I’m on page 440 of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, and at this point, I’m lost. Even reading The Library’s Guy’s website, where he exposes each section of the long novel into bite-size plot points, confuses me. I consistently lose characters and the placement of the narrative. I feel high when I get a cultural reference here and there, but as the saying goes, it’s mostly Greek to me.
Nevertheless, I find GR an enjoyable read. I love the language and its playfulness, but this may be the most tense, text-wise, novel I have ever read. And it’s hard for me to put down; it’s a page-turner, but not the suspenseful type of attraction, but more of the feeling of being in good company. It also helps that I’m not in tune with plots or storylines in the first place. I prefer mood over narration progression, and I have no trouble reading about the weather in a particular scene in a book that lasts for pages.
Pynchon is very much a writer of his generation and time. I’m not sure if a contemporary writer does such a novel now. The reason is that the Internet has changed narration, and technology makes things more fragmented, so although books like GR are very much the avant-garde of that process, people are now experiencing the horrific aspects of wars, economic disasters, and death worldwide in real-time. Memoirs are popular because it is the writer’s struggle to make sense of their world; more likely, readers can identify with that process. I think people in the 1960s were willing to expand what they knew or thought they knew into a new landscape. Also, due to The Internet and even AI Chat, people want to get their information more straightforwardly. They want to avoid the wiggle room that literature can provide. It’s very much the issue of the streaming/internet world destroying the concept of the music album, which has a narrative, but listeners want to go past that to hear their songs of choice.
I’m looking forward to not finishing GR. This doesn’t mean I will stop reading the book or put it aside, but I don’t want this journey to end. I find myself reading a page over again or wandering to the middle of the text on a specific page, and I am surprised to realize I’ve missed that key information. My mind drifts, but not in an annoying manner, but making my adventure part of the reading. And I will continue and report back.
Mason and Dixon is one to try. Once you get into the rhythm of the wonderful language it's amazing. I once asked Salman Rushdie what Pynchon was like, he told me "He knows a lot of TV trivia." Maybe that will help you with GV!
Cheers!
Aye, I too was frequently lost, and still am in both V. and Gravity's Rainbow, I too reread frequently, including over the years, but I too, like you, realized I was having a special and unique experience...the wordplay alone is delightful, even with all the missing information. Cheers.