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Gravity's Rainbow: Classics Deluxe Edition

by Thomas Pynchon

Gravity's Rainbow: Classics Deluxe Edition Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Tyrone Slothrop is an archetypal innocent abroad, but in the worst possible circumstances: he's an American on a mission to locate V-2 rocket-launching sites in war-torn Europe. On a larger level, the novel illustrates the struggle between those who perceive and rebel against the war, seeing it as an overt movement toward the obliteration of the individual, and those who suppress individual identity to serve the war machine controlled by "Them." Which side Slothrop is on remains highly ambiguous. An encyclopedic work much like Joyce's Ulysses, this is perhaps one of the two or three most critically acclaimed and pondered novels of the 20th century.

Gravity's Rainbow is dedicated to Richard Farina, a young writer Pynchon met at Cornell whose promising literary career was cut short by a fatal motorcycle accident. In 1974, the Pulitzer Prize Committee recommended this novel unanimously, but the Pulitzer Prize Board rejected it as "obscene" and "unreadable." As a result, there was no prize awarded that year.

Review:

"[H]e is searching for the same complex imitations of complexity that Joyce, Proust, Faulkner, and now William Gass use so beautifully. There is no reason to think that he will not soon succeed. The man is only 35 years old, and the language of each of his novels is more interesting than the last." Earl Shorris, Harper's

Review:

"I've been turning pages day and night, watching my fingers go ink black, I've been bleeding from paper cuts, reading Gravity's Rainbow. Forests have gone to the blade for this novel. Don't mourn the trees; read the book. Gravity's Rainbow will be compared with Ulysses and with Duck Soup." Geoffrey Wolff, San Francisco Examiner

Review:

"We're accustomed to circular and linear stories, but [Pynchon's] is structured in the shape of Poisson's ratio--a bunch of unrelated fragments come together, form a cohesive arc, then scatter as they descend. Pynchon blends all manner of fact, fiction, characters, relationships, and metaphors into this metastructure." Lisa Goldman

Review:

"At thirty six, Pynchon has established himself as a novelist of major historical importance. More than any other living writer, including Norman Mailer, he has caught the inward movements of our time in outward manifestations of art and technology so that in being historical he must also be marvelously exorbitant." Richard Poirier, Saturday Review

Synopsis:

Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the twentieth century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.

About the Author

Pynchon received the National Book Award for Gravity's Rainbow in 1974.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
Chris, February 21, 2007 (view all comments by Chris)
A supremely encyclopedic, wildly cinematic work of singular prose and plot, Pynchon's playful novel showcases literature as a weapon, and a terrifyingly robust one at that. Has a more brilliant study of nature, control, struggle, paranoia, and love ever been written (and in a manner so equally profane and profound)?
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CBD, November 12, 2006 (view all comments by CBD)
It's been recommended to me as the most complicated novel out there but a highly rewarding read.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780143039945
Author:
Pynchon, Thomas
Publisher:
Penguin Books
Jacket Illustrator:
Miller, Frank
Author:
Miller, Frank
Subject:
General
Subject:
Literary
Subject:
World war, 1939-1945
Subject:
Americans
Subject:
Science fiction
Subject:
War stories
Edition Description:
Penguin Classic
Series:
Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions
Publication Date:
November 2006
Binding:
Paperback
Grade Level:
General/trade
Language:
English
Pages:
776
Dimensions:
836x554x130 178

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