Pynchon - "Gravity's Rainbow"

Picked up a copy to read from the library yesterday. After 75 pages of
reading, still can't find a plot or understand any of the characters.
Am I missing something? Why is this book so collectible? Will start
Proust tomorrow.

Art Layton
Stamford CT

On 23 Jul 2003 05:59:42 -0700, (Art Layton)
wrote:

Picked up a copy to read from the library yesterday. After 75 pages of
reading, still can't find a plot or understand any of the characters.

75 pages? That's like the first two pages of most books. Stick with
it. It gets worse. Hope your lib has renewal privileges.

Am I missing something? Why is this book so collectible?

Relative scarcity, and a legend-building entry in "The Whole Earth
Catalog" about 30 years ago. Seriously, a lot of scholars of modern
American literature think this is one for the ages, and people will be
reading it in 200 years the way people today still read Proust (and
they do). They might be right.

Our distinguished colleague, "Art Layton" scribed:

Picked up a copy to read from the library yesterday. After 75 pages of
reading, still can't find a plot or understand any of the characters.
Am I missing something? Why is this book so collectible? Will start
Proust tomorrow.

Those who find the book difficult (nearly everyone) will find more
appreciation of Pynchon's masterpiece by acquiring the guide:

A "Gravity's Rainbow" Companion: Sources and Contexts for Pynchon's
Novel by Steven C. Weisenburger


--
(USA)

Watch out for the disappointing ending! Proust is better, or you could try
Pynchon's first book V.

Randy

--

KL7 wrote in message ...
Our distinguished colleague, "Art Layton" scribed:

Picked up a copy to read from the library yesterday. After 75 pages of
reading, still can't find a plot or understand any of the characters.
Am I missing something? Why is this book so collectible? Will start
Proust tomorrow.

"Randy Burns" wrote...
KL7 wrote...
Our distinguished colleague, "Art Layton" scribed:

Picked up a copy to read from the library yesterday. After 75 pages of
reading, still can't find a plot or understand any of the characters.
Am I missing something? Why is this book so collectible? Will start
Proust tomorrow.

Watch out for the disappointing ending! Proust is better, or you could
try
Pynchon's first book V.

Or "The Crying of Lot 49," the shortest and the most accessible of his early
books--and many think it's the best thing he's written.


--
Jon Meyers
[To reply,
lose your way.]

Thank God I'm not the only one! I have been a reader all my life, consider
my sell fairly literate and well-read but have NEVER been able to get
through a Pynchon book. It was my "dirty little secret," never admitted it
in polite society. I think the publishing world it putting one over on us.

OK, I'm ready to get blasted now by the all the people who think he's the
greatest literary genius of all time and I'm just too dumb to get it.


"Art Layton" wrote in message
om...
Picked up a copy to read from the library yesterday. After 75 pages of
reading, still can't find a plot or understand any of the characters.
Am I missing something? Why is this book so collectible? Will start
Proust tomorrow.

Art Layton
Stamford CT

OK,

Since everyone else is 'fessing up, I have tried several times over the past
ten years and just can't do it. The embarrassing part is that I am a
collector of several postmodern authors who supposedly owe a great deal to
Pynchon (Don Delillo, David Foster Wallace, etc.). I made it through DFW's
"Infinite Jest" with no problems (it is often called "the Gravity's Rainbow
of the 90's" because it was on everyone's must read list but no one actually
read it). I often think about trying Gravity's Rainbow again, but it stays
on the bottom of my reading stack because there is always something more
appealing, and less frustrating, demanding my time.

Brian Thomas



"Syd Torres" wrote in message
...
Thank God I'm not the only one! I have been a reader all my life,
consider
my sell fairly literate and well-read but have NEVER been able to get
through a Pynchon book. It was my "dirty little secret," never admitted
it
in polite society. I think the publishing world it putting one over on
us.

OK, I'm ready to get blasted now by the all the people who think he's the
greatest literary genius of all time and I'm just too dumb to get it.


"Art Layton" wrote in message
om...
Picked up a copy to read from the library yesterday. After 75 pages of
reading, still can't find a plot or understand any of the characters.
Am I missing something? Why is this book so collectible? Will start
Proust tomorrow.

Art Layton
Stamford CT

John A. Stovall wrote in message
...

I will agree "The Crying of Lot 49" is his most accessible and I read
it when it came out and still re-read it. I followed it with "V" and
"Gravity's Rainbow". "Gravity's Rainbow" to me is the best of the
late 20th Century American novels. But I found "Vineland" unreadable.
************************************************** ***

I confess I actually enjoyed reading Vineland (BTW for those who don't know
"V" is his first book and Vineland came out in the early 90's). Vineland is
just an ordinary novel in many ways, much more accessible than Gravity's
Rainbow. Rainbow did pick up for me by the time I got into it but the
deliberately disappointing ending (maybe 100 pages) was a downer, still it
is one of the few books of that time period that is likely to be read 100
years from now and make lists of great American novels. The Crying of Lot
49 was good but too short.

Randy

wrote:

Thank God I'm not the only one! I have been a reader all my life, consider
my sell fairly literate and well-read but have NEVER been able to get
through a Pynchon book. It was my "dirty little secret," never admitted it
in polite society.

This happens to me *all* the time. I have any number of authors whose works
I've never been able to read, despite the fact that I'm an omnivorous reader
who can get through masses of surprisingly-dull-to-everyone-else stuff (as C.S.
Lewis said once, I like being bored).

I just figure that I may get around to liking some of them after all (I have
"come round" to numerous authors in my day), and I may not. Not much odds
either way, there's plenty to read in the world. But considering the stuff I
adore that plenty of people hate, my bet is that there really is something in
Pynchon to like. You may just not be constituted to like it, which is a
different matter.

--Helen

Hello everyone,

You know this really won't do, discussing the contents of books, in
this newsgroup.

Art Layton wrote:
Picked up a copy to read from the library yesterday. After 75 pages of
reading, still can't find a plot or understand any of the characters.
Am I missing something? Why is this book so collectible? Will start
Proust tomorrow.

Art Layton
Stamford CT