Introduction

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ellauri069.html on line 363: Gravitys-Rainbow/summaries/" class="bsg_nextSection_action" data-amplitude="[Book] Next Button">Part Summaries
ellauri069.html on line 376: Thomas Pynchonin 1973 mestaripala Painomusteen Sadeviitta on eepos, pelle-eepos, ja Suuri Amerikan Novelli, kuten Moby-Dick. Toisinkuin Melvillen lukijat, kuiteskin, Pynchonin lukijat voi mennä sivukaupalla täysin pihalla siitä mitä juonessa, tilanteessa tai tyypeissä on tapahtumassa. Kirjaa ei edes voi kunnolla lukea selaamatta samalla koko ajan esim Steven Weisenburgerin Seuraneitiä ja Michael Davitt Bellin “Some Things That ‘Happen’ (More or Less) in Gravity’s Rainbow.”
ellauri069.html on line 455: Q: How can Gravity's Rainbow be so highly acclaimed when it makes not a lick of sense?
ellauri069.html on line 457: A: I never thought I would live to see a time when Gravity’s Rainbow would be denigrated and dismissed for lacking sense. This book appeared when I was a freshman at university. It was immediately chosen as part of the reading list for a course in 20th century fiction in English and regarded as important, and it was expected that simple-minded undergraduates should be able to make a serious attempt to engage with the book using heart, faith, skill, and such intelligence as they possessed. As a result, I own a first edition. ;)
ellauri069.html on line 461: It may also be a good warm-up for the querent’s reading muscles to start with Pynchon’s earlier novel V, which is excellent in its own right, but not as extravagant as the even more brilliant Gravity’s Rainbow. It is V2, after all.
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Q: What is "Gravity's Rainbow" about?
ellauri069.html on line 475: Q: What makes "Gravity's Rainbow" a good book?
ellauri069.html on line 477: Before I write this answer, I should put it out there that it took me two reads and a guide to understand what’s going on in Gravity’s Rainbow. After all that, I feel I have a proper grasp of Pynchon’s Magnum Opus. Apparently, Pynchon once said he doesn’t know how he wrote the book.
ellauri069.html on line 481: Q: Is Gravity's Rainbow the greatest American novel?
ellauri069.html on line 483: An article recently came out in the LA Times about Pynchon’s Great American Novel. The article begins by stating that Mason and Dixon is actually the most obvious candidate for the Great American Novel, and it instead suggests that Gravity’s Rainbow is perhaps the Great European Novel. The article then questions whether or not the Great American Novel even exists, and if it does if it is of a singular form or if it takes on many forms at once. After considering this question, the article finally claims that the Great American Novel is actually made up of all of Pynchon’s works fused together “into one epic Pynchoverse.” The Great American Novel certainly does not need to take place in America, but still many will argue that Gravity’s Rainbow by itself can never be considered as the Great American Novel because of its non-American setting and its wide array of characters. This is definitely debatable, but I do enjoy the idea of a “Pynchoverse” or a Pynchon Compilation being considered as the true Great American Novel. That being said, I do think most readers and Pynchonerds would undoubtedly say that Gravity's Rainbow is the Greatest Pynchon Novel.
ellauri069.html on line 491: My engineer nerd friends insisted that I should read Gravity's Rainbow, since it was rich with near-poetic observations about engineering and math. It was also rich with military history, jargon, and Pynchonian bong-hit digressions.
ellauri069.html on line 497: I suspect I would need to read it a few more times to really “get” it. I’d prefer an eBook with deep annotations into the Gravity's Rainbow Wiki
ellauri071.html on line 40: Kenosha Kid: Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow possesses an image which has intrigued readers of the novel since its introduction. Many readers come away from the novel failing to find the answer to one question: What is the Kenosha Kid? Critics have argued about the identity of the Kenosha Kid. Some have argued that it does not really exist. Instead, it is only the result of Tyrone Slothrop´s hallucinations brought on by sodium amytal (or "truth serum"). Ironically, the idea that the Kenosha Kid comes out during a dose of "truth serum" proves to be even more confusing for readers (given it may or may not really exist). Other critics have denoted the Kenosha Kid as a dance (likening it to the "Charleston" or the "Big Apple" dances).
ellauri159.html on line 1219: You prefer writing about your own personal topics. You may lose your creative drive if the subject isn’t about you. If so, try taking an angle that allows you to write about your feelings on the topic, if not you yourself. If you’re a technical writer, look for ways to connect with readers by anticipating and meeting their needs. Or you can use your tech knowledge to write another Gravity´s Rainbow. But don´t expect your employer to like it.
ellauri360.html on line 289: Thomas Pynchon : Gravity's Rainbow
xxx/ellauri068.html on line 187: "My own favourite tribute to Borges comes in Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow in which a group of Argentinian exiles, led by the adventurer Squalidozzi, and at large in Europe during World War Two, hijack a German submarine. Improbably, they are accompanied by the glamorous Graciela Imago Portales – a ‘particular friend’ of the Buenos Aires literati – to whom ‘Borges is said to have a dedicated a poem’. Two lines are cited: “El laberinto de tu incertidumbre / Me trama con la disquietante luna . . .” Of course, the quotation has puzzled scholars, as it is neatly consistent with the rhythms and motifs of Borges’ earlier work, and yet nowhere to be found in his oeuvre. It would no doubt have delighted Borges, the more so since Pynchon made it up."
xxx/ellauri068.html on line 278: In Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow, a group of Argentine anarchists led by Francisco Squalidozzi collaborate with a German filmmaker, Gerhardt von Göll, to create a film version of Martín Fierro.
xxx/ellauri113.html on line 50: Gravity is more subtle, though: the real problem is not so much nonrenormalizability as high-energy behavior inconsistent with local quantum field theory. In quantum mechanics, if you want to probe physics at short distances, you can scatter particles at high energies. (You can think of this as being due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, if you like, or just about properties of Fourier transforms where making localized wave packets requires the use of high frequencies.) By doing ever-higher-energy scattering experiments, you learn about physics at ever-shorter-length scales. (This is why we build the LHC to study physics at the attometer length scale.)
xxx/ellauri123.html on line 563: The difference between a rule and a principle is that one is merely a guideline that follows from the other. Principles don’t break. They’re universal. Gravity is a principle. Whether it’s you who falls from a skyscraper, your cat, or a 17th century vase, it’s not gonna end well. Gravity makes no exceptions.
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