Evan’s Reviews > Gravity’s Rainbow > Status Update

Halfway through this monster epic. The episode with Slothrop retrieving the buried hashish in heavily guarded Postdam inching through bombed out Berlin was surprisingly pleasant. Read this episodically and it's doable.

Pynchon's ravings here at near the halfway point have gotten so digressive and maximalist; literally everything that pops into his head goes onto the page and I guess I'm just going to ride this thing like a mismatched array of riptides and cross currents and chaotic waves to the shoreline if they take me there. The beauty of the writing keeps me grounded enough. That's all for now.

This ballooning episode with Slothrop also in disguise as a reporter reminds me that I, too, back in the 1980s, took a hot-air balloon ride over the city when I was a newspaper reporter. Sometimes I forget I've done some things.

Didn't enjoy the Herero section but do understand what Pynchon is driving at about colonialism and the idea of collective self destruction. Onward.

We encounter Marvy the racist and a black rocket commando and a gal who might be a witch, and too young for these sorts of things. Page 300. Pynchon is no more crazy in his tales than DFW, but a much more meticulous writer. Proceeding.

Section 2 of Gravity's Rainbow complete. Every sentence brims with wisdom. Really helps to be a reader who's a generalist -- reading across the disciplines of history, pop culture and literature. As I do that anyway, it's good prep.

You definitely have to be keyed into a particular frequency to appreciate this book, and luckily I finally got there. Pynchon is using this rather funny espionage tale with Slothrop to outline political history in ways that are eerily prescient and timeless; sumbitch predicted EVERYTHING. Slopthrop just bumbling around Europe with Brit intel completely failing at tracking him is pretty hilarious. Eagerly onward.