The Gravity's Rainbow Handbook: A Key to the Thomas Pynchon Novel

by Robert Crayola

Thomas Pynchon has a reputation as a "difficult" author - but he doesn't have to be! With this new guide, Gravity's Rainbow can be understood by the average listener. Included a chapter-by-chapter summary and commentary on the story, a thorough description of all major characters, a biography of Pynchon, suggestions for essay topics, and much more. This guide is guaranteed to help you finish and make sense of Gravity's Rainbow - all in a concise and easy format. Whether you are totally new to the book or just want to deepen your understanding, this guide will save you hours of struggle and frustration.

Genres: Nonfiction

Audible Audio

Published February 3, 2016

Reviews

[Diana Long · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this cover to cover and will keep it handy as the novel written by Pynchon is one heck of a piece of work.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

There have been very few times I've needed annotations or to pre-read and post-read, other than like Ulysses and Proust.

Gravity's Rainbow proved a recent expection--I had listened to the audiobook which was great for catching the prose, lyricism and witticism but not for character renention and theme anaylsis.

[Маx Nestelieiev · Rating 3 out of 5]

short, but useful for those who don`t understand a bloody thing in Pynchon`s novel. some ideas are rather speculative but the synopsis is OK and the list of characters is helpful if you feel yourself lost in writer`s wordish gravy.

[Stuart · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good companion to Gravity's Rainbow, it goes some way to explain what I've just read. I'll re-read Gravity's Rainbow at some point and refer back to this beforehand.

[Aaron Aoyume · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is short, it is straightforward, and it is comprehensive. A really great help to find myself in the most difficult passages of Pynchon's mammoth.

[Ken Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read Gravity's Rainbow several times, and have read selected pages and passages in the book many, many times. It's the greatest novel I've ever encountered, an absolutely amazing book that rewards multiple readings and inspires research and analysis. The more I think and learn about the book, the more amazed I am at Pynchon's achievement, which seems to me at least to be almost ultra-human. How can any one person master the encyclopedic range of topics and technologies in GR, and integrate them all so seamlessly into such a beautifully and masterfully written book?

Which I hope provides some context for Robert Crayola's Gravity's Rainbow Handbook. Crayola has managed to summarize the narrative (not an easy task), provide historical background for the story, and catalog a good number of the main characters (and there are hundreds of characters name-checked in GR), all in a concise format that's a joy to read. Crayola's handbook added both to my knowledge of, and appreciation for, the book. Well worth the ebook price!

Mr. Crayola, I hope you're working on another handbook. May I suggest Against the Day, which might be Pynchon's second greatest novel (it's certainly the longest), and one I don't think gets the attention and praise it deserves.

[Jenny Boronyak · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are better resources online for helping you understand what is going on in the book. It was kind of nice to not have to pull out my phone to look up character names or remind me of plot points, but he misses a lot and his summaries of each chapter are very thin. I found myself looking online when I got to the harder sections.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

For what it is, its great. brief guide to characters and plot, significance and summary.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good quick chapter summaries and other tidbits to help keep track of events and major themes and endless characters….

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Gravity’s Rainbow once a couple of years ago. I had a reading buddy with whom I held a weekly call to discuss the previous weeks reading and that helped immensely, though I would never have said that I truly ‘got’ every aspect of the book or understood half of what was going on while reading it, but I loved it nonetheless. This handbook is something I wish I had when I first read it and I’m thrilled to read this again the next time I read GR.

[Larry Bassett · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a very short book about a very long work. I couldn’t really follow this guidebook to understand the story as I read it. I was hoping it would do that but it didn’t come even close. The answers to the study questions in this guidebook definitely gave me some clues about what some smart people think this book is all about. The author of this guidebook says that anybody can figure out what gravity‘s rainbow is all about with a little effort. To be brief, I think that is BS!

[Luke Dylan Ramsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

C/C+

This was… fine. But Franz Pökler didn’t fuck his daughter, even if this “handbook” states he did multiple times. I don’t really understand how you can write a guidebook for GR and fuck up stuff like that. Also Mr Crayola makes a few too many other assumptions, and also comes across like a virginal prude who has never seen a drug in his life, let alone imbibed one.

Still, for what it is, it’s fine. Perfectly fine.

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful tracking the characters. I so loved gravity's rainbow.

[Bernd Schnabl · Rating 3 out of 5]

so helpful !!

[Pino Sabatelli · Rating 2 out of 5]

Due stelle e mezza

[Vovka · Rating 3 out of 5]

I needed this assistance to get through Gravity's Rainbow. I've used a very good guide to get through Ulysses, and this is not a very good guide, but it's the guide I had, and that was good enough.

[Héctor]

Un texto somero. Recomendable si es para una primera aproximación a la novela.

[Chris Meloche · Rating 5 out of 5]

My first attempt at reading Gravity's Rainbow back in the 1980s was not a success. I stopped about fifty pages in. In recent years, one of my goals was to read (or re-read) all of Thomas Pynchon's books.

My first complete read of the book left me reeling. I was helped by some of the people who posted video reviews and commentaries on youtube but, it was still a confounding experience.

For my recent re-read, I enlisted the assistance of Robert Crayola's book. It was just what I needed. His introduction to the characters and, most importantly, his synopsis of each section provides an excellent key to orient yourself to the various situations encountered.

The book does a very good job for its intended purpose and I am thankful for the way it helped me to navigate the story.

Of course, there are still many aspects of the story (obscure historical, cultural references etc...) which are beyond the scope of its approach. For those interested in venturing more deeply into the text, Steven Weisenburger's Gravity's Rainbow Companion is the book to get. He digs in often line by line to deconstruct and decode the story's references. I recently purchased a copy and plan to use it during the course of my next read of Gravity's Rainbow.

One of the best observations that I've heard is that Gravity's Rainbow is not a book you read. It's a book you re-read. How true!

[Kevin Oliver · Rating 3 out of 5]

Also known as “Study Guide: ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ by Thomas Pynchon.” To be used as you read GR.

This is a very basic guide with short character profiles, chapter summaries, theme refreshers, and other elementary information.

This is not a page-by-page companion. If you’re looking for a more detailed and thorough examination of the text, get Weisenburger’s 2nd edition “Companion to Gravity’s Rainbow.” If you’re not interested in all of the allusions and minutae but just want to make sure you understand what’s going on, this works fine.