I want to have a serious discussion about Gravity's Rainbow. I'll ask a question and lay some ground rules for participation. Let's try and have an actual discussion.Q: What is your interpretation/analysis of the ending? Please try to give somewhat of an effort post and respond to effort posts in kind. Don't worry about being "wrong", just participate and show you've actually read the book. At this point, even plotfagging would be welcome compared to what's been posted recently.Do NOT respond to anyone who:>posts anime pics>posts a smiley face, especially :^)>discusses Visual Novels as literature>randomly discusses his hatred for Pynchon, Gaddis, DFW, Gass (possibly others, I'm pretty sure the Borges hate thread is his too)
i did not get to the end because my reading level is too low to grip the entire thingi did however get to the part where Slothrop drops the harmonica in the toilet
To accept Pynchon as a quality writer is to garb yourself in a coat of hot pockets and video games and then writhe around on the ground in a supermarket while screeching and slapping yourself on the sides of your head.He is cheeto dust. Nothing more.Nothing more than a hack, a useful tool for publishers to trot out to say "Hey, we're making literary fiction!" I cannot wrap my head around the adulation he receives, let alone the wide praise this has got. The book trudges from set piece to set piece, leaves us no real questions or anything to think about really.The same bullet that kills a Foster Wallace fan will also kill the Pynchon and Delillo fan. They come from the same root, from the same doritos stained console. They are frauds, and as a warrior of literature it's my duty to expose the fakes and the inauthentic when I see them. I will fight with crawls and teeth until the last imposter is fallen to the groundI have about as much respect for Thomas Pynchon as I do for the dogshit on my shoe. It is reddit. It is video game hot pocket. It is capeshit. It is cheeto dust. I'm literally screaming right now and slamming my arms down on my desk just thinking about it.It is the most depraved video game infantilized manchild degeneracy. It is saturday morning cartoon. It is non-neurotypicality. It is memes. It is video game. It is tarantino. It is imdb.It is coca-cola puberty. it is axe body spray. it is a white stain on boxer shorts. it is arri alexa hot dog caffeine on disney channel.Pynchon is a miserable hack whose movies are propped up entirely by reddit meme writing which gets the r/literature and r/truelit pleb crowd all hot and bothered. It is the death knell of Literature. One of the biggest trashmasters working today, a hack's hack. This is hot pocket the writer. Cheeto dust: the man.His books are a bad joke; an insult to the literary medium; a gob of spit aimed at all that is good and great about literature. Another polished postmodern gritty popcorn writer.
>>25220093When I first got into Tolstoevsky & co. I genuinely believed in the superiority of literature above other art forms, I disavowed popular music and turned to classical. Now it's like I'm back in my early teens, watching Tarantino and action films, vibing to Zappa and Led Zep, playan' RPGs and strategy games. And of course still reading literature whenever I'm in the mood for it, which is often.
>>25220093>I am literally screaming right now and slamming my arms on my desk just thinking about it.Ironically that's also reddit. You've become the very thing you swore to destroy.
Can’t help but think you trying to keep the retard away is like a batsignal for him.
>>25220103Claiming it‘s one guy responsible for hating a slew of midwit authors is a pretty easy handwave of the fact that none of them are very good. (I have never made a thread on any of them.)
>>25220077This book is garbage. Stop shilling it here and take your goons back to preddit
slothrop having a mental breakdown, cf. kenosha kid section
>>25220077the scene diving scene filtered me and I stopped reading after that.
>>25220175shit*
at least to me idrc how much i understand the novel because it embodies the 70s perfectly. its a bunch of insane technically complex bullshit and then it ends. i think the ending has something to do with slothrop going through MKUltra (thats what all the sodium thiopenthal and harvard toilets were about) but i enjoy the novel so much from sentence to sentence that it doesnt matter
>>25220077Every third thread on this board is about Pynchon, or Joyce, or whatever. I think you're all pseuds jerking each other off on how superior you are to your peers. Those books fucking SUCK.
>>25220077>Q: What is your interpretation/analysis of the ending?total femboy death
>Now Everybody-
>>25220458https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-Y7TUkSyoI
>>25220077Slothrop gives into his delusions which provides us with a way to determine what was real in the proceeding 3 parts and make sense of it.
Not related but I had no fucking idea how long AtD is. I thought M&D was the doorstopper.
>>25220657Yeah, AtD is considerably longer than M&D, I would guess at least twice as long by word count and his longest work by far. Even GR is longer than M&D.
>>25220128But that doesn't make sense because the kenosha kid episode was due to the effects of sodium amytal, whereas the ending would be (according to your theory) a neuropsychological breakdown. Logically, they wouldn't be connected, i.e. similar in form.
>>25220844>t. plotfagWhat makes you think the sodium amytal actually happened?
>>25220844Meh...a mental breakdown's a mental breakdown, whatever causes it.
>>25220863Sodium amytal was part of his delusion.
>>25220874idk maybe, but the books says he underwent some kind of drug induced state, and what the visitation learned about matches up with his breakdown, so that lines up. i guess pynchon could have meant for the whole scene to be a hallucination. but if so then i completely missed out on that part.
>>25220886The book also says that lightbulbs are conscious. The sodium amytal and prescient erections are all part of the delusion he concocted the deal with the rocket.
>>25221182yeah, but there's a section talking about the black wing project and developing the schwarzkommando that directly references slothrop's experiment and what they learned from it. plus in the section when slothrop goes out to check the blast site where he sees pirate, he refers to being invited to a hospital for testing. idk, i could be wrong and there's something i'm missing. or maybe i'm just reading the things i referred to incorrectly. but that's just how i read it.
>>25221595>idk, i could be wrongYou are. And you type like kind of an idiot.
>>25221624Ouch, that’s not very nice. The man was just offering his interpretation of events in the book that he admitted might be incorrect.
>>25221624well, it’s all anonymous so i dont care, if i look like an idiot or plotfag thats ok, at least if you could point out where im wrong or what im missing like the other anon so i could learn something
>>25221595What makes you think those really happened? there is also a section with conspiratorial light bulbs. Do you think it is a coincidence that we learn that Hogan loves bananas? or could it be that Slothrop pulled Pirate into his protective delusion? Part 4 gives us the clues to figure out what is and what is not real, mostly, we can't know 100% but we can get most of the way. >>25221630>>25221631Ignore the troll.
>>25221630I’m tired of midwits, what can I say>>25221631No. Try reading. Slowly if you have to.
>>25221633well damn, i guess i’ll go reread that section then>>25221636anon, call me whatever you want, i couldn’t care less, if there’s something you could teach me call me a retard as much as you want, i just want to learn
>>25221639Rereading part 4 on its own won't help much, the rest is filled with clues as well and most are not quite as simple as making a connection through bananas and even the bananas he gives us a tiny little nugget of a hint that it is real, but a good amount that it is not. Don't forget your proverbs.
DFW fucking sucks but Pynchon is alright, reminds me of my favorite VN Song of Saya. :^)Anyway its about how the technology we used to get to the moon has a dark history, how the wonder and adventure we felt towards it needed to use rockets soaked in the blood of the enemies of nazi germany. The elect and the ones who were passed over was also in reminisce of like master and slave dialect. There is a million different things this book is about
>>25221648That's a pretty good imitation, I mean you missed the point of it which he also does, but you plotfagged it hard meaning you had to have at least read a summary of it, which is more than the actual animposter did.
>>25221656Don't respond, dude. He's just going to start trolling and derail the thread. We actually have a pretty good discussion going on. Stop before he turns it to shit like always does.
>>25221648>There is a million different things this book is aboutThis. The book is by its nature digressive and encyclopedic. It's even in the title, rainbow, you can choose to focus on any of its primary colours: Elect/Preterite, Eros/Thanatos, Banana/Missile, nazism, military-industrial complex, the rise of three letter agencies, nuclear paranoia, whatever the fuck Pynchon was getting at with the tarot analogies. I read it as 00000 to Joyce's 00001 (Joyce himself appearing in the book as Stephen Dodson-Truck). Where Ulysses is life-affirming, GR is life-denying.
>>25221710It is kinda like Ulysses’ schizophrenic daughter at times huh?
>>25220077>>25221656>>25221658lol, holy fuck, how stupid does one have to be to pick up a reputation on an anonymous image board as the most retarded of all posters?
>>25221718Yep. Where Ulysses had these well-planned, well-organised chunks with clear changes in style (note how Oxen evolves linearly), GR shifts its register willy-nilly, from high to low to high again in just a few sentences.
>he is samefagging again
>>25221723I think at this point it's better to just not acknowledge him. He's gotten his shit kicked in every gaddis/pynchon/dfw/gass hate thread he's made. He's been exposed as lacking any knowledge regarding literature and he's been near universally reviled to the point where the OP of this thread put a warning against him. I think that's enough. He definitely hasn't been posting as much or if he has I haven't noticed it. Or who knows, maybe he decided to actually start posting about literature. Whatever the case may be, there's actual discussion to be had here, which is a breath of fresh air from all the threads he's been making.
I am officially /lit. Spoiler: not gonna read any of them, just for display bwahahaha
>>25220298t. hasn't read any of the masterworks of English literature.
>>25221799He has a point. This type of writing which was started by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is kind of a waste of time. Reading should have a purpose. And I’m not saying this to “own” you or anything, im trying to help you. Your life will NOT improve by being a reader. Most of it is just silly
>>25221973>Reading should have a purpose.Why?
>>25221973Gravity's Rainbow helped me understand calculus
My takeaway is that we live in a post-ideology world that runs on human and animal blood, liberalism has failed, all attempts at subverting the system only strengthen it, and all you can really do is carve out your own pocket to somehow exist peacefully within it.
>>25222564Your question answers your own. If there's no purpose, then why do it?
>>25222721For fun, to learn a new word and study some masterful prose. Also it's got some pretty cutting satire
>>25221806why would you buy them if you're not going to read them? or am i getting whooshed right now?
>>25220077>What is your interpretation/analysis of the ending?How'd they end up in the 70s? And is that Richard Nixon guy with the adenoid related to Pirate's adenoid somehow? And what's with that futuristic rocket city?I was so confused.
>>25223122it wuz all a dream
>>25223122I think some anon gave a pretty analysis earlier up the thread. Check it out.Also, holy shit, can we put OP's rules up for every Pynchon thread? It seems to be working to keep the retard away and the thread is just so amazing. First time I feel like in years there's been a good Pynchon thread.
>>25222719If i came to this conclusion by looking around me should i bother to read this book?
>>25223279It's not quite as bleak
>>25220077how the world ended up in the cold war state and nuclear fears. book is very much a product of its time.
>>25221710>GR is life-denying.What? Not at all
>>25220096Are we turning this into a pasta? That guy was completely serious when he made that post lol
>>25223866I like Pynchon but despite his sincerity it really read like a reddit meme.
>>25223860Let me rephrase that: it documents the life-denying, dehumanising Systems that surround us. Pynchon himself is very sentimental.
>>25223870I think he was purposely playing it up in response to this pasta >>25220093
>>25220077Ending was to subvert the trope of the discernible end where they blow up the death star and then get medals.nobody ever said a day has to be juggled into any kind of sense at day's end
>>25220298start a thread on your favourite author, get no replies and then come back here.
>>25220298Who is your favourite author? I wonder, since I doubt you’re going to answer this
>>25220077Is Thomas Pynchon related to William Pynchon, the founder of Springfield, Massachusetts and author of the first banned book in America?
>>25224095Apparently so.Follow the bouncing ball:There is a Hand to turn the time,Though thy Glass today be run,Till the Light that hath brought the Towers lowFind the last poor Pret’rite one…Till the Riders sleep by ev’ry road,All through our crippl’d Zone,With a face on ev’ry mountainside,And a Soul in ev’ry stone….Now everybody-
>>25224095Yes. William Slothrop is a mirror image of the historical William Pynchon.“That’s what Jesus meant,” whispers the ghost of Slothrop’s first American ancestor William, “venturing out on the Sea of Galilee. He saw it from the lemming point of view. Without the millions who had plunged and drowned, there could have been no miracle. The successful loner was only the other part of it: the last piece to the jigsaw puzzle, whose shape had already been created by the Preterite, like the last blank space on the table.” “Wait a minute. You people didn’t have jigsaw puzzles.” “Aw, shit.”
>>25224095No
>>25224100>>25224169>>25224196>apparently>yes>noWhich is it?
>>25224369ask chatGPT
>>25224369Maybe
>>25220298>Those books fucking SUCK.Well, I'm convinced.
>>25220298They're no grand conspiracy anon, they're just really fun writers. They write in the same spirit as Rabelais, Cervantes, Sterne, and Diderot
Are his other books this insane?
>>2522460949 kinda. V is much more "normal" (by Pynchon standards)
