Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow is one of the most dense and difficult works I've ever managed to read. The narrative is convoluted and digressive. The characters are unhinged, paranoid, and solipsistic. There is a decent overview of the plot on Wikipedia, but I will try to give my own synopsis.
The story takes place at the end of World War II. London is being bombarded by Germany's V-2 rocket. Ned Pointsman is a doctor at the "White Visitation", a sort of asylum where war intelligence work is done. Studies are done following Pavlov's work on mental conditioning and psychology. They discover that the sexual escapades of Lt. Tyrone Slothrop match precisely with the location of the rocket attacks and predate them by a few days. Thus we learn that the rocket is entwined with sex, specifically Slothrop's. And Slothrop's sex life is warped by Pavlovian experiments done on him when he was young boy. There is a steady theme of paranoia, mixed with the reality that many of Slothrop's and other's actions are controlled or directed by a mysterious Them. There's an affair between Jessica Swanlake and Roger Mexico. There's a dark S&M game played by Katje and Gottfried in Denmark under the direction of their master Weissman, also known as Blicero.
In part 2, peace is breaking out and Slothrop is sent to the Casino Hermann Goering where he rescues Katje from an apparent octopus attack. They sleep together and then she disappears, and he sneaks away from his watchers to go on a secret mission. In Zurich he meets a member of an Argentinean freedom group that has commandeered a German sub and takes a message for him.
Part 3 is titled "In the Zone". This is the zone inside occupied Germany where there is much activity around the rocket. A group of Africans have been brought to form a Swartzcommando. They are trying to reconstruct a copy of the V-2 rocket, the 00000. Meanwhile a Russian named Tchitcherine is looking for their leader Enzian, who is his half-brother. Slothrop gets involved with a drug dealer, gets chased by American soldiers, gets captured and released by Tchitcherine, and meets a horror movie actress named Greta. Greta leads him to the Anubis, a sort of pleasure ship traveling on a German river. There he witnesses and takes part in an orgy. After getting washed overboard he wanders around a lot and enjoys his alter ego as the Rocketman.
In Part 4 Slothrop's narrative dissolves as the 00000 is reconstructed by Blicero and Enzian. The story is filled with various digressions such as Japanese kamikazes and sentient lightbulds. In the end the rocket is assembled with Blicero's sex slave Gottfried inside and fired towards England.
The exposition above can barely scratch the surface of the happenings in this book. There are many flashbacks and sub-plots. The themes revolve around paranoia, free will versus fate, and sex as power. The travels of Slothrop are told not in a traditional narrative but as a very imaginative, wandering stream-of-consciousness flow. At times we are not sure what is real and what is imaginary. Though the characters seem paranoid, eventually true conspiracies are revealed.
A few things stick in my memory: that the V-2 rocket strikes without warning since it travels faster than sound, and that has an affect on the psychology of those in London. That Slothrop's fate is tied to the rocket through Jamf's experiments on him, the man who created the rocket's plastic component Imipolex G. Slothrop loses his focus in Germany and doesn't really understand why he's there. The Swartzcommando in Germany is a kind of dark force of power that Tchitcherine is drawn to but that he wants to destroy. Slothrop's sexual escapades culminate on the Anubis with the orgy and Greta's daughter Bianca, who later dies. That Greta and Bianca are somehow linked to a rocket scientist named Pokler who gets visitations from a girl who may be his daughter or a series of impostors. That the sexual depravity in the White Visitation is mirrored by Blicero's at the cottage in Denmark, and it is Blicero who sends his "son" to be sacrificed on the rocket.
It is difficult to judge this book. At times it was enjoyable and occasionally funny. A lot of the time it was confusing. The novel's title refers to the trajectory of the rocket as it flies through the atmosphere and finally lands on its target. Certainly the rocket and its fate influence the story's arc, and engineering and mathematics are throughout the book. I think a good work of literature should be enjoyable with or without extra explanation, but this book is so complex that it is difficult to really appreciate it without extended footnotes. At the same time, I know there is good stuff there. I will give a B. I am glad to have gotten through it. Some long books are exciting and you don't want them to end, or you have mixed feelings about the end because you will enjoy it but it will all be over. This is not one of those books. It was a marathon read. I was exhausted after reading it.
The story takes place at the end of World War II. London is being bombarded by Germany's V-2 rocket. Ned Pointsman is a doctor at the "White Visitation", a sort of asylum where war intelligence work is done. Studies are done following Pavlov's work on mental conditioning and psychology. They discover that the sexual escapades of Lt. Tyrone Slothrop match precisely with the location of the rocket attacks and predate them by a few days. Thus we learn that the rocket is entwined with sex, specifically Slothrop's. And Slothrop's sex life is warped by Pavlovian experiments done on him when he was young boy. There is a steady theme of paranoia, mixed with the reality that many of Slothrop's and other's actions are controlled or directed by a mysterious Them. There's an affair between Jessica Swanlake and Roger Mexico. There's a dark S&M game played by Katje and Gottfried in Denmark under the direction of their master Weissman, also known as Blicero.
In part 2, peace is breaking out and Slothrop is sent to the Casino Hermann Goering where he rescues Katje from an apparent octopus attack. They sleep together and then she disappears, and he sneaks away from his watchers to go on a secret mission. In Zurich he meets a member of an Argentinean freedom group that has commandeered a German sub and takes a message for him.
Part 3 is titled "In the Zone". This is the zone inside occupied Germany where there is much activity around the rocket. A group of Africans have been brought to form a Swartzcommando. They are trying to reconstruct a copy of the V-2 rocket, the 00000. Meanwhile a Russian named Tchitcherine is looking for their leader Enzian, who is his half-brother. Slothrop gets involved with a drug dealer, gets chased by American soldiers, gets captured and released by Tchitcherine, and meets a horror movie actress named Greta. Greta leads him to the Anubis, a sort of pleasure ship traveling on a German river. There he witnesses and takes part in an orgy. After getting washed overboard he wanders around a lot and enjoys his alter ego as the Rocketman.
In Part 4 Slothrop's narrative dissolves as the 00000 is reconstructed by Blicero and Enzian. The story is filled with various digressions such as Japanese kamikazes and sentient lightbulds. In the end the rocket is assembled with Blicero's sex slave Gottfried inside and fired towards England.
The exposition above can barely scratch the surface of the happenings in this book. There are many flashbacks and sub-plots. The themes revolve around paranoia, free will versus fate, and sex as power. The travels of Slothrop are told not in a traditional narrative but as a very imaginative, wandering stream-of-consciousness flow. At times we are not sure what is real and what is imaginary. Though the characters seem paranoid, eventually true conspiracies are revealed.
A few things stick in my memory: that the V-2 rocket strikes without warning since it travels faster than sound, and that has an affect on the psychology of those in London. That Slothrop's fate is tied to the rocket through Jamf's experiments on him, the man who created the rocket's plastic component Imipolex G. Slothrop loses his focus in Germany and doesn't really understand why he's there. The Swartzcommando in Germany is a kind of dark force of power that Tchitcherine is drawn to but that he wants to destroy. Slothrop's sexual escapades culminate on the Anubis with the orgy and Greta's daughter Bianca, who later dies. That Greta and Bianca are somehow linked to a rocket scientist named Pokler who gets visitations from a girl who may be his daughter or a series of impostors. That the sexual depravity in the White Visitation is mirrored by Blicero's at the cottage in Denmark, and it is Blicero who sends his "son" to be sacrificed on the rocket.
It is difficult to judge this book. At times it was enjoyable and occasionally funny. A lot of the time it was confusing. The novel's title refers to the trajectory of the rocket as it flies through the atmosphere and finally lands on its target. Certainly the rocket and its fate influence the story's arc, and engineering and mathematics are throughout the book. I think a good work of literature should be enjoyable with or without extra explanation, but this book is so complex that it is difficult to really appreciate it without extended footnotes. At the same time, I know there is good stuff there. I will give a B. I am glad to have gotten through it. Some long books are exciting and you don't want them to end, or you have mixed feelings about the end because you will enjoy it but it will all be over. This is not one of those books. It was a marathon read. I was exhausted after reading it.
Labels: paranoia, Pavlov, postmodern, Pynchon, sex, V-2, World War II
posted by Dylan Peters | 8/24/2009 09:02:00 PM
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