By David Summerfield
Gravity’s Rainbow
by Thomas Pynchon
Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition
Nov 2006, $US23, Paperback, 776 pages, ISBN-13: 978-0143039945
This diffusely styled high-octane prose-poetry narrative densely propagated with astonishing vulgarity chugs at you with the coal infused muscle of a steam engine. Incredible amounts of erotically detailed aberration remarkable in scope have you believing you’re speeding along a zipline over insanity. Whether you believe you’re interpreting the in-your-face rantings of an unhinged lunatic or perhaps the remarkable menageries of a genius at all times it is a complete expedition into absurdity. Make no mistake however reading this vulgar erotically infused tome can become a delightful and delicious banquet as you anticipate throughout its several hundred pages each imaginative-yet-incredibly-delusional-vignette which after reading sticks with you (and should be taken in small bites to allow reflection) like the fat ladened entree of a Viking feast.
In part one of four parts there is no discernable plot. V2 rockets are landing crazily and indiscriminately from Germany into Britain during World War II. As the madness of the outer war rages various other storylines begin to intersect as a frantic and frenzied alternate war of spy versus spy rages on black markets for procurement of any scrap of information regarding intelligence or technological innovation that will give one side an advantage over the other.
By part two the story descends deeper into its own madness. A phalanx of new characters has paraded in and out so many it’s hard to keep track all with names characteristically impossible to pronounce. In a bewildering array of color flavor and sensation the narrative continues to manifest unforgettable levels of lewdness and instead of the title ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ you come to thinking this book could easily have been titled ‘Depravity’s Rainbow.’ Through a series of madcap and fantastical misadventures reminiscent of Mad Magazine or the Marx Brothers a character named Slothrop emerges as a man running from and obsessed with escaping from ‘They’ or ‘The System’ who want to experiment on him because of a certain Pavlovian reaction he has regarding the V2. This thread of the story disappears and reappears rather confusedly throughout the entire dense tapestry of the surrounding asides and voluminous cast of characters. The hallmarks of the narrative at this point have become human waste smack talking lab rats along with Slothrop’s erections which for some reason manage to correlate precisely with the rocket strikes even as the exact value of this lugubrious phenomenon remains unclear.
Moreover as the introduction of so many characters in and out has tended unfortunately to obfuscate any all-encompassing theme rather than searching for any unifying concept I found myself reading the book more for its brilliantly rendered and disjointed asides. However I did come to see the rocket itself as an overarching metaphor for the unpredictability of life events that come seemingly out of the blue quickly without warning and having disastrous effects as well as consequences. As Pynchon relates ‘though chances are always against a precise hit we all move in an ellipse of uncertainty hoping to avoid that perfect strike in the center of the target area.’
Taking up this book is a massive undertaking and in that sense it’s like reading several volumes of an encyclopedia or ‘The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich’ though infinitely more delightful. And even if one becomes slightly confused by its roller coaster twists and turns or has not found it super revealing in some Darwinian sense in my opinion the reader will at least have found it outrageously funny and entertaining.
Chapter eleven in part three is a pivotal segment (in my estimation) where the narrative veers from whimsy and magical realism into dead seriousness. It examines the dual nature of the rocket and in detailing the making of the projectile on the Island of Gravity it is simple enough in its construction built to kill humans and to be the main armament and delivery system for war and destruction. But the account also hints rather paradoxically at how the rockets parabola will one day no longer represent a vapor trail of destruction and devastation but will come to represent as a rainbow a moniker symbolizing man’s hope and aspiration for the future exploration and peaceful conquest of space. And for me this becomes one of the main points or ironies of the book.
Beyond that Pynchon defies you to understand much of his story at all. With prodigious amounts of nuance metaphor and simile he is constantly testing your fortitude as he reels off aside after aside having to do with excrement and other bodily effusions descriptions of sex acts grandiose gritty and extraordinary all brilliantly detailed which veer off never to be salvaged again as part of any coherent narrative. By page five hundred I’d seriously begun to wonder why and what I’d been reading constantly expecting something in the way of a plotline to reveal itself an ‘Aha’ moment a reward for having slogged my way through this miasmic tome of mayhem with still only a vague idea of what it was about what was happening or where it was going.
But while wallowing in my bewilderment something relevant in the book did seem to reveal itself as to what may be an explanation of at least one overarching theme when on pages 529 and 530 reference is made to ‘the dawn being nearly here’ the war itself being one giant plot its cost in blood and treasure the result of a global conspiracy between developers of technology such as plastics electronics and aircraft and some ruling elite whose loyalty is not to any nation/state but only to themselves as a collective–the ‘they’ consistently referred to in the book and other than for the reliability of his erections to predict V2 strikes what Slothrop must be running from for no other apparently decipherable reason. The ‘They’ in the book (which is my conviction) this well-funded messianic illuminatus along with charlatans of newly emerging tech had to have proving grounds on a planetary scale and so had masterminded these enormous killing fields for real world testing of their processes algorithms and machinery.
The goal of this experiment of industrial science with its incredible cost was to reap great wealth for this shadowy confab once their terror-filled applications of science and technology (just as the parabola of the rocket would eventually become a symbol of peace) were put to passive use. As it is my own interpretation I ask each individual reader to consider it and how it might fit with their own understanding as they too struggle through Pynchon’s gravitational universe. And when so much of the book seems intent on burying the reader in obfuscation and confusion I found this to be an unusually ironic and daring amplification on the author’s part when so many other messages hadn’t come through had wilted under the thick canopy of narrative as the author veered off into another time another place another character to eviscerate.
And if this book should be read for any reason at all it should be appreciated for its stunning command of depth its language and scope of insight into what he (Pynchon) does manage to make obvious and that is the unequivocal depravity of the human condition in its ability to jump from the page and literally assault the reader with perceptions of delusion decadence debauchery and wantonness. And as I researched before during and after reading the book I discovered a cult of hobbyists and influencers code breakers and book reviewers along with any number of youtubers and devoted followers who still and probably always will spend countless hours attempting to decipher and explain the caterwauling mayhem and madness behind Pynchon’s method. But instead of as assiduously trying to unravel one’s own thinking I couldn’t imagine engaging in this type of soapbox analysis spending so much time and effort trying to remove oneself and others from under the weighty and idiosyncratic avalanche of another person’s mind back into the light of day where there is none.
At any rate I knew a woman once she was not highly intelligent or structured in any sense but through the shear force and power of her personality she succeeded at whatever she did just as this book succeeds without any apparent storyline or theme (except what you pull from it) through the sheer power and capriciousness of its eccentricity. Thankfully at some point despite all its novelty you feel like the narrative is advancing slowly painfully toward some conclusion but I leave it to each reader to decide for himself whether it satisfies. And one can only suppose as the rocket’s parabola has become a symbol of benevolence and the Illuminati having fully converted their machinations to nonviolence reaping great riches that despite the V2’s conversion to peaceful use Slothrop’s erections still work.
About the author: David Summerfield’s works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and photo-art have merited publication in over three dozen literary magazines/journals/and reviews in the US, Britain, Canada, Germany and India. A graduate of Frostburg State University, Maryland, and a veteran of the Iraq war, he’s also been co-editor, columnist, and contributor to various publications within his home state of West Virginia. He’s been a finalist for the 2024 Northwind Writing Award sponsored by Raw Earth Ink, a finalist in the 2025 digital art competition entitled Secret Garden sponsored by Ten Moir Gallery and is a 2025 nominee for the Pushcart Prize. View his work at davidsummerfieldcreates.com