My Pynchonian World

I know it's been a while since I've posted, but I have to admit, I can't say I'm sorry! I've been reading Gravity's Rainbow every second I can :). I sadly have had to come to terms with the fact that, somehow, I lost that free time I've enjoyed since before I can remember, the free time I always managed to make for myself in spite of all the responsibilities of school and life, the free time that it seemed few managed to hold on to as years passed. I suppose it's about time I face the fact that I was reading at a blessedly high rate (usually even 70-100 pages a day) that, eventually, had to slow down to a more normal amount. It literally breaks my heart some days. I've been happy, though, knowing that, really, I have all the time I want to read Gravity's Rainbow, which has been an epic ride.

I'm a little less than half way through, only recently having managed to advance at all. Not only was the reading quite difficult for a while, I also had to juggle the accompanying guides, texts, and images that I was using. To my list of help I recently added an episode-by-episode summary found here, which was helpful not so much for the events I was reading, but to look back and see things I didn't before. Gravity needs to be read and reread and reread and reread, so finding this summary right around when I was finishing up Part 1 was helpful to me, as I could look back to the earliest parts of the novel and gain even more understanding. 

As for Part 2, Un Perm' au Casino Herman Goering, I give any frustrated readers stuck in Part 1 the good news: it gets better!!! This explains much of the advancement I mentioned earlier. The section really focuses in on the center of the novel's "plot" (read: series of events), which is: Slothrop. It opens with Slothrop in Riviera, ostensibly on a furlough. Really, though, he's being watched....by everyone and everything, and Slothrop knows it. He goes along with it for a while but eventually starts messing with the plan, getting the agents to "crack" and abandon the experiment. These events are absolutely hilarious, like slap-stick funny and absurd, sometimes even a little sad. Not so much jumping around, a little less of the enigmatic, abstract language (which is still present but in easier-to-swallow doses and already a little clearer after much repitition) all helps to make what I've read of this section much more like a traditional narrative. I can go 10, 20, 30 pages without needing some guide or wiki or another. Pynchon continues to amaze me and I urge anyone even considering reading GR to do so. Embrace the foreign languages, the esoteric words, enjoy knowing you might spend months lost in it. Let it become your world, as it has mine. 

I've been continuing my school reading, too, which exposes me to all types of writers and poets. D.H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Cisneros, Walt Whitman, these are just some of the greats I've been learning about. Poetry definitely is something that I don't read as often as I should, but a couple of my classes have recently filled me with a great desire to go out and buy some poetry volumes!!! Though I'm never too far from poetry when reading Gravity's Rainbow...

Well, that's all for now. GR may be awfully time consuming, but at least it's just as rewarding. One day, onee dayyy I'll be able to read other books again, maybe the next volume of Proust (which stares at me every day in my desk, waiting to be opened) or Ulysses, which I can't wait to try again. Keep reading, everyone!!