so i started gravity's rainbow the other day

j., though there are places that made me laugh i think of it as closer to, i dunno, reading comic books; most of the gags aim for amusement or wonder, instead of laffs.

the chase scene in the mountain, btw, is where pynchon totally excels at this in GR. by Vineland, it's increasingly how he's doing EVERYTHING.

i like it that pynchon sort of forces me into a sense-driven reading mode precisely b/c it cuts across how i (& probably lots of foax) learned to "appreciate" literature in school.

Wow that's embarassing. I think I've always spelled it like that too. *hangs head in shame*

(compare the moments of terror, fear, etc., in gr to just the set-pieces in v - which leads me to wonder what a comparable list of them might be for gr.)

as per leslie fiedler there is little difference, generically, between sex porn and horror-porn, which is why in particular i was moved to wonder where the horror-porn is in gr (it is clearly locatable in v).

i don't know if that would even satisfy me, though, as far as my question above goes, since that would make for an asymmetry between the horrific and the sex-porn in 'gr', given that the latter is easily localizable to particular encounters, some fantasies.

oboy

i'm halfway through and i'm pretty sure > halfway out of my depth. but it's doing a good job of expanding my imagination, empathy, understanding of how life exists on earth, etc. flattening of time and space, the quintuple zero, mapping of coordinates (in the context of categorized and apposite human destruction) are all combined like a very elaborate and troubled essay of what's going on at the center of human evolution since like the discovery of the printing press. and all those s/m scenes! i really have to ask -- do you people think it's an accurate rep. of berlin sex life? hottt and weirdddddddd. i think he's getting at something else under the surface of that, you know? beyond decadence...

Writing about Oakley Hall the band, I came across Pynchon's original review of the novelist Oakley Hall's Warlock (think he wrote more later), on this good Pynchon archive (which has lots more besides his essays, that's just where I came in)
http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_gift.html

okay, I just finished this...it took me a solid year. I kept having to stop and take breathers, but it was mind-blowing. I feel I must read it again, as I'm sure I've missed a ton of subtext

I'm exactly at that point, too, Morley.

"the smoke of certain afternoons" is such an odd thing to find qualms with.

can one find qualms or just have them?

"October 25: Rocketmen and Wastelands, an essay by Marshall Shord - Shord is a recent graduate of Washington College, Maryland, who won the nation’s largest undergraduate literary prize, the Sophie Kerr Prize, in large part thanks to his 100-page critical thesis on the first three novels of Thomas Pynchon. Shord was awarded a check for almost $56,000 for his scholarly excellence and last we heard he’s been traveling the world. The Modern Word is proud to share the Pynchon paper worth a BMW, which could be characterized as one reader’s personal dialogue with Pynchon’s first three novels."

http://themodernword.com/pynchon/shord.pdf

^thanks for this...v. good reading on a slow day at work.

pers'n'ly i am for thinking it is awful

who would make the best film adaptation of gravity's rainbow? i think the coen bros would do the best at casting the array of characters.

i read this book 15 yrs ago in fits & starts over six months mostly "under the influence" so it passed by in a semi-comprehensible haze. what stuck was the names, i almost made "geli tripping" my first ILM tag.

ken's takes on the science/literary split feel absolutely OTM to me.

I read the first ten pages the other day! If I could only quit it with the Internet for a week or two I'd be able to get through the rest. Already I can sense it's gonna be pretty sick.

if you read gravity's rainbow in two weeks i doubt you are really reading it

i like the coen brothers doing this, but, dumb question, wouldn't it have to be a miniseries, not a movie?

if you think about the timeline and actual narrative in gravity's rainbow, i think it would fit into a 2 hour (or maybe a little more) film

Have you heard Saunders' Issac Babel reading on the New Yorker podcast?

no wai cutty -- slothrup would barely be parachuting within the first two hours, and that's omitting the musical numbers.

i do not think coens are a great match, because of their tendency to flatten the whole range of humor into one dry sadistically funny band, and i would submit alex cox as a better director.

i don't think you could do it justice in 2 hours! you'd have to leave too much out and all of the plot digressions are what make the book what it is.

also i think the coen brothers would make it too hokey. i don't really think gr could be made into a worthwhile film, actually.

i would say maybe terry gilliam over the coen bros tho

howz about coens for the dance numbers, someone else for the rest.

Have you heard Saunders' Issac Babel reading on the New Yorker podcast?

wrong thread?

Ha, yes. That was for "Book Remakes".

just found a link to it, i will check it out!

and that's omitting the musical numbers.

the musical number in the white visitation room with all the lab workers in a maze, damn that would be so awesome.

I think this would have to be an animated film to work properly.

Also Louis, I would recommend reading it as quickly as possible and not trying to follow it too closely, just enjoy the language and humour, and then re-reading it extensively at your leisure.

(6'53" if you don't want to sit through the whole thing)