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    The Gravity's Rainbow Handbook: A Key to the Thomas Pynchon Novel
    The Gravity's Rainbow Handbook: A Key to the Thomas Pynchon Novel
    The Gravity's Rainbow Handbook: A Key to the Thomas Pynchon Novel
    Ebook66 pages59 minutes

    The Gravity's Rainbow Handbook: A Key to the Thomas Pynchon Novel

    By Robert Crayola

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    Thomas Pynchon has a reputation as a "difficult" author -- but he doesn't have to be! With this new guide, Gravity's Rainbow can be understood by the average reader. Included are: a chapter-by-chapter summary and commentary on the story, a thorough description of all major characters, a biography of Pynchon, suggestions for essay topics, and much more. This guide is guaranteed to help you finish and make sense of Gravity's Rainbow -- all in a concise and easy-to-read format. Whether you are totally new to the book or just want to deepen your understanding, this guide will save you hours of struggle and frustration.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRobert Crayola
    Release dateDec 7, 2015
    ISBN9781311664341
    The Gravity's Rainbow Handbook: A Key to the Thomas Pynchon Novel
    Author

    Robert Crayola

    Robert Crayola is the author of numerous educational guides and videos, plus the following works: ILLUSTRATED BOOKS & STORIES William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience (2011) The Little Girl and the Little Boy (2016) The Past is Still Happening (2016) There Is No Government (2016) COMICS Prince Pander (2014) The Pubic War (2015) Batman LSD: The Living Nightmare (2016) Star Wars: Vader & Son (2016) SHORT FICTION Savage Tales (2013) DRAMA 18 Plays For Untalented Actors (2012) NONFICTION Cheat Codes For Life (2010) FICTION Dr. Jew (2010) Ueda Sensei Solves Crimes of Depravity and Perversity (2011) Ueda Sensei Vomits on the Garbage of Humanity (2012) Ueda Sensei Castrates the Insidious Underground (2013) Ueda Sensei Penetrates the Vagina of Morbidity (2017) SHORT TEXTS Prayer Magic: Conversations With Reality (2008) Vipassana Meditation: My Experiences at a 10-Day Retreat (2012) ALBUMS Alpha Cat (2011)

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      Book preview

      The Gravity's Rainbow Handbook - Robert Crayola

      The Gravity's Rainbow Handbook:

      A Key to the Thomas Pynchon Novel

      by Robert Crayola

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2015 Robert Crayola

      https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/robertcrayola

      ****

      CONTENTS

      Introduction

      The Elements of Literature

      Characters

      Glossary

      Key Concepts

      Chapter Summaries & Commentary

      Critical Questions & Essay Topics

      Conclusion

      INTRODUCTION

      Gravity's Rainbow, however you approach it, is a difficult book. Widely regarded as a classic, new readers may read fifty or a hundred pages with feelings of confusion and disgust, wonder why the book is so widely esteemed, and put it back on the shelf to gather dust. This is unfortunate. With some persistence and a little help (which this guide hopes to provide), Gravity's Rainbow can be one of the most rewarding experiences available to a reader. Imagine a story that combines Ulysses, Catch-22, The Canterbury Tales, Naked Lunch, Tropic of Cancer, Cat's Cradle, Lolita, Under the Volcano, Macbeth, and On the Road into one book. That is the scope of what Pynchon creates in Gravity's Rainbow. And like Ulysses, it seems to contain every experience available to a human being. This guide will give you the tools to navigate this incredible story. But before we get into the details of the text itself, let's look at the challenges that the book presents to the new reader.

      First, there is a huge cast of characters. It is often unclear who is speaking, and to whom. People disappear and don't show up again for hundreds of pages. There is often little description of a character, or descriptions are scattered throughout the book, requiring multiple readings to get the full flavor of who these people are. To help you figure out who is who, I have provided a detailed listing of every major character in the book.

      A second challenge of this novel involves context. The book demands a great knowledge of history, geography, science, mathematics, music, psychology, pop culture, and the occult. The amount of knowledge is almost overwhelming. Fortunately, there are annotations available to help you identify any specific detail (Steven C. Weisenburger's book and pynchonwiki.com are both excellent resources). However, I hope to show that most of the details included in the novel are impressionistic, helping to paint a picture, but ultimately not essential for understanding the book as a whole. In fact, the amount of information required to get the gist of the book is not much larger than any novel. It only requires knowing what is essential so you can see the bigger picture Pynchon has carved out. I hope to give you that information in this guide.

      Another challenge the book poses is the content. This is not a book for the prudish. It contains profanity, racism, graphic violence, torture, pedophilia, coprophilia, sadomasochism, and a seemingly infinite number of sex scenes. If these depictions put you off, this might not be the book for you. That being said, Pynchon doesn't present these scenes thoughtlessly or admiringly. They are included with a purpose. The book takes place at the end of World War II, and Europe is in a state of chaos. As political boundaries are dissolved and redefined, so too are personal boundaries. Almost every character makes poor choices as the stress and pain of war tears them apart. This is not to excuse or justify their actions, but to help see how people then (and now) continue to live destructively. Also, for all its darkness, Gravity's Rainbow contains nobility, compassion, self-sacrifice, and forgiveness. We will look further at the sense of doom that many characters experience, and how it leads to bizarre and painful situations, and for some, a kind of redemption.

      And if these hurdles weren't enough to deter the new reader, the postmodern aspect of the book can leave many people confused or displeased. Postmodernism in literature is a movement that attempts to deconstruct how the narrative itself functions. This shows up throughout Gravity's Rainbow as Pynchon intrudes his voice into the text, parodies his own efforts, and questions the reliability of any perspective. Since many of the characters are intoxicated in the book (as Pynchon supposedly was during much of the book's writing), this also works its way into the storytelling. Everything is questionable. A sense of paranoia pervades the landscape, and there are no easy answers about who or what to believe.

      With these warnings in mind, we are ready to start unraveling Gravity's Rainbow. Think of it as climbing the Mt. Everest of novels. It's a very steep and thorny path to the top, but once we arrive, I promise you the view will be amazing. This is a book that gets

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