Gravity's Rainbow autodidact, sorta

[Joseph Tracy]

My reading history with Pynchon is odd. So is my life history, but I won't bore you with much of that. I was profoundly elsewhere during Pynchon's literary rise having left the mainstream of culture for a spiritual commune and many years of celibacy, prayer, and hard physical work.  I broke from that personal history after much heart searching and a good deal of research into church history, human history, and textual and historic analysis of the Bible. Thank american towns and universities for a great library system. Somewhere around 2000 I was given a copy of Vineland by a  good friend with  whom I played music and shared an attempt to homeschool our children, ours were no longer  home-schooled and graduating High School;  his son 11 years old. Kevin had an English masters and he gave  me Vineland because I have a weird sense of humor and because I had lived in Arcata Ca for years. 

So I read Vineland and found it  the funniest most intriguing and oddly structured book I had ever read, then V, then COL49 then GR, then Vineland again while participating in the p-list discussion of it.  I didn't read much Pynchon criticism apart from starting and deciding to leave off Weisenberger and some articles recommended on the P-list; thanks friends.  I then read M& D with a  tad more internet research. The first Pynchon book I truly began to study was ATD.  I found this whole multivalent inquiry and attempt at auto-didacticism  via Pynchonian digression richly satisfying, amusingly wacky, and appropriately weird  leading to books about ancient greek philosopher's, the history of fossil fuels,  and a growing knowledge of relatively underexplored European history. ATD remains my personal favorite Pynchon book but they all seem more and more like a single work.  

I had enjoyed and been powerfully influenced by Gravity's Rainbow but did also find it to be the most dense and difficult of P's works.  I put off a thorough second read until now.  Mike Jings translation questions inspired me to begin to read GR again while making summary notes after each segment. The quality , range and subtlety of the prose is striking me. The power with which P immerses the reader in the terror of London under aerial bombardment, while simultaneously making jokes and setting up the trajectory of his alternative history/commentary is wildly impressive. Chasing leads is incredible -the rainbow patch on black over flaming sword that looks like rocket forSHAEF, possible Crowley/Ian Fleming collaboration on luring  Rudolf Hess to Scotland. How he orchestrated all this is boggling.

So I will be posting some thoughts and asking some questions about Gavity's Rainbow.  I'm also going to post my chapter summaries with the hope of eliminating errors and adding absolutely crucial information. So if I get some feedback , muchos gracias. If not, sokay too.