GRAVITY'S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon

I don't know. We must have read different books. To me the main uniting thread is corporate exploitation, with parallel lines of plot both at the level of personal exploitation as well as at the national level. The staples to reality being Ford corporation (not explicitly name) and von Braun's curious flip to NASA

Thanks, Chris! This was my first view of one of your videos and I will definitely look forward to watching the others. I did watch/listen to the entire video presentation and it's a wonderful modern reference tool for understanding/enjoying "Gravity's Rainbow". I came to the book via author Alan Moore who, puts it at #1 in his list of 100 books to read, so, naturally, I was curious if you have had the good fortune of reading his gigantically inspired, "Jerusalem", yet? Recommended by me to thee as a "thank you" for the insightful video.

April is the cruelest month

Bravo! Bravo! I just read GR for the first time (3rd try) and just listened to this video while coming & going in my car over the last week. And pow! You list a bunch of the references. That’s huge. Really nicely done. 👍

It's probably out of print by now, but I think the first compilation of scholarly Pynchon essays was Mindful Pleasures. It had the Slade, Tanner and Poirier you quoted and also an indispensable piece by Edward Mendelson, who called Pynchon the greatest living writer in the English language. Which kind of ups Bloom for fanboying ;)

A point about who Pirate's first fantasy was surrogating for: I don't think it's Blicero. I don't think Blicero would trouble himself about being Elect. I think it's Brigadier Pudding's fantasy. The iconography is pure London. And Pudding has a fantasy life that's quite of interest to The Firm, cf. Domina Nocturna, Shining Mother and Last Love.

I feel like I'm too stupid to read Gravity's Rainbow. However, I'll always feel that way. Not because inadequacy but because I'd like to understand all the nuisances and intricacies woven onto the pages by Pynchon. Where are DFW's footnotes when you need 'em?

Finished a close first reading of GR over the course of a few months and wanted some virtual feedback! Thanks for your fine efforts in compiling these myriad thoughts. One knock on Pynchon, and this novel in particular, is that there are passages which even after multiple readings are nearly inexplicable. I’ve read that Pynchon copped to not always knowing what he was writing about (wink wink), but I’m curious if anyone else felt at sea during their reading.

I read this when it was new. Enjoyed it. Had some knowledge of the V2

Always wanted to read it again but lacked the energy. I may be ready....

Thanks!!! Incredible video!!!

I had great fun reading Gravity's Rainbow for the first time after it hovered like a ghost over myself and a few friends over the past years. My first pynchon as well. I'll admit that while cruising through the novel I felt like I was missing out on quite a bit of the subtleties and that I was going to need a re-read despite my enjoyment. Of course that is absolutely still the case (needing a re-read that is), but your video was an excellent follow-up exercise and an incredible help in my absorbing of the novel. Helped me realize I picked up on a lot more than I had initially thought and allowed me to contextualize other parts I had missed the significance of. Thanks! Continue making great content!

thank you!

Critic Sven Birkerts wrote that both Pynchon and De Lillo investigate "hidden structures of power" in their novels.

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didn't expect to but watched the whole thing haha, brilliant and really engaging, thank you so much! can't get enough of gravitys rainbow and feel a lil lost since finishing it

Someone said "Bureaucracy is evil." Why is it evil? Because bureaucracy erases accountability. No one is to blame for anything. It's just how things work, how things are.

Finishing this book is a hazing ritual for admission into a cult.

I’ve read Anti-Oedipus and I hated it. The analysis of Pinchon by that particular author seemed more like an overanalysis. Just not a fan of Foucault, Derrida, Lacan and Deleuze. I love Freud though, and I like this review video however, and am enjoying it so far.

Appreciate your efforts. Have only read one Pynchon novel, that was Mason & Dixon and found it beautifully written, heartrending at times, funny, and very moving. Hard to start GR as I cannot stand the lead characters name slothrop. Don't want to read or hear in my head such a terrible sound, an anti-name. But who knows, you might persuade me. Thank you!

What the hell are you waiting for before venturing forth into Against The Day.

Do you plan on reading or reviewing Against the Day [if you haven't read it already]? Some Pynchon fans don't like it but it's not only my favorite Pynchon novel but it's my favorite work of fiction of all time. Pure masterpiece. Would love to see what you think.

Very thorough and insightful analysis.

I read Gravity's Rainbow as an English major at UCLA in the mid 90s. I loved it. But I had to disavow everything our professor told us about the book. It really has to be experienced on an individual level. I had classmates who were reading the Weisberg guide on GR. A big mistake. They held too many preconceived notions. You just have to dive in and enjoy it. If something makes you scratch your head, mark the page, underline, and do some research. But keep trucking. It was one of the greatest reading experiences I ever had. After I finished, I gave my copy to my grandfather, a very big reader and the most brilliant man I've ever known. Like me, it also took him two weeks to get through it. We arrived at different conclusions but we both loved the book. It was a subject of frequent discussion between us for the rest of his life. It's a very special book to me.

You have nice eyes bro

How has this video not been taken down??? Masturbating for 3 hours on camera wth dude!

I just started reading Gravity’s Rainbow. And my goodness, the breadth of Pynchon’s use of language is mind blowing.

Favorite book of all time, thank you : )

I tried that book years ago and absolutely unreadable

I first read at 16 couldn't read it past 10 pages. Again read at 19 after reading ij, brothers karamazov, war and peace and other biggies....this is the greatest novel ever written. I just don't find anything comparable to this book. The most unique writer.

masterpiece review. Check out my movie like trailer Of gravity’s rainbow and others of Pynchon like AtD,m&d on my channel

It was when Pynchon mentioned the town I live in that my paranoia really kicked in with GR

Great video - took me many separate viewings while eating, but finally got through it. Loved the novel and very much enjoyed re-living a lot of it as you passed through it in your review. Will have to take up Recognitions at some point, and pick up some of the secondary literature for my eventual inevitable second pass of GR. Again, great stuff, keep it up.

Every sentence is a family guy cut away gag

I see Gramsci in the bottom left 👀

Regarding what GR is about… I read somewhere of Pynchon commenting that he didn’t know what the hell he was attempting with that book. Kind of an derogatory, off-the-cuff summary of the book. At least that’s how I interpreted it at the time.

Does anyone know where that was from? I’m confident that it wasn’t something I dreamt.

Gravity's Rainbow is my favourite book ever. Not only is it unique, hilarious, imaginative and MONSTROUSLY encyclopedic, it's also probably the most vividly written novel I've ever read. The descriptions of every environment, foodstuff, schedule, map, film, weapon or cloud formation is beautifully (and often grotesquely) worded; Casino Hermann Goering will likely stay in my head until I die. It utterly defies convention and expectation. There is no book like it and there will be no book like it ever again.

I could just read the whole book rather than watch a 4 hour video.

Just finished this two days ago, definitely feels like it will be one of the seminal linguistic experiences for the rest of my life. So thankful to have a resource like this to help contextualise many of the parts of the book, and also can't wait to read it again (in like, five years haha)

The really weird thing is the trans-finite numbers between zero and one is a larger infinity the than the rational numbers between zero and one as you can’t the next trans-finite number as was conjectured by Cantor and proven by modern mathematicians.

"You cannot spoil gravity's rainbow for would-be readers"
As a huge Hideo Kojima fan I've have been saying for years that I'm not sensitive to spoilers, as it isn't what happens, but how it happens that is interesting, and with this video I feel I'm going down another rabbit hole just as I was when I read House of Leaves and Pale Fire. Postmodern storytelling is just my thing is would seem

I saw this video but watched maybe only the first 30 min, then in English our final was to pick whatever book we wanted and do a report on it and I chose GR. Such a good choice this video got me to read such an amazing book

Now I've seen your entire video and I love it. Thanks again. I'm planning on doing a second reading of GR so I looked around and luckily found your video. I just want to say something regarding your quoting the "pure, informationless state of signal zero." I read GR 30 years ago and I just recently reread a journal I was keeping at the time and the one quote I included in my journal was about Mondaugan's "electro-mysticism" in which "the triode was as basic as the cross in Christianity. " It seemed to me that you may have missed a key point here, or at least what I think is a key point, in this quote (I don't have a copy of GR handy). In this "electro-mysticism" system the "ego, the self that suffers a personal history bound to time" is the grid while the "true Self is the flow between the cathode and the plate. The constant pure flow." I think we can think of the pure flow as pure consciousness---I'm drawing from Patanjali's dhyana yoga here---which, the GR narrator says, is modulated by what is on the grid: "sense data, feelings, memories relocating" all of which are, of course, the stuff of the ego in the yogic view. We are told in GR that these are "constantly changing with time, now positive, now negative . . ." ---the ups and downs, in other words, of Samsara. Then: "Only in moments of great serenity is it possible to find the pure, the informationless state of signal zero." That would be the "citta vritti nirodha" of Patanjali meaning the cessation of the activity of the mind. The zero. This establishes contact with pure consciousness and its source: "Ishvara," defined by the Yogapedia as "synonymous with Brahman (or Absolute Reality), but can also refer to the Supreme Consciousness . . ." Or, one might say, "beyond the zero" which might be at least one meaning of that phrase. Moksha. Further, perhaps that is what happened to Slothrop with his "dissipation." He became one with the all so that in some mystical sense his story was done, finished. We could talk about the earthy fertility sign of the Rainbow/Earth at that moment, its naturalism and promise of renewal but this is getting longish. He was, after all, "just feeling natural," which is the last we from him. I just think that the, for lack of a better word, mystical themes in Pynchon shouldn't be overlooked. Also, somewhat on those lines, the "parallelism" that challenges cause and effect can be seen as synchronicity, the acausal relations Jung discusses. Pynchon is full of synchronicities (Inherent Vice particularly, perhaps) . . . I could say more of course . . . ---thanks again, I'm glad your video is out there!

This is great, thank you. I'm curious: what is the source of the story of Hitler's dream that the V2 couldn't fly? That is indeed very interesting.

Lebensraum was about conquering Ukraine and incorporating it into a new German civilization. Putin's main goal right now is about stopping that from happening and keeping Ukraine out of western Europe's orbit.

I'm curious if you think any of the sexual encounters are gratuitous. Why or not why? I listened to GR on audio, and I remember nearly throwing up while riding my bike home. I'm not sure what some of the scenes added...