Thomas Pynchon
1973
Around 760 pages
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. After the high that was The Black Prince, we were due for a reckoning. As the sage of our time, Ms. Taylor Swift, puts it, "I don't like how flying feels like falling 'til the bone crush."
I'm sure that I've complained on this blog about my S.O. liking Thomas Pynchon. Well, even he won't read this monstrosity, which really shows us what deep shit we are in. Okay, let's get this over with.
Summarizing a book like this is a thankless task. I feel like writers like Joyce and Pynchon suck all the heart and magic out of prose, reducing it to some sort of mad mathematical formula designed to create as much intellectual stress on the reader as possible. In tomes like this, there is always plenty of weird sex stuff, which might be the bulk of the appeal this holds over the literary crowd.
For me, this held the same amount of enjoyment as reading the Yellow Pages. You either hate this, or you have to get a Gravity's Rainbow tattoo. I'm not sure how genuine the readership of this one is, the appreciation feels performative (which is even lampshaded in the most recent Knives Out movie).
I'll give one star because I hated it slightly less than its spiritual successor, Infinite Jest, and I'll need a way of demonstrating my contempt later.
RATING: *----
Interesting Facts:
Interesting Facts:
Though the book won the National Book Award for 1974, Pynchon chose neither to accept nor acknowledge this award.
Time named Gravity's Rainbow one of its "All-Time 100 Greatest Novels."
Dedicated to Richard Farina.
UP NEXT: The Honorary Consul by Graham Greene
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