50
Used, New, and Out of Print Books - We Buy and Sell - Powell's Books
Cart |
|  my account  |  wish list  |  help   |  800-878-7323
Hello, | Login
MENU
  • Browse
    • New Arrivals
    • Bestsellers
    • Featured Preorders
    • Award Winners
    • Audio Books
    • See All Subjects
  • Used
  • Staff Picks
    • Staff Picks
    • Picks of the Month
    • Bookseller Displays
    • 50 Books for 50 Years
    • 25 Best 21st Century Sci-Fi & Fantasy
    • 25 PNW Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books From the 21st Century
    • 25 Memoirs to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Global Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Women to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books to Read Before You Die
  • Gifts
    • Gift Cards & eGift Cards
    • Powell's Souvenirs
    • Journals and Notebooks
    • socks
    • Games
  • Sell Books
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Find A Store

Don't Miss

  • Scientifically Proven Sale
  • Staff Top Fives of 2022
  • Best Books of 2022
  • Powell's Author Events
  • Oregon Battle of the Books
  • Audio Books

Visit Our Stores


Kelsey Ford: From the Stacks: J. M. Ledgard's Submergence (0 comment)
Our blog feature, "From the Stacks," features our booksellers’ favorite older books: those fortuitous used finds, underrated masterpieces, and lesser known treasures. Basically: the books that we’re the most passionate about handselling. This week, we’re featuring Kelsey F.’s pick, Submergence by J. M. Ledgard...
Read More»
  • Kelsey Ford: Five Book Friday: Year of the Rabbit (0 comment)
  • Kelsey Ford: Powell's Picks Spotlight: Grady Hendrix's 'How to Sell a Haunted House' (0 comment)

{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##

Gravity's Rainbow

by Thomas Pynchon
Gravity's Rainbow

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews

ISBN13: 9780143039945
ISBN10: 0143039946



All Product Details

View Larger ImageView Larger Images
Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$23.00
New Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
QtyStore
1Burnside
3Cedar Hills
1Hawthorne

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.

Powell's Staff on PowellsBooks.Blog

These 25 vastly different books create a stunning portrait of the dislocation, perseverance, and hope at the heart of life in 21st-century America...

Read More»


5 3

What Our Readers Are Saying

Share your thoughts on this title!
Average customer rating 5 (3 comments)

`
videowrangler , January 21, 2010
I read this the summer after I graduated from the University of Florida and I needed the companion guide to the book for most of the references! I absolutely loved every time I had to pick up the guide and I remember every day of the summer I read it fondly!

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

report this comment

`
Chris , February 21, 2007
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)?

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

(13 of 22 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment

`
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.

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

(11 of 24 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment




Product Details

ISBN:
9780143039945
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
11/01/2006
Publisher:
Penguin Books
Pages:
784
Height:
1.30IN
Width:
5.54IN
Series:
Penguin Classics Deluxe Editions
Age Range:
18 and up
Grade Range:
13 and up
Copyright Year:
2006
Cover artist:
Frank Miller
Author:
Thomas Pynchon
Subject:
War stories
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
Americans
Subject:
World war, 1939-1945
Subject:
General Fiction
Subject:
Science fiction

Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$23.00
New Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
QtyStore
1Burnside
3Cedar Hills
1Hawthorne
Used Book Alert for book Receive an email when this ISBN is available used.
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram

  • Help
  • Guarantee
  • My Account
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Security
  • Wish List
  • Partners
  • Contact Us
  • Shipping
  • Transparency ACT MRF
  • Sitemap
  • © 2023 POWELLS.COM Terms

{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##