that took me about a year to read similarly. :brickwall
Enjoy, and good luck to you, Jeremiah Jazzz.

[Jeremiah Jazzz]

hehe thank you, thanks you! I am not really going to start it until I wrap up a few projects I've been working on lately. I understand what you're saying though, sometimes a book takes guts and a large amount of patience, like the aforementioned Finnegans Wake, which after reading has become one of my favorite books. The idea of not gaining every aspect right away and returning with a few rereads draws me to works like Joyce of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow!

[metal134]

I recently finished this novel and honestly, it's reputation as this incredibly difficult book belies the reality of it. Granted, it was not an easy read, but not nearly as hard as it's made out to be. And it instantly jumps into the mix of my favorit novels ever.

[mono]

I recently finished this novel and honestly, it's reputation as this incredibly difficult book belies the reality of it. Granted, it was not an easy read, but not nearly as hard as it's made out to be. And it instantly jumps into the mix of my favorit novels ever.
Pynchon, to me, has a very flight-of-consciousness style that I think confuses a lot of readers, especially that that genre of writing seemed relatively outdated, having nearly gone to the graves with Woolf and Joyce.
The vagueness of the subjects he wrote of also perplexed me a bit; I would read part after part, and the scene he wrote of would get revealed late in the chapter, so I would have to back-track as to what on earth he said of this and that.
Surely, I have read more difficult things, as you well said, like almost anything by Joyce, but it seemed one of the more mysterious things I have read, definitely worth another read sometime in the future, if I feel brave again. :D

[dfloyd]

I've only read one of his novels: V. I know he writes in a non linear style that he supposedly got from Nobakov. I didn't think V. was particularly hard to read, so I'll have to look into Gravity. By the way, I liked V.