GRGR What is gravity's Rainbow about?

[Cometman]

I had never spent that much time thinking about the opening page of
Gravity's Rainbow before.  I suppose that's why people do these group
reads, eh?

A lot of interesting ideas, including that about the Holocaust. I just
finished reading the Gravity's Rainbow Companion right before the group
read started.  I don't recollect much attention to that idea in the
Companion.  I'm willing to consider it, though, if it adds to my
understanding of the book.  .

I am starting with a few preconceptions:

1) Gravity's Rainbow is the story of Slothrop.  There are other
important characters, true.
In the Companion, it talks about how Pynchon "debases" the heroic
format - the 4 parts of the book being the hero's discovery of his
special nature, his education, his mission, and his apotheosis (donated
the book to the library before I imagined needing it for the group
read, so I can't quote it right now) - but I'd say more that Pynchon
develops that structure using erudition and daring, than that he
debases or inverts it.  I suggest that Slothrop, by disappearing into
the mass of the Preterite, achieves his apotheosis in that wise.

2) Revealed through the story of Slothrop are 3 great themes: 
a) coming-of-age; but I always think a good story includes that
b) the roles of preterite and elect, and the unacceptibility of a
certain seemingly pervasive uncaringness in the presumptive Elect
c) the search for meaning in life - as shown in the Proverbs for
Paranoids, illustrative of Blake's statement, "I must create a system
or be enslaved by another man's", but also in Slothrop's romances and
friendships and changes of identity.

3) There is a lot of good writing to enjoy.

I like the anarchic format, so far.  If people prefixed GRGR to their
group read posts, (or mabye some are doing that already?) we could
still have the other stuff going.  A schedule I could live with would
be a page a day, does that seem reasonable to anybody?