So I decided to take up reading again...

So I decided to take up reading again, I found an old dog-eared copy of Gravity's Rainbow and since it's recommended here I started with it.

Is this book supposed to make me feel stupid? It's so dense and confusing.

It's supposed to make you feel confused. I highly suggest you look into a companion guide and get a notebook to keep track of the characters and their narratives. Unless you're an 80 year-old erudite Englishman who participated in the second world war and has a deep understanding of Ouspensky, a lot of the references are going to go right past you.

Don't start with that book. Start off with a small classic like 'Heart of Darkness' or something.

'Winesburg, Ohio' would make for a good starter as well.

I happened to have a college course in the rise of fascism in Europe, and I'm in the military so I was able to keep track of the book pretty easily.
But if not, I'd suggest starting with the futurists then work your way through the cultural aspects of the early 1920's to 1945.

I'm about 100 pages in I don't really want to stop now. I'll look into a companion guide.

I disagree with this user.

I think reading through it and not knowing what is going on is bad but I don't think you should buy a guide.

If you don't know who someone is, stop yourself and figure out who they are, then resume reading. It will take longer but at least you won't have some English teacher spoon feeding you an analysis.

Use your brain.

its confusing? war is confusing

doesnt make sense? heh. war doesnt make much sense either, buddy.

Also, you don't need to get every single reference to appreciate the book. On your first readthrough why not just enjoy it for what it is?

You can't "Use your brain" to catch when Slothrop skillfully uses the European term "specific impulse" rather than the American term "specific thrust" unless you have a working knowledge of the distinctions between European and American engineering terminology. You can't "Use your brain" to pick up on how referring to somebody as a "175" is a passing reference to the Nazi penal code for homosexuals unless you know the Nazi penal codes. You can't "Use your brain" to understand that "laager" is an Afrikaans term that means "a migrating encampment" but was used during the Herero War to refer to concentration camps unless you not only know Afrikaans but understand how it was interpreted in southwest Africa in 1904.

So shut up. A companion guide isn't "some English teacher spoon feeding you an analysis," it's somebody who has professionally studied the book pointing out potentially significant errata that is going to pass over your head if you do not already know what to look for, which you almost definitely do not. Drop your inflated ego for two seconds and accept the fact that you do not have this knowledge. You can lie to yourself and pretend you know what's happening, you can move your glazed eyes over the words that you don't fully understand and construct a vague "appreciation" based on ignorance, and when you reach the end you can add another notch to your bedpost, but it will be sort of horseshit.

Why the hell did you start with GR? lel

nice contextually autological use of the word errata

and i'm not the guy you're replying to, just highlighting the blistering irony borne from your apparent scrupulousness

anyway, his main point seemed to be about understanding the book's narrative, not recognizing the myriad references (not to imply they're entirely superfluous to understanding the story, just not universally necessary)

and last thing, as someone with an inflated ego, I can confidently say that you do too, you hellhound hypocrite you

Cringe

i freaking love gravitys rainbow man. one day when i went to my friend jackson's house for his birthday i strapped a bottlerocket to the area where my penis is (but outside of my clothes). we were outside and all my friends were like baha dude that's funny and i just said "i dare you guys to jerk me off. I double dog DARE you. just see what will happen." they were all like aha dude no you're crazy. scaredy cats wouldn't do it. so i went back inside and asked jackson's mom where the lighter was, telling her it was for the birthday cake. what can i say? sometimes i'll tell a little white lie when it's for one of my nutso pranks. anyway, when i came back out with a lit V2 on my groin, a screaming came across jackson's driveway. you shoulda saw their faces. i'd have to say that i've always done off-the-wall things like that, but ever since i got the book i've been just a little bit more... shall we say... bananas. ;)

>>>>>>

Pynchons my fav writer for sure because my fav thing in books is goofs, gags, jokes and rambunctious behavior, and his books are full to the brim of it. Every novel is like one of those novelty snake cans, you open the book & POP you get a face fulla snakes and you fall back cackling. The mad mind, the crack genius, to do it! and then you think hmmm whats he gonna do next, this trickster, and you pick the book back up and BZZZZZZZZZZ you get a shock and Hahahahahah you've been pranked again by the old pynchmeister, that card. "Did that Pynch?" he sez, laughing yukyukyukyuk. Watch him as he shoves a pair of plastic buck teeth right up into his mouth and displays em for you- left, right, center- "you like dese? Do i look handsome???" Pulls out a mirror. "Ah!" Hand to naughty mouth. And you're on your ass again laughing as he snaps his suspenders, exits stage right, and appears again hauling a huge golden gong.

Gotta hand it to Gravity's Rainbow. I know it's a meme novel around here, but man, it changed my life. I'd grown up thinking reading was homework. A novel was drudgery for me. This attitude lasted way into my high school years, a time when if I wasn't asleep in class I was skipping and hanging out in a buddy's basement doing bong hits. We'd play this game where we would get high and make up a crazy scenario like, OK, what if everything was very serious, right, like it was a serious place and time and everywhere you looked everything was highly serious, but what if at exactly the point when everything was at its most serious and you expected the next moment to continue the trend of utmost seriousness, what if, at that very moment, a gorilla wearing a fez on a giant unicycle rode by. My friends and I would collapse into convulsions of laughter, punching each other and slapping our knees. "No! Stop it! Fucking stop it!" a teary red face would choke out. We called it The Game, and normally we only played it while we were blazed in a basement, but once in a while we would play it in school. One fateful afternoon a few of us numbskulls had detention together. We sauntered in (high, of course) and sat down to serve our time. At some point we started to play The Game, right there in detention. Our supervisor, an English teacher who was known for being kind of a hardass, was for some reason being super chill that afternoon. We occasionally got pretty loud with our laughter, but not even once did he tell us to keep it down. He just sat there at the desk reading a newspaper. We even got a few chuckles out of him. Then, with fifteen minutes left of our sentence, he folded up the newspaper, came over to us, and sat down on a desk. He was holding a thick book. "Here," he said, "I think you guys might get a kick out of this." We read the cover: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. OK, we said. We were skeptical, but we took the book. I was the first one to read it. My mind was blown. This guy Pynchon had been playing The Game since the early 70s. You think that since the book's about World War II that it's going to be all serious. But then you're like, wait, whaaaat? Did that guy just go down the toilet? Why is there a pie fight during the serious war? Why is there weird sex happening? Weed? This guy Pynchon blew all our random scenarios out of the water. I gave it to the other guys to read, and we agreed to stop playing The Game entirely. We decided to leave it to the master. Thomas Pynchon, whoever you are, we salute you.

Yeah, you have to understand what Pynchon's doing. The book is long and it contains words that refer to high-brow things and other words that refer to low-brow things like candy. That's been the template for modern literature since Pynchon, and it's one Pynchon invented. Whenever a writer sits down to write an ambitious work, he first writes the big number 1000 on a piece of paper because that's how many pages he has to aim for. Then he makes two columns, High and Low. In the High column he puts all the things he learned in school, and in the Low column he puts all the mass-market products he indulges in because in the end he's a regular guy like you or me. Then he creates a McGuffin. Then he comes up with as many funny name as he can like "Jeremiah Xbox-Lewinsky." And then he strings together a bunch of wild scenes the characters star in while they search for the McGuffin. But of course they never get it, the post-Pynchon writer must end the book abruptly because to do otherwise would be to succumb to base mass-market narrative techniques and this is art, baby. And there you have it. It's not easy to do. I only thought of one funny name, but you have to think of at least 50.

fuck a guide honestly, honestly look up the referents yourself on the internet, honestly honestly

yuck

if you're reading gravity's rainbow and paying anything other than ancillary attention to errata like that then you mostl likely suck on several counts

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>You can't "Use your brain" to catch when Slothrop skillfully uses the European term "specific impulse" rather than the American term "specific thrust" unless you have a working knowledge of the distinctions between European and American engineering terminology.
A ten year old could pick this up from the subtext of the part you're speaking about... its an englishman and an american man having a conversation.

now this ... is true shitposting + stale pasta

i'm truly impressed