Given that I haven’t picked up Gravity’s Rainbow in over a week it must be time to throw in the towel. Over the last week I have picked up some advice from a variety of sources. Advice no.1 is to not make Gravity’s Rainbow your first ever Pynchon. Oops. Advice no. 2 is not to worry about anything on the first read through, things are more likely to work out second time round. Huh? Read it twice? God forbid!
As I beat a hasty and thankful retreat I reflect that to Gravity’s Rainbow falls the singular, and dubious, honour of being the book to most nearly cause me to throw up (in public!) Yeah, that was the clinching moment.
However, I also recall that “All the radii of the room are hers” (love that), there were lyrical bananas, a hilarious take on English “candy” and everything with an octopus is good.
There is a plan. Read some shorter offerings from Pynchon, and then, I’ll be back…
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The Crying of Lot 49 is a pretty easy (and short) read. And it’s not short, but a whole lot of Against the Day is very palatable and even fun. V wasn’t a fun read, though I was glad I read it. I had to pick Gravity’s Rainbow up three or four times over the course of probably a decade to get into it enough to finish. When I was done, I was glad I had read it, but, as with V, I sure couldn’t say that I had enjoyed the whole thing.
Thanks Daryl. Reassuring, if not exactly encouraging for a further attempt. I have just read a review of The Crying of Lot 49, and it does sound amusing. Elsewhere I have seen V recommended as a good first Pynchon, but having now found multiple votes for TCof L49 as entry point that must be the way to go.
Flicking through Gravity’s Rainbow, before putting it back on the shelf, there were some wonderful passages… but not in sufficient quantity to propel me through the more numerous difficult parts.
I might invest in the Gravity’s Rainbow guide book before embarking a second time.
Sounds like my experience with Roberto Bolano’s “The Savage Detectives” – 623 pages. The reviews were reverent, but I found it terribly repetitious about this young group of people. I quit after 143 pages, have no regrets.
Oh… Hoping to read Bolano’s 2666 in the New Year… Hm.
I generally regret leaving a book unfinished, but not usually untempered by relief. And I find that reading a too hard book can lead to no reading whatsoever. In the grand scheme of things there are too many potentially great books to linger over the one which isn’t working out.
Anokatony, I had nearly the same experience with The Savage Detectives, though I muddled along for a few hundred more pages than you managed before I gave up. Sarah, it’s not a hard book — just kind of dull. Given all the raves it got, I figure I must either be missing something or not be wired for that type of book. I did like 2666. Some of it was a little tedious, but the last section is really good, and there’s a lot of interesting stuff in the first two sections. It’s definitely worth some time and effort.
Useful post. I have had both Gravity’s Rainbow and TCoL49 on my shelves for ages, but have never had the urge (or the courage!) to read them. It now seems that starting with TCoL49 seems my best chance of finally getting properly acquainted with Thomas Pyncheon
Has anybody here read Mason and Dixon? Someone gave it to me for my birthday.
Anna – There definitely seems to be a consensus on which is the right way to go with Pynchon. I hope that your efforts are more successful than mine. I hadn’t heard of ‘Mason and Dixon,’ but it has a Wikipedia entry… It sounds wonderful, but I begin to think that I enjoy reading about Pynchon more than actually reading him.
Daryl – I hope that you will be reading 2666 with Infinite Summer in the New Year. Assuming that it is the kind of book that one would wish to re-read.
Anna, I started M&D a few years ago and found it pretty entertaining, but life intervened and I put it down and haven’t gotten back to it. This post and the fact that a friend started and put down Pynchon’s Vineland recently made me pick that one back up last night. I’d never given it a real try. I read the first section last night, and it was delightful. I don’t know that TCoL49 is really at all representative of Pynchon’s longer work, but I’m getting the feeling that Vineland may be. That said, I’m only 12 pages in, so there’s a lot that could go wrong still.
Sarah, I doubt I’ll reread 2666 quite so soon again. It’s a big time investment for something I’ve read so recently. And with my abortive attempt to blog Dracula (which I did read, and even ahead of schedule) in mind, I doubt I could do the book justice on the blog. Infinite Jest was a special thing for me, I think, because it’s such an important work to me. Maybe I’ll chime in from time to time on 2666, but I think I sort of spent myself on IJ in terms of blogging. I’ll surely be following some of the blogs, at any rate.
I agree that Infinite Jest was special. I was hugely enamoured by the idea of the group on-line read, and still am, in principle; but I realise now that it was the combination of group read and IJ which was critical.
I have nearly finished Dracula, but the Infinite Summer component pretty much fell by the wayside.
Hope you enjoy Vineland. I am going to try again with Pynchon. But not too soon. And this time it will not feel like running my head into a wall…
Daryl, “pretty entertaining” sounds good
I think I will start with Lot49, since it is only a slim volume, and if I like that I will continue with M&D and then, if I still like Pynchon, I might buy Vineland, and then maybe I might finally at long last read Gravity’s Rainbow.
At least you started… I didn’t!
I did get to 100 pages, on my first attempt, before I put it down. I might try again next year.
Best of luck on your Pynchon plan. Inherent Vice sounds really interesting (maybe I just like vice stories!)
I’m still chugging along on Gravity’s Rainbow and I will tell you that having the Companion has helped me to enjoy it FAR more. I wasn’t quite sure how to use it at first, but I’ve gotten into a pattern of reading the Companion’s introduction (normally a short paragraph) to each chapter before I read the chapter itself. Typically the introduction grounds me as to an estimated date and place and a general overview of what will happen in the chapter. Then I read the Gravity’s Rainbow chapter and I go back to the Companion and read the notes.
There is no analysis in the Companion. It’s simply a whole lot of notes that provide more information on the technological, historical and geographical references that are in the book. Some of the notes that have been especially helpful have been on the Herero and on the actual historical facts surrounding the development of the V2 and V4 rockets.
I’m on page 377 now and I think I’ve read six or eight other books since I started Gravity’s Rainbow. Had I not decided to read other things in order to break this whole thing up, I think I’d have closed the book for good by now too.
The method I’m using to read it would be far too cumbersome and slow if I wasn’t reading anything else. The book is also much too dense for me to read much more than 25 pages in a sitting (or whatever a chapter length ends up being).
It’s pretty interesting to me that reading Pynchon and reading Wallace have been such different experiences. I think I tore through Infinite Jest in about three weeks. I simply didn’t want to stop reading. Despite a certain difficulty, it was nothing like this one.
I’m looking forward to reading Bolano sometime this winter too.
Uncertainprinciples – I’m sure that starting a second time is harder than starting the first time. Also, you were sufficiently decisive to bail after a hundred pages. Three hundred pages it took me to quit dithering. Have you read any other Pynchon?
So next year it is for Gravity’s Rainbow. Perhaps we need a pact?
Lisa – Thank you for that really helpful explanation; and I will invest in the companion before setting off again. I agree with you about reading other books alongside. It isn’t the way I would have read in the past, but I don’t think I could ever commit to reading a work of this kind cover to cover without the occasional oasis of sanity along the way.
I’m glad that you’re succeeding. Good luck with the remainder! I’m not sure if ‘looking forward’ is exactly the phrase I’d use in conjunction with Bolano…
Nothing wrong with putting a book down, sometimes it just works that way. I’m glad I started with The Crying of Lot 49 though, which I really liked (as you saw on my blog).
Bolano, hm, I have to admit I get a feel from Bolano sometimes of readers wanting to like him. That said, 2666 is the magnum opus, I’d start on something like The Savage Detectives. 2666 is a big ask if it turns out you don’t like his prose or whatever.
‘2666′ is probably going to be the next Infinite Summer read, which is why it is on the cards for me. I hope I won’t come to regret (a) not taking your advice, and (b) failing to learn from the Gravity’s Rainbow debacle.
I know rationally that there is nothing wrong with putting a book down. I even think it can be the wisest course. But I am never going to like that sensation of failure, misplaced or otherwise.
None of us do. Mary Stewart’s The Crystal Cave remains on my little list of books part read, but the truth is I strongly doubt I shall ever finish it, let alone the next two books in the trilogy.
Still, better to move on and read something one enjoys. It’s just that as with many things, it can be easier said than done.