“This is some kind of a plot, right?” Slothrop sucking from a velvet pipe. 

“Everything is some kind of plot, man,” Bodine laughing 

“And yes but, the arrows are pointing all different ways,” Solange illustrating with a dance of hands, red-pointed fingervectors. Which is Slothrop’s first news, out loud, that the Zone can sustain many other plots besides those polarized upon himself . . . that these are the els and busses of an enormous transit system here in the Raketenstadt, more tangled even than Boston’s – and that by riding each branch the proper distance, knowing when to transfer, keeping some state of minimum grace though it might often look like he is headed in the wrong way, this network of all plots may yet carry him to freedom. He understands that he should not be so paranoid of either Bodine or Solange, but ride instead their kind underground awhile, see where it takes him. . . . 

By Ian L.

I fear, dear reader, that in even attempting to describe the manifold plots contained within Gravity’s Rainbow, the constraints by which I am bound have already caused me to fail in my endeavor. Which is to say, this book is a challenge to read but even more so to describe. This novel challenges your understanding of what a novel should be. 

Gravity’s Rainbow, described as the least-read must-read of the English literary canon, is perhaps the post-war post-modern novel. Anthony Burgess, of A Clockwork Orange fame, described the novel as, “the war novel to end all others.” It is often spoken about alongside James Joyce’s Ulysses, another book notorious for being considered either a great work of literature or completely incomprehensible. I am sympathetic to the former, but I understand how people believe the latter. The narrative and prose are confusing from the launch. Gravity’s Rainbow plays with its narrative distance in much the same way that our brains do while we are dreaming. A scene might open on one character and follow them for a beat; then, the focus flies into the head of another and digs deep into their individual psychology, history, or worldview.

While we are following these various and sundry characters, many of whom are not our “main” character (which itself is a harder question to answer than you might expect), the narrative is also running along a track parallel to our real history. Pynchon’s prose is impeccably diverse, in both its form and subject. The story is interspersed with poems and songs sung by and about the people who populate this novel. Several of the “chapters” could easily be independent short stories. The narrative meanders and diverges into reveries on myriad topics: historical events, artistic movements, psychology, chemistry, physics, genocide, philosophy, and even esoteric “sciences.” Pynchon’s words manage to be witty and evocative, beautiful, and hilarious, as well as harrowing and even vulgar. Truly so. I do not have the digital real estate to expand on that point, let alone most aspects of this novel. 

Ostensibly, Pynchon’s novel is set during the final stages of World War II. The German military has been rapidly manufacturing and deploying the V-2 rocket, the first ever long-range guided ballistic missile. It screams across the sky so fast you only hear it if you survive. An initial ensemble of secret intelligence operatives catches word of a strangely serialized rocket and an unknown device included in its schematics. The 00000 Rocket and the mysterious Schwartzgerät form the central gravity well around which this novel’s narrative revolves. It is an awesome medley of carefully researched facts mixed with Pynchon’s creative labyrinth of fiction. The novel is initially disorienting, by design, aimed at confusing the reader’s understanding of what is “actually happening” within the narrative. The characters experience this feeling, too.

One recurrent theme throughout the novel is the ever-mounting presence of paranoia. The characters struggle under overarching and competing plots. They buckle under the questioning of whether anything they have ever done has helped anyone. The War has consumed them, and only too late do they realize the War Machine does not exist on both sides. It is a superposition that collapses all sides into itself. This maddening descent is humanized by Pynchon through his characters, who are irrevocably altered by their situation. Each undergoes a derangement of the self, a severing and mutilation of their minds and bodies, or for some, their souls.  

If there was a word we could use as a through line for the vast wasteland that is Gravity’s Rainbow, it might be “Preterite.” Grammarians probably recognize this word as a fancy term for the simple past tense. I imagine most people are not thinking about Christian Eschatology in their day to day. To put it simply, the Preterite, according to Calvinist doctrine, are those who are not predestined for salvation. The characters we follow are among the Preterite, the passed-over and forgotten who are used by the Elite and the Elect. Those who must live in the wake of what war wrought. It would seem trite to state something so simple as “War is Bad.” Gravity’s Rainbow is full of themes that can seem stupidly obvious when stated outright. It is not these answers that earn Pynchon his accolades, but how he moves toward his answers. That is something that must be experienced, not explained.  

Much like the end of the novel, I want to close this out with an abrupt pivot toward the mystical. Within many mystical traditions, whether hermetic or religious, lies the belief that profound truths cannot be readily grasped by the uninitiated or faithless. To expose these truths too hastily is to rob them of their power. To put it another way, for a revelation to be of any consequence, its content must first be hidden.

Knowledge is like light; the ten-tons of rocket-powered symbolism and the concentric layers of narrative are a prism which refracts and disperses the light into a visible rainbow. Without the prism the light is visible but unfiltered. The diverse cast of characters, the disparate circumstances they find themselves in, even the story of Byron (the sentient immortal light bulb), are all pieces of the prism. Pynchon expertly constructed this obfuscating puzzle to reveal something prescient about the world we inherited. Despite being published 50 years ago, I would wager its relevance has never been less in question. More than ever, we live under the shadow of Gravity’s Rainbow.  

Gravity’s Rainbow is available in print, as well as an e-audiobook and an audiobook on CD. The audiobook, skillfully narrated by George Guidall, brings Pynchon’s words into great relief and were an indispensable aid in completing the book. 

Ian is an Instructor and Research Specialist at East Columbia Branch. After finally finishing Gravity’s Rainbow, he is not sure what to do with himself. Infinite Jest stares at him dauntingly from his shelf. If anyone asks, he – never – did the “Kenosha,” kid.