52 Books in 52 Weeks, it's called. The challenge is simple: read a book every week for a year.
31. A reader’s guide to Gravity’s rainbow.
Since this was my second attempt at penetrating Pynchon’s breakthrough novel, and my first attempt ended in such utter defeat, I thought I’d bring along reinforcements. Fowler’s guide was my secret weapon, orienting me to the novel scene by scene and helping me frame what I was reading, so that I wasn’t entirely responsible for creating meaning out of what is (frankly, at times) a complete mindf***. As a discipline, I did not read a chapter of Rainbow without first reading its corresponding section in the Guide. Fowler is a bit of a mystic himself, many times writing with a less-then-clear semi-spiritual vernacular. But overall, the thrust of his work comes through: that Pynchon is not concerned to craft a narrative or preserve the dramatic and personal integrity of his characters, but is writing something more akin to poetry; and that the chief concern is the relentless and inescapable action upon passive, ‘preterite’ citizens of this world by the completely Evil and Omnipotent denizens of an Other Kingdom, just over the spiritual horizon. With that frame, Gravity’s Rainbow had a structure that helped me piece the narrative together and kept me reading (albeit “just,” at times). And Fowler’s identification of the repeated elements in the novel (King Kong, Hansel and Gretel, etc.) were very helpful, as were the keys to the bewildering cast of characters. I do wonder if I would have had a different experience — less cynical, overall, and with a more immediate response to the surprisingly effective sinister moments — if Fowler weren’t leading me by the nose. But more likely, I’d have had no experience at all as I abandoned the novel after 100 pages. So: a useful book if you’d like to make it to the end of Gravity’s Rainbow.
