Anyone read Gravity's Rainbow? I'm about 100 pages in and have just a general question...

[EastTennesseeDem]

What the fuck?

[CBGLuthier]

1. I found Finnegan's Wake to be slightly more comprehensible

OK, that's a lie but yeah WTF indeed. I am curious to hear the opinions of those who have read it.

[EastTennesseeDem]

3. Read it on the heels of Infinite Jest

which was the best book I've ever read.

Heard about the parallels between the two, and from what I can discern I can kind of see them, but good God this one is a chore.

I can't help reading it though. There's something about the postmodern aesthetic that I just get hooked on.

[HappyMe]

2. I have a question about your question.

Is that 'What the fuck?' in a good/enjoying the book way? Or a 'What the fuck?' in a bad/why am I bothering way?

[EastTennesseeDem]

4. Neither, really

Have you read it?

[HappyMe]

5. No. That's why I asked.

I'm going to the library tomorrow. If it's a Finnegan's Wake kind of tome, I won't be reading it.

It's a bit of a hoof to the library, so I try to avoid dragging books home that I want to take back after a day or so.

[EastTennesseeDem]

7. Haha, it's NOT Finnegans Wake.

in that there's an overarching story being told. But it's not easy.

So to answer your original question, I don't really know. It certainly was innovative, although a lot of people probably question whether or not that was a good thing.

If you've read any David Foster Wallace novels (excluding The Pale King), you kind of get a sense of what Gravity's Rainbow is like, only much much more difficult.

Basically, it's just hard to parse. I plan on taking another three or four months with it.

[Aristus]

6. You're about where I was when I had to give up.

I'm a pretty tenacious reader, but I had to quit on that one. It's tough...

[caraher]

12. Same here

I did turn every page of Ulysses, but I probably should have quit that too. But I had more time when I was 20; this past summer was when I tried Gravity's Rainbow and while it did have its charms, it was just too much work to be worth my time.

[sharp_stick]

8. That will probably continue

through most of the book. I read it as part of an English class back in University and pretty much the entire class was like this.

For some reason, for my reading group anyway, it seemed to come together at about the 3/4 or 4/5 mark.

I think part of it was the "holy shit I'm actually going to finish Gravity's Rainbow!" effect.

The other part was probably the fact that we had a reading group and a Professor to help us work through it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. It was THE popular thing to read when I was in graduate school in the 1970s

Coming off a hard day of studying, I needed something a bit absurdist in the evening.

It's been a long time, obviously, but I remember that the best way to deal with it is just to enjoy the individual vignettes and the word plays (among Tyrone Slothrop's ancestors is a Puritan named Constant Slothrop, who has a brother named Variable, for example) and worry about the continuity later.

[EastTennesseeDem]

10. Oh, I'm definitely enjoying it...

but...I'm not quite sure why.

[Democracyinkind]

11. The FUCK! (Spoiler alert for the part below)

The Rockets connect to the dick. His dick.

But not before some serious Imipolex G - S/M...