[HN Gopher] Read "Gravity's Rainbow" fifty years later
___________________________________________________________________
Read "Gravity's Rainbow" fifty years later
Author : hackandthink
Score : 100 points
Date : 2023-04-05 15:52 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (aurelien2022.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (aurelien2022.substack.com)
| rooneymcnibnug wrote:
| My favorite book of all time, and still so extremely prescient to
| American culture/society.
|
| I wrote about a personal connection to this book - also touching
| on the idea of the preterite and paranoia - here:
| https://rooneymcnibnug.github.io/writing/2022/05/19/The-Watc...
| nemo44x wrote:
| The great themes of this book to me are:
|
| Power is pathological and is a systemic thing. There are not
| conspiracies - it gains function from itself and the incentives
| it brings along with it, which go back into the system of power
| and make it even more powerful. Everyone just sort of goes along
| with it because it's just the way things are. Pavlov's dog is
| brought up often to sort of illustrate this.
|
| Of course like many post modern works of fiction and philosophy
| it blames just about everything on capitalism, which I don't
| agree with for a number of reasons, #1 being we haven't really
| had capitalism since the 1930s. We've had something far worse
| which is this managed economy and governance - a system of
| managerial elite that we call capitalism, but it ins't. But, the
| type of system doesn't matter in this book. The point is wars and
| things as crazy as an ICBM (the book really made me think of how
| insane it is to have designed a missile that destroys random
| people 100's of miles away) exist not for political reasons so
| much as money and acquiring power/money. Politics hardly matters
| and is a distraction to get people to buy into the stupidity of
| it all. In essence, a condemnation of consumerist culture which
| has taken the world by storm since this was published.
|
| It's actually a prescient book today with AI as it's also a
| critique of technology and how it doesn't free us, quite the
| opposite, and will probably end up in the destruction of man.
| Either with nukes as the book is obsessed with or climate, or
| naughty AI.
|
| Now the best part of the book and saddest is that all this is
| happening. It's the natural state of mankind. But there's no way
| to avoid it. It's inevitable. You can't change the world. Because
| anything you do that you believe is changing it will just be co-
| opd. We see this in everything today. Any kind "Revolutionary
| Change" is immediately used up by corporations that see to march
| in lockstep as if it's a conspiracy. But it's not - it's a
| numbers game based on incentives.
|
| The advice granted in the book is to fly under the radar, it is
| all you can do. Do not participate in society at large. Do not
| try and change it as anything good you make will just be used for
| evil eventually. (like the rockets in the book. invented
| initially by hobbyists who wanted to go to space; co-opted by
| politics to make bombs) Simply avoid it and find love and friends
| and happiness apart from the hideous system that strangles us.
| [deleted]
| newhaus1994 wrote:
| I wrote my undergrad thesis on Gravity's Rainbow and the book has
| stuck with me more than perhaps any other. It's a post-modern
| retelling of Ulysses, for one, but not just that. It's a post-
| apocalyptic novel but also a novel incredibly concerned with
| reconstruction following WWII. It's a critique of
| industrialization, but also a critique of the pop movements
| resisting industrialization.
|
| It's the most difficult book I've ever read--took me several
| months to work through. But I treat it similarly to how Finnegans
| Wake should be treated: don't try to understand everything, but
| rather find _something_ on every page you can relate to or
| appreciate.
| number6 wrote:
| I read a third and lost the drive. No real story. Description
| of Life und coping with randomness. Should I try again?
| daseiner1 wrote:
| first third was the most difficult and least rewarding
| section on my first (and so far only) read. I literally
| finished it, realized I understood exactly none of it, and
| restarted the book. Took me 6 months to read the entirety of
| _GR_ (I was taking my time with notes and references and
| such) and it was entirely worth it.
| newhaus1994 wrote:
| I think it's worth trying again--it has a story, but its plot
| structure is in direct conversation/opposition to the
| modernists, so it's looser, more chaotic, and more
| deconstructed. As such, I read GR forcing myself to let go of
| the pressure to comprehend the plot and rather to focus on
| the impressions the book was imparting on me.
|
| To be entirely clear: it's weird as hell.
| jrumbut wrote:
| Yes, the second third is the best third.
|
| Allow me to recommend the audiobook version. It helps keep
| you moving forward during portions that are disgusting,
| boring, or jibberish.
| romanhn wrote:
| That's interesting, I tried Gravity's Rainbow on audiobook
| and came to a conclusion that written copy would be better
| due to sheer amount of detail and different characters. I'm
| no stranger to large tomes (tackled GR right after getting
| through Infinite Jest audiobook), but it was the first one
| I gave up on about a quarter to a third in. At one point I
| realized that I'm really not enjoying the process and
| barely following the storyline. Maybe will try again in ten
| years.
| sharkweek wrote:
| I love Infinite Jest with all my heart, and I also tried
| to read GR shortly after as I was on a "big book" kick
| (had also read Underworld in the same time period and
| loved that too).
|
| Gave up on GR after about 200 or so pages realizing I
| couldn't ultimately describe a single thing I had read.
|
| I really want to finish it at some point but I also want
| to enjoy it. Maybe at a different point in life.
| number6 wrote:
| The audiobook version seems to be a good idea, since it has
| a lot of conversations. Thanks for the recommendation
| jandrese wrote:
| It would be interesting to listen to the book where the
| narrator does a different voice for every character,
| since so often the character speaking (and also the time
| and location) changes somewhere in the middle of the
| sentence and it is up to the reader to figure out when. I
| bet there are a lot of different opinions as to where it
| happened and how much overlap there is.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I aborted early on as well. But that was several decades ago
| -- I might have the patience now.
|
| I can say I easily devoured (and enjoyed) "The Crying of Lot
| 49". That might be a compromise.
| viscanti wrote:
| > It's a post-modern retelling of Ulysses.
|
| I must have missed this in my reading. Who parallels Stephen or
| Leo or Molly? Tyrone didn't seem to be to be in search of a
| father figure or a father figure in search of a son. I enjoyed
| both books but must have missed the ways in which GR is a post-
| modern retelling of Ulysses (I saw the post-modern part). It
| sounds like you've spent a lot more time with it so I'm curious
| how you saw it.
| mariusor wrote:
| Your reply is a little meta, but parent probably meant "The
| Odyssey". Ulysses is the Latin name of Odysseus.
| viscanti wrote:
| Ulysses parallels The Odyssey, which is also a father and
| son story. I understand how those books are connected. I'm
| not sure that I understand how GR is a post-modernist
| retelling of either. Seems like I'm missing something so
| I'd love to understand in what way GR is related to either.
| newhaus1994 wrote:
| Perhaps I snuck in a bit of a hot take I had when doing
| my thesis ;) I find that GR's cadence and vibe follow
| Ulysses; the psyche deconstruction that occurs alongside
| physical meandering through mundane locations are so
| similar (to me) as to be inescapable.
| 50 wrote:
| > don't try to understand everything
|
| despite the fact that by reading a text you are actually
| rewriting it (i.e., borges: "All men who repeat a line from
| Shakespeare are William Shakespeare"), maybe reading should be
| like listening to music: to let it flow through you, at least
| for the first few readings or so, and then, if you wish, read
| with a more critical eye
|
| e.g., from _finnegan 's wake_: "The siss of the whisp of the
| sigh of the sowftzing at the stir of the ver grossO arundo of a
| long one to midias reeds; and shaes began to glidder along the
| banks, greepsing, greepsing,duusk unto duusk, and it was sas
| glooming as gloaming could be in the wst of all peacable
| worlds."
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Reading can (and should!) serve many purposes. I, for one,
| don't really like the experiential reading mode. Poetry is
| fine, but for most books I want to understand it
| intellectually.
|
| (Not a criticism, just a refinement of what you said)
| 50 wrote:
| reminds me of roland barthes' conception of readerly
| (straightforward; reaffirms our ideology/offers no
| transgressions) versus writerly (complex; requires some
| leap/myth busting) texts
| steveklabnik wrote:
| > maybe reading should be like listening to music:
|
| Massumi's introduction to his translation of A Thousand
| Plateaus (selected paragraphs by me, it's a lot longer than
| just this of course):
|
| > This is a book that speaks of many things, of ticks and
| quilts and fuzzy subsets and noology and political economy.
| It is difficult to know how to approach it. What do you do
| with a book that dedicates an entire chapter to music and
| animal behavior--and then claims that it isn't a chapter?
| That presents itself as a network of "plateaus" that are
| precisely dated, but can be read in any order? That deploys a
| complex technical vocabulary drawn from a wide range of
| disciplines in the sciences, mathematics, and the humanities,
| but whose authors recommend that you read it as you would
| listen to a record?
|
| > Which returns to our opening question. How should A
| Thousand Plateaus be played? When you buy a record there are
| always cuts that leave you cold. You skip them. You don't
| approach a record as a closed book that you have to take or
| leave. Other cuts you may listen to over and over again. They
| follow you. You find yourself humming them under your breath
| as you go about your daily business.
|
| > The question is not: is it true? But: does it work? What
| new thoughts does it make it possible to think? What new
| emotions does it make it possible to feel? What new
| sensations and perceptions does it open in the body? The
| answer for some readers, perhaps most, will be "none." If
| that happens, it's not your tune. No problem. But you would
| have been better off buying a record.
| Hasu wrote:
| > It's the most difficult book I've ever read--took me several
| months to work through. But I treat it similarly to how
| Finnegans Wake should be treated: don't try to understand
| everything, but rather find something on every page you can
| relate to or appreciate.
|
| This is excellent advice, especially for Gravity's Rainbow -
| I'm certain that a lot of the novel went over my head, but I
| think even if I'd understood all the references and concepts
| explored, this is a book that I still wouldn't fully grasp. It
| actively resists being understood.
|
| I still loved it and got a ton of value out of reading it.
| There are brilliant sections of prose, amazing imagery,
| hilarious jokes, and concepts that I think back on all the
| time.
|
| It took me several aborted attempts to finally finish the
| thing, because I kept losing the thread, and the logical part
| of my brain wanted to understand everything. Once I gave up on
| that and accepted that sometimes I just couldn't understand
| what was happening or what the relevance of a section was, the
| book became easier to read, and much more enjoyable.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > It's a post-modern retelling of Ulysses, for one, but not
| just that. It's a post-apocalyptic novel but also a novel
| incredibly concerned with reconstruction following WWII. It's a
| critique of industrialization, but also a critique of the pop
| movements resisting industrialization.
|
| I've noticed most modern classics that people describe as being
| about a bunch of themes are usually absurdly overrated.
|
| Most of the really great books, people describe, "It's about
| this character who..."
|
| Not, "It's a commentary on..."
|
| The first type of book is good, the second type of book usually
| just panders to an audience and MFAs...
| slothtrop wrote:
| I found it less difficult than Joyce, but by comparison I
| actually enjoy most Pynchon. Never understood the former.
| pfarrell wrote:
| As far as Joyce goes, I haven't read _Ulysses_. _Dubliners_ ,
| however was very approachable and enjoyable. It's is a
| collection of descriptive short stories of people in turn of
| the century Ireland. The final story, "The Dead" is haunting.
| wk_end wrote:
| Personally I love Joyce but found Gravity's Rainbow puerile.
| I definitely missed a lot and should probably take another
| swing at it, though.
| slothtrop wrote:
| puerile is a funny criticism coming from a Joyce fan
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Not for nothing that most Pynchon fans I know are huge
| Joyce fans and vice versa.
|
| There was a young fellow named Hector...
| rooneymcnibnug wrote:
| "puerile"
|
| https://allthatsinteresting.com/james-joyce-love-letters-
| nor...
| olddustytrail wrote:
| I don't think these letters are puerile. There's not much
| childish about them. Maybe poo-rile.
| wk_end wrote:
| This is very silly. I don't think private correspondences
| ought to be held to the same standards as a writer's
| published fiction; even bringing them up is nonsensical.
|
| Beyond that, I'd encourage you to look up the definition
| of "puerile", which is as much about being juvenile or
| silly as it is about sexual or scatological - say what
| you will about those letters or Joyce (or Nora's!)
| particular fetishes, there's nothing that suggests that
| they weren't in earnest.
|
| As a sibling comment at least alludes to, it's much
| fairer to point out that Ulysses has plenty of its own
| sexual or scatological humour, and that someone might
| easily describe it as puerile. And fair enough; as to why
| it doesn't personally strike me that way compared to
| Pynchon, all I'll do is rest on the de gustibus defense.
| justinator wrote:
| I never read the book Gravity's Rainbow, but I had an art book
| that had a drawing for each page of Gravity's Rainbow, which
| makes me both want to read the book, and certainly not want to
| read the book,
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Pictures-Showing-Happens-Pynchons-Gra...
| I_complete_me wrote:
| At eighteen and a student of Civil Engineering in Cork, I got a
| J1 student visa to work in the USA for the summer. I recollect
| that I came across Gravity's Rainbow in a random bookshop in
| New York. It was lionized and it looked difficult so I bought
| it.
|
| I was staying in Far Rockaway and working on East 52nd Street
| in New York so the overall daily commute time was about 5 hours
| with numerous changes. I finished the book in the three months
| I was in America. When I came home, most people I spoke to
| about the book assumed that I'd lost my mind. I've never yet
| met anyone that has read it. I should add that a lot of it went
| over my head. I also managed to crack Rubik's Cube that summer.
| Heady days. That's over 40 years ago.
| tatrajim wrote:
| In a powerful, if indirect, way Gravity's Rainbow changed my
| life. The idea that V2 rockets pockmarked London in a Poisson
| distribution blew my young mind. How could randomness be
| predicted?! It prompted me later to take a number of courses in
| statistics and probability, which deeply informed my academic
| career.
|
| Also, the sheer myth making of Thomas Pynchon as a literary
| hermit (rarely photographed or interviewed) proved influential on
| how I have chosen to live, albeit at a very different level of
| fame.
| scott-smith_us wrote:
| I've tried to get through Gravity's Rainbow at least three times
| over the years, and I've always given up after a week or two.
|
| No matter how far in I get on each attempt, I'm just lost as to
| what's going on, who's talking, and how things are connected...
| nemo44x wrote:
| > No matter how far in I get on each attempt, I'm just lost as
| to what's going on, who's talking, and how things are
| connected...
|
| That's totally normal for the first couple hundred pages. Just
| keep reading. Infinite Jest was sort of similar in this regard.
| But eventually you and the book come together and it really
| begins to flow. There's some really good stories and ideas in
| there, even after all these years.
|
| It's worth it.
| havblue wrote:
| Having enjoyed infinite jest, I was looking for comparisons
| trying to determine if I could make it through GR as well.
| Reddit says Gravity's Rainbow makes infinite jest look like
| twilight in comparison...
| romanhn wrote:
| I posted about it above, but I tried to read Gravity's
| Rainbow right after Infinite Jest. While the latter was a
| bit confusing to follow early on, once you make sense of
| characters, it's pretty easy to keep going. The writing was
| fairly straightforward (even including the million side
| notes). I cannot say the same for GR. I gave up a third to
| a quarter in, having realized that I have no idea what's
| going on and that I can only follow the story line based on
| the Wikipedia summary. It definitely felt like a different
| level of convoluted compared to IJ.
| nemo44x wrote:
| I think you may have dropped GR right when it started to
| pick up a thread. You have to be willing to page back
| here and there when you pick up a reference you think you
| heard earlier to get clarity, but I had this with IJ too.
|
| Trust me, GR really starts to flow and becomes really
| funny. It's literature crafted at a super high level of
| skill.
|
| I guess my point is you start to follow certain
| characters, certain other ones pop up again and again,
| and some come and go. It isn't unusual to page back and
| reread a bit to refresh. But it really becomes a page
| turner eventually.
| smallerfish wrote:
| > If Pynchon apparently claimed to have written much of GR while
| taking psychedelics, well, it doesn't show.
|
| What?! GR is very clearly an acid inspired book. Lots of wild
| ideas and very visual scenes, but I found it tedious to read.
| cossatot wrote:
| I tried re-reading _Sometimes a Great Notion_ by Kesey when I
| moved to Oregon a few years ago. I had read it 20 years ago and
| loved it, at a time when I plowed through fiction. This time,
| though, the passages that were clearly written when the acid
| kicked in were so terrible that I had to move on. Scenes from
| the dog 's perspective (that were also clearly unreasonable,
| such as the dog associating the feeling of a snake bite with
| fire, which most dogs have never felt, vs. getting cut or some
| other feeling that dogs have actually experienced), etc. Cool
| story, with topical themes in the 2020s, but... we have the
| internet, we aren't so bored around the house that the
| opportunity cost to reading this shit is low enough to make it
| worth it.
| notahacker wrote:
| And the only thing that might have influenced it more than
| actual drugs were the drug-infused subcultures of the sixties
| and early seventies. It's a book nominally about WWII and its
| immediate aftermath which devotes more time to a subplot where
| one of the characters going on a road trip to look for a big
| bag of weed for the cool Germans he's been hanging out with
| than the resolution of the war...
| viscanti wrote:
| There are some hilarious and memorable scenes that make it a
| classic for me. Things like the Banana Breakfast were laugh out
| loud moments for me.
|
| As for being influenced by psychedelics, it seems plausible.
| Lots of scenes are portrayed in a way where you can't
| distinguish what is reality and what is a
| dream/hallucination/whatever else it might be that Pynchon has
| in mind. The shifting perspectives across characters within a
| scene and the continuous struggle to figure out what's
| happening, what's really happening, and what's a dream can make
| for a challenging read. Overall I found it an enjoyable read
| but I can understand it's not for everyone (but that's Pynchon
| in general - you either love him or his books are an unpleasant
| slog).
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I've never understood what the author intends to convey in books
| like this. Maybe I'm just a simpleton.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Books like this are deeply immersed in the political and
| culture and subculture of their day, so are hard to approach
| out of context.
| p0pcult wrote:
| It's verbal jazz, or literary expressionism. Riffs and tone
| poems. Look for recurring themes and symbols.
|
| We aren't taught (in American schools, anyway) a lot of how to
| ingest these genres of media. Hence the refrains (about
| abstract art, e.g.) "my 5 year old could paint that!"
| syndacks wrote:
| Postmodernism is definitely taught at the college level but
| it's for reasons like this most people aren't familiar with
| it.
| p0pcult wrote:
| Correct
| jrumbut wrote:
| I've noticed that a lot of people expect books like this to be
| a puzzle, but they really aren't.
|
| When Pynchon writes about Slothrop naked in a barn getting
| attacked by a witch's owl you can just laugh at it, you can
| just be disgusted by Captain Blicero, etc. No mystery solving
| required.
| jandrese wrote:
| It is definitely a book I would dread having a test on after
| reading it.
|
| I think its status as "serious literature" does it a
| disservice in this regard. School teaches us that literature
| must be carefully scrutinized in order to not miss the
| obscured meaning packed into each and every passage. But
| treating Gravity's Rainbow with this level of scrutiny leads
| only to madness.
| jrumbut wrote:
| Yeah, the idea that great literature is great because it
| has a bunch of secret messages encoded in it is as crazy as
| Gravity's Rainbow and kills a lot of people's interest in
| literary fiction.
|
| Funny enough GR does have a bunch of secret messages
| (Tyrone Slothrop -> Sloth Or Entropy), but they aren't why
| the book is good (closer to why the book is bad) and aren't
| necessary to enjoy it.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I wrote a paper on Gravity's Rainbow without reading it, and got
| an A- on it, from which I conclude the professor either had not
| read my paper, or had not read Gravity's Rainbow. Either are
| possible. I prefer to believe that nobody has ever actually read
| Gravity's Rainbow.
| not2b wrote:
| I read it, decades ago. I have to confess that i skipped some
| of the dryer parts, so I probably read 80% of it. There were
| parts that were just amazing, and other parts not so much so.
| It was well worth it.
| [deleted]
| paddw wrote:
| I think you can get an A- on a paper these days for writing
| anything remotely representing a cogent or lucid train of
| thought.
| itronitron wrote:
| The comedian Father Guido Sarducci has a great joke about
| that.
| coldtea wrote:
| You're describing much higher standards than what's the
| case...
| mobb_solo wrote:
| Pynchon isn't "difficult". Try getting stoned before reading.
| notahacker wrote:
| I must admit that I have, in fact, actually read Gravity's
| Rainbow.
|
| On the other hand, I do think it's likely to be high on the
| list of books most admired by people that read _about_ it
| instead of reading it...
|
| (Atlas Shrugged is another. In certain business and political
| circles, the book about the business leaders going on strike to
| prove how much value they really create sounds like the one you
| want to cite as your inspiration, but whenever you open it, it
| just seems like 1000 pages of weirdness about trains,
| philosopher pirates and genius scions of self-made
| conquistadors peddling stock scams as an unlikely act of
| heroism, with drive-by digs at Christianity, marital fidelity
| and nuclear weapons and an 80 page speech in which the world is
| inoculated against socialism by the revelation that 'A is A'.
|
| Bet there's lots of high fantasy lovers that loved works
| _influenced_ by LOTR but never quite got past Tom Bombadil in
| the actual book too, but then there 's others that will know
| the appendices off by heart!)
| clairity wrote:
| i've read both _gravity 's rainbow_ and _atlas shrugged_ ,
| and found both to be worth reading, but _gravity 's rainbow_
| was immensely denser and commensurately more intriguing, if
| also frustrating. _atlas shrugged_ is as straightforward as
| _to kill a mockingbird_ or _the handmaid 's tale_ in its plot
| and messaging, and worth the read in for similarly
| straightforward reasons. _gravity 's rainbow_ seems like it
| was strained through the multiverse of _everything,
| everywhere, all at once_ and spit out linearly fractalized.
| it 's challenging to say the least.
|
| tolkien, on the other hand, i found so boring as to never
| have been able to finish even a fraction of any of his books.
| nkrisc wrote:
| Having read about half of LOTR when I was a kid, then seeing
| the movie trilogy, to reading it now to my son, I have to say
| I actually enjoy it more having seen the movie already.
|
| Knowing the general plot from the movie makes reading
| everything that happens in between the major story beats much
| more interesting since I have a sense of where in the story
| we are. It's also fun to notice the differences when they
| adapted the story for the screen.
|
| I've also told my son the general plot several times
| beforehand (when he wanted me to tell him a story and I
| couldn't think of any other) and I think he's much more into
| it because of that as well. He knows where we are overall and
| what generally comes next.
| legulere wrote:
| Atlas shrugged even contains a part where it complains of
| rentier capitalism, and only paints people that are truly
| genius deserving of their fruits of labour.
|
| It's a horribly written book that also I didn't finish, but
| at least it's ideology also goes a bit against the people
| that think it's about them not getting enough.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| I always find it interesting when Ayn Rand is discussed. I'm
| not from the US and I got The Fountainhead as a present and
| without any knowledge of who she was or what her books were
| about. I quite enjoyed it. There is something appealing about
| the idea of people who are excellent at what they are doing
| and stick to their ideals no matter what life throws at them.
| I then bought and read Atlas Shrugged but it wasn't a great
| read as it drifted off into the rambly and preachy. But again
| the idea of someone starting a society somewhere remote where
| things are right is appealing in some daydreaming romantic
| kind of way.
|
| It then boggled my mind when I learned that people take this
| seriously. And it means something. Rather than it just being
| a work of fiction.
|
| I'm not sure where I'm going with this comment. But if you
| haven't read The Fountainhead and you can mentally distance
| yourself from the political side of everything around it,
| it's worth a read.
|
| (Saying that as someone who read The Lord Of The Rings and
| thought it was okay but couldn't get through The Simarillion
| because it was just a bit too odd)
| api wrote:
| Any Rand was a Russian expat Jew whose family fled the
| Bolsheviks. She wanted to create a kind of anti-Marxism to
| inoculate America and succeeded I think to a very limited
| extent.
|
| In the end I often compare her to Marx. Both were great
| critics but their work breaks down when you get to the "and
| then what" part. And then... magic happens and utopia! You
| just need the enough unicorns.
|
| Followers of these two tend to criticize a lot. Marxists
| can pen deep critiques of capitalism and Randians of
| socialism. But they start sounding magical when it comes to
| solutions.
|
| I've come to be skeptical of criticism and its value. Doing
| things is way harder than criticizing them.
| antognini wrote:
| The way I think of it is that The Fountainhead is a novel
| that was informed by Rand's philosophy. Atlas Shrugged is
| Rand's philosophy in the form of a novel.
|
| One of my professors in grad school was extremely liberal
| but loved Fountainhead and would defend it on the rare
| occasions that it came up.
| climb_stealth wrote:
| > The way I think of it is that The Fountainhead is a
| novel that was informed by Rand's philosophy. Atlas
| Shrugged is Rand's philosophy in the form of a novel.
|
| Oh yes, that describes it perfectly! Thanks for
| mentioning it, for some reason that makes me feel much
| better about the whole thing.
| itronitron wrote:
| They probably did not read it.
|
| I've read the first third of the book, at some point I'll make
| another attempt. Pynchon's writing style is rather interesting
| in that reading it, for me at least, requires dedicated
| concentration for multiple pages until the point when I get
| 'sucked into' the book and then it flows. The only person I
| know that has read through it did so on a road trip and just
| plowed through without trying to make sense of entire chapters.
|
| Gravity's Rainbow is also more challenging because it spans a
| lot of different characters and subplots. The Crying of Lot 49
| is much easier, and Vineland is an aberration. I know one
| person who thinks that Pynchon hired a ghost writer for
| Vineland because the writing style is so different.
| mason55 wrote:
| > _Pynchon 's writing style is rather interesting in that
| reading it, for me at least, requires dedicated concentration
| for multiple pages until the point when I get 'sucked into'
| the book and then it flows_
|
| Yeah, my problem was that I'd get into the flow when there
| was action and things happening, and then zone out during the
| more descriptive/sensationalist passages, but not zone back
| in until I'd missed a bunch more action.
|
| I tried just reading it without worrying if I was zoning in
| and out but I found that I was missing so much that it wasn't
| holding my interest.
|
| I loved the book when I was able to really sit and focus hard
| on what I was reading but at the moment most of my reading
| happens in bed as I'm falling asleep and it's just not the
| kind of book that works for me for that kind of reading.
| Hopefully some day.
| beebmam wrote:
| What is it like reading Pynchon translated into other
| languages? Has anyone done this before?
| Verdex wrote:
| I've only ever read the wikipedia summary. And from that much I
| actually wonder if the professor having read Gravity's Rainbow
| was more likely to have given your paper an A- than another
| professor who hadn't. Like the book sounds like if you were to
| truly understand it then you would no longer understand
| reality.
|
| And this suggests an interesting thought experiment in human
| comprehensibility. Does there exist some media where a totally
| ignorant analysis becomes more compelling once you have
| actually experienced the media being analyzed versus before you
| have experienced the media.
| everly wrote:
| If you want to like Pynchon but are daunted or put off by
| Gravity's Rainbow, start with Bleeding Edge (2013)
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Bleeding Edge is amazing. I think it gets some flak for being a
| bit more surface-level than his better known works, but his
| prose is great as ever and some parts are genuinely chilling.
|
| Also one of the few novels where I feel like the pop culture
| references help instead of hinder it. I love the idea that this
| ancient ex-Navy guy knows enough about Metal Gear Solid to
| reference it in the context of DARPA and the internet as a tool
| of the cold war.
| downut wrote:
| The shorter later novels are not difficult but don't bring the
| full banquet. I still really enjoy them. As a character my wife
| and were quite fond of Maxine in Bleeding Edge. I immensely
| enjoyed Against the Day, which is big enough to get the full
| effect but not quite as anarchic. As with Ulysses, I hated it
| when it 'ended'. Keep going, the ride's fantastic! Mason &
| Dixon has got the dialect problem, which has to be mastered to
| grok what's going on.
|
| I didn't find The Crying of Lot 49 that difficult. However I am
| still annoyed after 4 decades I notice post horns too easily.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Radiohead's fanclub: W.A.S.T.E.
| clairity wrote:
| it's even on coffee bags: https://barrio.la/trystero-coffee/
| a conspiracy, i tell you!
| jrumbut wrote:
| Bleeding Edge might be of particular interest to the crowd here
| because it blends perspectives from at least 60 years of
| engineering, from the slide rules and rolled up sleeves of
| Pynchon's younger days to open source and web 2.0.
|
| I might recommend The Crying of Lot 49 over it though. It is
| weirder but also much faster moving.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| I really liked TCoL49. It's a weird feeling, reading I
| constantly felt like the author was making fun of me, like
| someone telling an elaborate lie just for the fun of knowing
| that people are falling for it. But I had so much fun that I
| just didn't care; I _wanted_ him to trick me into believing
| the whole meant something, because the trip was worth more
| than the destination.
| itronitron wrote:
| That book really opened up history for me, it would be
| interesting to pair that with 'Lies My Teacher Told Me'
| since so much of our knowledge of world history is based on
| third or fourth or fifth hand accounts.
| zug_zug wrote:
| If you want to like Pynchon stop. You shouldn't "want" to like
| anything. Where is this internal pressure coming from, and how
| can you get rid of it?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| ... why's it bad? I've repeatedly put in the work to
| appreciate things that weren't initially appealing, and it's
| been rewarding pretty much every time.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Uh, because it's an obvious status-game with a pretense of
| intellect that fails to garner approval from normal likable
| people as well as the kind of person who likes literature,
| who will in turn feel obligated to out-Pynchon you?
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I think... you're bringing a lot to this discussion that
| wasn't there until you introduced it.
| KyleBrandt wrote:
| If reading, I would recommend a companion book, makes it easy to
| check references if you feel like you are missing too many things
| while reading.
| https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0820328073/ref=tmm_pap_swatch...
| sergiopreira wrote:
| Aha, yes indeed! Given AI right now....
|
| A key theme in the book is the relationship between power and
| technology. Pynchon explores the idea that those who control
| technology also wield immense power, and that this power can be
| both destructive and corrupting.
|
| Super befitting to the current discussion around AI.
| jackconsidine wrote:
| My attempt at GR was humbling. It took months, and like the
| author of this piece, I came away wondering what it was even
| about.
|
| Most advice I read insisted that I shouldn't get hung up on the
| details. Indeed, this and V. both kind of read like a dream to
| me, where I could subconsciously tune in and out and focus on
| certain details, but not all of them.
|
| That probably was the best tact for me, though I got to the end,
| frustrated at how many loose threads I was holding.
|
| Oh I also really didn't enjoy the constant song inventions- there
| probably were 50 of them and I had a hard time appreciating them
| drivers99 wrote:
| > put it down, and thought, like hundreds of thousands of other
| readers, I suspect, _What The Hell Was That About?_ Oh, there was
| a story, there were characters, and it was possible to say what
| the book was "about" in banal terms. But I didn't understand it
| at all.
|
| That's how I felt after reading the "The Illuminatus! Trilogy".
| Wikipedia says it's also postmodern so maybe that's why.
| lubesGordi wrote:
| Every time I read a description of GR I think Robert Anton
| Wilson was probably inspired by that when he wrote The
| Illuminatus! Trilogy. Illuminatus is probably easier to
| understand though. Lots of references to Joyce in Illuminatus
| also. It's probably good prereq reading to GR.
| tomfunk wrote:
| my coworker begged me to read gravity's rainbow with him so i
| did. it was a slog. there are so many nuggets of interesting
| ideas and brilliant prose but the utter hostility to the reader
| made it possibly one of my least favorite reads in recent memory.
| i don't recommend it to anyone.
| doitLP wrote:
| Doesn't that mean it's just a bad book? If the intention of art
| is to communicate a message it fails miserably. I have no
| patience for the college-kid "grand mystery of it all" thing.
| Like how so many festival films just cut to black unresolved.
| 99 times out of 100 it's just lazy film making. The artist
| hiding behind a robe of impenetrability has no clothes on
| underneath.
| jrumbut wrote:
| > the intention of art is to communicate a message
|
| That might not be the intention.
|
| Given the chaos of life, and especially the chaos of WW2,
| isn't it a little ridiculous to tell stories about it that
| are neat and clean and have a coherent logical flow? If
| humanity was like that there never would have been a WW2 to
| write about.
|
| I wouldn't want to only read Pynchon, but given how often we
| dream it makes sense to read a book that follows dream logic
| sometimes.
|
| It captures a very real part of the human experience that
| more plot or message focused literature leaves out.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Doesn't that mean it's just a bad book? If the intention of
| art is to communicate a message it fails miserably.
|
| There are whole genres of music that are often characterized
| as "just noise" or "boring" or whatever by people who haven't
| put in the work to learn how to appreciate them. Some genres
| seem to be much easier to learn to appreciate than others.
| Some are famously difficult.
|
| Books work the same way.
| notahacker wrote:
| > The artist hiding behind a robe of impenetrability has no
| clothes on underneath.
|
| With Gravity's Rainbow, when yet another scene is resolved
| with kinky sex and the overriding narrative arc turns out to
| be an elaborate dick joke, you get the feeling this might
| literally be true!
|
| (Really, GR frequently reverting to the trying-too-hard to
| shock or the scene resolving by the protagonist getting laid
| or inebriated is much more annoying than the stream of
| consciousness style narratives, flowery language, inability
| to suspend disbelief or general mystery about what's supposed
| to be going on, which are more widely used literary
| devices...)
| tomfunk wrote:
| I think of critique in two ways: 1) Did the author,
| filmmaker, etc. effectively achieve what they were trying to
| do? and 2) Did I like it?
|
| So, in the first sense, I don't think it is "bad" because I
| believe this is exactly what the author was setting out to do
| in writing it. In the second sense, yes, it is a bad book in
| that I don't like it.
| flenserboy wrote:
| Sometimes the complexity is necessary and is part of the
| actual art; it is this case when it comes to GR.
|
| Also: for those who like Pynchon, and would like another
| author whose work requires chewing, give William Gaddis a go.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| I felt as I did reading parts 2 and 3 of _The Divine Comedy_ ;
| lost and humbled. I gave up after scratching the surface.
| saghm wrote:
| I imagine I'm not the only person whose strongest association
| with this book is the reference in "Knives Out":
| Benoit Blanc : Harlan's detectives, they dig, they rifle and
| root. Truffle pigs. I anticipate the terminus of Gravity's
| Rainbow. Marta Cabrera : Gravity's Rainbow.
| Benoit Blanc : It's a novel. Marta Cabrera : Yeah, I
| know. I haven't read it though. Benoit Blanc : Neither
| have I. Nobody has. But I like the title.
| awhtakwjht wrote:
| I read the first 50 pages several times
| rooneymcnibnug wrote:
| Those are some good pages, to be fair.
| teach wrote:
| I've owned a copy of GR for over a decade and haven't even
| attempted to read it. This scene in Knives Out made me laugh
| out loud.
| randrus wrote:
| Read GR yonks ago, and it nearly killed me, but I still remember
| laughing til I cried at his description of being fed candies by
| the roommate of the woman he was pursuing. And growing bananas. I
| have no plans to read it again.
|
| OTOH I re-read V and The Crying of Lot 49 every decade or so and
| always have good time. But I liked Infinite Jest and have never
| made it cover-to-cover on anything by Joyce or Beckett.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I bought a stack of Pynchon novels on sale, I've been meaning to
| work up to Gravity's Rainbow (mostly because of its length, not
| complexity). I did read "The Crying of Lot 49", but having
| finished it only a month ago, I'd be hard-pressed to give you a
| coherent summary of what the hell happened in that book.
|
| Clearly Pynchon is not an author I should be reading right before
| bed.
| viscanti wrote:
| Don't psyche yourself out over it. GR is more challenging and
| has less of a clear plot than The Crying of Lot 49, but it's
| still just a book. For a first read, you probably want a very
| light guide for each section (you can read it before or after
| each section so you never feel like you've completely lost the
| plot - I found this one helpful personally)
|
| http://people.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/links/culture/rainbow.be...
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| i read the crying a few years ago.
|
| it is very re-readable.
|
| i don't remember a thing about it.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Gravity's Rainbow was supposed hard for me to read I thought
| COVID might have permanently damaged my brain. The whole work has
| this meandering dream-like quality that only achieves some
| semblance of a normal narratove for a few moments in the middle
| (the tip of the parabola I suppose). I would read several
| paragraphs and wonder how the hell we'd got to wherever we were,
| because it didn't seem related to where we were a page ago and I
| couldn't even remember what happened in between. I sometimes feel
| asleep mere sentences into a reading session. It took me nearly a
| year to work through.
|
| It is a fascinating work though, full of nuances and themes and
| connections everywhere you look. I probably only caught about a
| tenth of them. In that way it makes sense that Jonathan Blow
| referenced Gravity's Rainbow when talking about The Witness.
| hackandthink wrote:
| I read "Gravity's Rainbow" ages ago when I had all the time of
| the world.
|
| Joshua Cohen's "Book of Numbers" feels sometimes pynchonesque.
|
| It's easier to read and set in the 90s.
|
| https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/240498/book-of-numb...
| danielvaughn wrote:
| I tried reading it years ago and gave up after a few pages. I
| might try again one day, but I don't like being actively confused
| when I'm trying to consume content via reading. It just
| frustrates me. Movies I can handle, like Adaptation is one of my
| favorite films of all time, and it "actively resists being
| understood" to quote another commenter here. Yet that approach
| translates much better to film than to literature IMO.
| alehlopeh wrote:
| Is consuming content by reading different than just reading?
| wk_end wrote:
| Adaptation is a great movie but I wouldn't really say it
| resists being understood - it tells a fairly straightforward
| narrative (the only catch, I guess, is the question of how much
| of the climax and denouement is "real" and how much of it is
| "cinema"). Even Charlie Kaufman's most recent film, "I'm
| Thinking of Ending Things", fits that bill an awful lot more I
| think.
| XorNot wrote:
| Good lord I got through, I think maybe a third of this before
| wiki'ing the synopsis and then putting it down forever.
|
| It goes absolutely no nowhere and I'm immensely glad I didn't
| waste my time.
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