Gravity Rainbow. No words.

A quote from my article on Pynchon (second from the bottom) was included in the Russian edition of Against the Day. It reads:

True to the tenets of postmodernism, Pynchon’s prose represents an extraordinary blend of literary worlds. His works are grounded in so-called "low genres" - conspiracy fiction, science fiction, and spy novels - yet they are written with consummate literary artistry. The text abounds in metaphors and philosophical reflections, frequently exploring the very nature of fiction and is generously seasoned with satire and elements of the picaresque novel.

The article itself:

https://disgustingmen.com/blog/tomas-pinchon-samyj-zagadochnyj-pisatel-sovremennosti-gid-dlya-novichka-kotoryj-ne-boitsya-slozhnoj-no-krutoj-literatury/

i feel like he’s so good at making funny names he would knock it out of the park with a drag queen name.

just came across this formidable term for what i'm pretty sure is my first time (in the "see also" section of "computational complexity of multiplication", since you asked), and audibly emitted a "whoa". i'm somewhat shocked this didn't show up in mason & dixon somehow. it ties in several different ways, and seems the kind of thing that would have come up in research for that book, and it's just such a fantastic word. it's like half the stuff i've studied in my life somehow connect to this concept, and yet it's incredibly esoteric and completely worthless and i've not heard of it in forty-six years.

the References section on this page is great, too.

Hello All. To start off, I want to make clear that A. I am enjoying the novel and have no issue with generally working with it, B. I have an alright grasp of plot but I want a better one.

I'm currently at page 150 of this novel and my most reoccurring feeling is this in and outness of understanding what's happening and being lost in this dense mist of language and words. Is there any way in which this is supposed to be read or is it one of those "you just have to feeeeeeel it man" kinda books. I'm used to an overwhelming prose like with Faulkner, but with him the structure is (typically) more systematic, whereas this is very much... different. Anyone felt similar, any assistance to be given?

Just wanted to share a great few lines from the St. Helena section of Mason and Dixon (Ch. 11) that captured my imagination:

“… for Commerce without Slavery is unthinkable, whilst Slavery must ever include, as an essential Term, the Gallows, — Slavery without the Gallows being as hollow and Waste a Proceeding, as a Crusade without the Cross.”

Starting the Pynchon journey thanks to my wife.

Big PTA fan, so he sort of led me here. Also, had to flex the new Sterling Cooper & Partners mug lol!

My last unread Pynchon, so couldn’t pass up this find. Think this might be a top Pynchon cover along with GR first edition.

So I saw online some references to Douglas Fowler's guide to GR, and there are no resources I could find on this book anywhere. No PDF, ebook, or copies for sale recently. I recently found a copy online, and it has shipped, so I should have it soon.

Would it be beneficial for me to scan the pages so people can access it? Do people care/want this? Is there an ebook source I just did not see (I doubt it, but just checking)?

It would take a little while, but I am happy to do it if there are others as desperate as I was to find a copy. There are other guides out there, and maybe this one is out of print because people care about it less, I am not sure. For me, I am interested in any serious analysis of the GR, so it was a must-locate for me.

TL;DR: Would people want me to scan this and make it available?

Edit: Seems plenty of people are interested, so I will look to start processing it once it arrives. I am thinking the easiest process would be to scan the pages with my phone and use Google Lens to grab the text and paste in a document, and then I could provide a Google Doc link and hopefully a PDF version as well. I will keep you updated.

"Springer, this ain't the f***in' movies now, come on"

"Not yet. Maybe not quite yet. You'd better enjoy it while you can. Someday, when the film is fast enough, the equipment pocket-size and burdenless and selling at people's prices, the lights and booms no longer necessary, then...then..."

Maybe Slothrop would’ve found the S-gerat if he posted up at a mail sorting facility

Like it so vivid and so metaphorically dense.

I mean iam not far into the book but the adenoids that I think represents nazism or institutional rott.

The overall vividness of the explanation of places and things.

And what I think was stream of consciousness writing I mean it is disorienting but not in a bad way

Hello,

I wanted to suggest that some people on here might be interested in reading the Report on Operation "Backfire", which was put out by the War Office of the British Military in 1946. It details the joint (though mostly British) Allied effort to collect the remains of the V2 rockets abandoned by the Germans across Europe and stage a successful launch using salvaged parts. Wow, sounds familiar! Pynchon definitely knew about Operation Backfire (Slothrop meets people working on it in the book) but I don't know exactly how much he knew and where he got his information from. These reports were still classified when he was writing GR as far as I know.

Cuxhaven, Mittelwerk, and Nordhausen are all discussed, along with every aspect of V2 construction, testing, and firing that you could ever possibly want to know. Reading all 5 vols. straight through would be pretty tedious, as a lot of it is highly technical and frankly boring, but it's worth at least flipping through all of it to see the pictures and diagrams. I would say that the following are worth actually reading:

All of vol. one

Vol. two, section two: Assembly

Vol. three, part one: General Description; part six, section 29: Launching the Rocket

Vols. four and five are all pretty technical, but interesting to flip through!

Based on a quick search, I don't think this has been posted before; apologies if it has!!

From FT, Ex-German Spy Chief ensnared by investigation into millionaire steakhouse heiress. Sounds familiar.

Just finished V. and made a playlist on Spotify with all the songs I came across while reading it. I found another similar playlist, but it wasn’t very accurate, so I decided to make my own.

[Link]

Today the paperback was released and haven’t seen much discussion about it. Wondering if anyone grabbed their copy?

Online says Target would have em but none of my targets had any on display. And amazon isnt selling the paperback for some reason. Only the large print version. anyone know why?

Inspiration: photo by Victor J. Blue/Bloomsberg news: capitol riot 2020; Rape of the Sabrine Woman: painting by Luca Giordano

I just finished reading Vineland, it’s my fourth Pynchon (after V., IV and CoL49). I really liked it but I found myself more overwhelmed than any of the other books in trying to remember details and names. While I was able to follow the story pretty easily and most of the side plots, there was so much going on that I found it hard to recall details about characters or where they appeared before in the novel and keep up with every one of his meandering little paragraphs. Strangely never felt this with his other books and was just wondering if this is kind of normal for Vineland?

Hi everyone, this is a discussion post & a recommendation (sort of thing).

Simply wondering if anyone here who's finished ATD has heard of/read Dukaj's Ice, the English translation of which was published in Nov. last year.

I'm on my second read of ATD, just to the part where Kit gets the Q-weapon from Woevre. Finished it about a year ago. I finished Ice this past June, spent a couple of months on it, and even on my first read, I couldn't help but notice the striking resemblances between these two novels.

Without spoiling too much of a plot:

Both are humongous historical-fiction/sifi epics over 1000 pages;

both settings were in the turn of the 20th century where lots of new technologies and ideas were progressing overwhelmingly;

in both novels, Siberia and the Tunguska event play an important role, albeit in Ice, they are the primary focus, and the story depicts more or less the aftermath of the explosion;

both novels draw heavily from mathematics and Quaternion/4th dimension (tho I remember Dukaj's interpretation is more on logics/role of languages);

Light/refraction serves as one central motif in both novels;