Gravity's Rainbow Thread

[CadmiumYellow]

i want to read it this summer, who is in ! everyone is welcome, the more perspectives the better i think. we could start in like june or something ? july, if ppl need time to buy the book and finish other stuff they already started ? we could read, i dunno, a chapter or two a week or something, post when you have questions or thoughts or if you just feel like it. we could meet in person sometimes too ?? that could be fun. drink beer, talk about the book. please say yes ! i am tired of talking about this and not doing it, haha, i am determined to read it this summer ! even if i'm on my own.

here's the part where i sell it to you, in case you are not familiar: "Tyrone Slothrop, a GI in London in 1944, has a big problem. Whenever he gets an erection, a Blitz bomb hits. The novel's title, Gravity's Rainbow, refers to the rocket's vapor arc, a cruel dark parody of what God sent Noah to symbolize his promise never to destroy humanity again. History has been a big trick: the plan is to switch from floods to obliterating fire from the sky. Slothrop's father was an unwitting part of the cosmic doublecross. To provide for the boy's future Harvard education, he took cash from the mad German scientist Laszlo Jamf, who performed Pavlovian experiments on the infant Tyrone. Laszlo invented Imipolex G, a new plastic useful in rocket insulation, and conditioned Tyrone's privates to respond to its presence. Now the grown-up Tyrone helplessly senses the Imipolex G in incoming V-2s, and his military superiors are investigating him. Soon he is on the run from legions of bizarre enemies through the phantasmagoric horrors of Germany."

also there is a character in it named pirate, and he is awesome.

ok friends, let me know 

[Pube Truth]

i'm in. for all of it.

[CadmiumYellow]

sweet ! this is going to be so good ! i can't think of a better group to read a completely absurd book with, haha. ethan and seth, i know you guys expressed interest before ? and hey, david randle ? you would probably love this book ??

haha sorry if i'm being pushy, i just want to do things !!

[WWW.SETH.COM]

I got to finish this christopher buckley book. But that shouldn't take long. Let me know when you want to start.

[Pube Truth]

yeah, i've got like 20 pages left of that asperger's book, but that should take,  oh I dunno, 20 minutes, so yeah, lemme know when you wanna start, and I'll pick up a copy.

[CadmiumYellow]

should we shoot for june then ?? i am down for sooner rather than later if other people are 

[WWW.SETH.COM]

I just finishd my book. I remember this book being kind of a slog, so I think I'm going to get started now. Let me know when we begin officially.

[CadmiumYellow]

yessssssssss this is awesome

aight if you're in, get the book and read the first 30ish pages by june 6th

post whatever you're thinking ! i like the idea of keeping the posting structure loose. and unselfconscious ! not always brilliant, questions sometimes not always answers, not being afraid to just be like yo what the hell is happening. open to anyone's interpretation, cause the book allows for that. sharing that instead of turning it into some stupid i'm-right-you're-wrong thing. this is my vision !

i'm gonna try to convince certain ppl irl to read with us (cough mr. english parry cough) 

[CadmiumYellow]

here is more selling ! maybe we'll get more volunteers that way. i love you all very much and i want to read books with you ! here's more on why we should read this one:

"Ignore the begrudgers; never mind who Pynchon is supposed to be 'better' or 'worse' than; don't worry about not understanding all of it first go. Pynchon is one of the most intelligent and well-read novelists of all time, more so than you or I, but he has a rock'n'roll heart; nobody else can leap from zoot-suited craziness to rocket chemistry to diving down a toilet in search of a lost harmonica (twenty years before Trainspotting, kids) to minutely researched accounts of genocide and still keep littering his wildly elastic prose with daft little songs. There were probably people in ancient Greece who thought that Homer was an untalented driveller, too. Ignore them. Dive in. Enjoy. The last page is a killer. " -internet customer

do it do it you won't do it ! what else is happening this summer ?? probably nothing ! !

[Pube Truth]

alright, i'll get a copy today and start reading

[WWW.SETH.COM]

I remember that toilet-diving scene. I recall there were times when I could easily see Pynchon's world via his text. Other time his words were like an epic labyrinth between myself and the author's ideas.

[WWW.SETH.COM]

Curse you Pynchon and your allergy to segues!

[oatmeal fetish....]

Were you guys just able to find your copies in local bookstores or did you have to order them? I've looked at 3 places and so far no luck 

[oatmeal fetish....]

nevermind found it, starting it this afternoon 

[WWW.SETH.COM]

I need to start taking notes as I read this so as to ask questions in this thread. For example, there's a digression about a character's ancestry I'm curious about.

[oatmeal fetish....]

Slothrop's family's gravestones?

[WWW.SETH.COM]

Yeah, that's the one. I didn't want to mention the character's name out of some kind of spoiler paranoia.

I forgot how much Pynchon likes to list detail. I like it, a bit.

[CadmiumYellow]

nevermind found it, starting it this afternoon 

YESSSSSSSSS     

[WWW.SETH.COM]

There's a paragraph during the flashback about how Roger Mexico meets Jessica about older women with Fireman-sex fantasies. I found it significant for some reason.

[oatmeal fetish....]

I just got to one of the weirdest digressions yet. Slothrop is being administered a test and suddenly finds himself back in America before the war. He falls into a toilet to escape being raped by a gang of black men, and then it just sort of digresses into nonsense. There is mention in the next section about how he is undergoing a test to determine something about race relations, but I still don't quite follow. The whole thing was described very vividly, and even though I don't quite get what happened I really do like the digressions.