REVISITING GRAVITY'S RAINBOW
I rarely reread books. Too little time, too many other good books still to devour.
However, rules need to be broken now and again, and watching Benjamin McEvoy’s YouTube video on Thomas Pynchon’s ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ made me think that maybe it was time to revisit it.
When did I actually read it the first time? It has to be over thity years ago. I remember when I lived in Berlin, my band’s drummer Frank was a Pynchon fan and he introduced me to the pleasures of that most elusive of living authors. It may even have been his Picador copy of the book that I devoured.
Since then I’ve read absolutely everything by Mr P, which isn’t that hard since he hasn’t written many novels.
Anyway, ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in print, and I first read it around thirty years ago, so the numbers seemed to point to a reread. But would I be wasting my time? Would it be as good as it was before? Would it be too familiar to be enjoyable?
I’m now 250 pages in, which would be around a third of the way through. Initial scepticism has given way to ecstatic joy. Not only is this reconfirming it as a great novel, I’m enjoying it way more than the first time. The wisodm of age? A book as rich and deep as this has a lot to offer, probably much more than a single run through can absorb.
So yeah, it was a good idea to do it again.
Here are some random thoughts about ‘Gravity’s Rainbow.’
It’s really funny. I think this aspect of the book is overlooked. It’s both erudite and deep, but also full of toilet humour, slapstick and general hilarity. Just take the names of some of the characters: Nora Dodson-Truck, Ernest Pudding, Laslo Jamf, Tantivy Mucker-Maffick and Teddy Bloat. What a larf.
This is clearly one of the greatest novels ever written, but that doesn’t mean everyone should read it. To enjoy it fully you need to have a decent knowledge of, and interest in, World War Two and its immediate aftermath. You need to know about the Nazi V weapons programme. You need to be aware of the vast array of accronyms pertaining to secret services, military branches, etc. A smattering of the German language would help too. What makes it very close to me, is that family lore has it that my mother was narrowly missed by a V2 which landed in her north London street in 1944. I’m connected, and it’s personal!
Pynchon’s writing style can be quite eloquent, even beautiful, but there is a tendency for the transitions between sets of characters to just happen without one realising it, even seemingly mid-sentence, which can be disconcerting.
The way to enjoy it is just to dive in, provided you’ve met the aforementioned prerequisites. If you’re the type who needs every little thing explained before you can proceed, then this is not the book for you. It’s a sprawling, confusing chaos, mirroring the state of Europe in the war’s aftermath - just accept it as such.
Like in all Pynchon novels, people suddenly burst into song for no apparent reason. It’s funny.
Pynchon is an extremely intelligent man, and the novel is stuffed full of historical and scientific references, well-researched and veracious, but once in a while he has this neat trick of throwing something into the mix that has you scratching your head and thinking ‘that’s insane, that can’t possibly be true,’ and you come away not knowing whether he’s just winding you up or not. A case in point : a group of black SS men known as the Schwarzcommando. The very notion would seem to go against core Nazi ideology, but then again…
I noticed that quite a few negative reviews on Goodreads complain about the frequent use of bad language and explicit sexual descriptions. What’s wrong with you people? Seriously, words such as ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt’ are ubiquitous these days in TV shows, films and in print. As for the descriptions of supposed perverse sexual acts, may I remind the prudes that there is nothing new here : one of the earliest fragments of Greek poetry, dating from the 7th century BC, tells of foreskins being pulled back and ejaculations over people - check Greek Lyric Poetry, published by Oxford World’s Classics, if you don’t believe me! I think the shock value should have worn off after 2,700 years, no? There is one particularly memorable scene in ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ which describes a fairly specialised sexual proclivity, but I found this comedic more than anything else.
To summarise : it was a great idea to reread it, and I can’t wait for the next 500 pages. However, I don’t think this is going to herald an entire programme of reacquainting myself with previosuly consumed material - I still have a large stack of Victorian door-stoppers weighing down my shelves…