Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow is a novel published by Thomas Pynchon in 1973. Set in Europe near the end of World War II and built around the creation of the first military rockets, it dispenses with many of the traditional elements of plot and character development.

This novel is regarded by some as one of the great postmodern works of 20th century literature, but many others have declared it unreadable.

It was unanimously voted by the three-member Pulitzer Prize jury on fiction for the 1974 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. However, the other eleven members of the fourteen-member Pulitzer board overturned this decision, calling the book "unreadable," "turgid," "overwritten," and "obscene," with at least one member confessing to not having gotten more than a third of the way through the book.

The plot involves the V-2 rocket and Operation Paperclip, IG Farben, Standard Oil, parapsychology and conspiracy theories, drawing heavily on themes that Pynchon had probably encountered at his work as a technical writer for Boeing, where he worked on the Minuteman missile.

Gravity's Rainbow is in four parts, each with its own title and opening quotation:

1. Beyond The Zero
2. Un Perm au Casino Hermann Goering
3. In The Zone
4. The Counterforce

At the end of "The Counterforce", Gravity's Rainbow concludes with a completely obliteration of narrative.

Quotes

"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...secretly, it was being dictated instead by the needs of technology...by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of war."

"Homosexuality in high places is just a carnal afterthought now, and the real and only fucking is done on paper...."

External links

• Hyper Arts' Gravity's Rainbow concordance site
• More selected Gravity's Rainbow quotes