Gravity’s Rainbow is the last “difficult” and “scary” read from my Summer Reading Challenge and I’m ready to give up. I was ready to give up on page 7, again on page 16, also on page 34, then on page 43 and now on page 116.
I don’t want to give up on it, so now I’m in search of study guides, reading guides, something that will help me follow this, this, this… I don’t even know what to call it.
Anyone out there have any words of wisdom? Anyone out there who can tell me why I should keep reading? 600 pages is a long time to muddle through if I’m not going to get anything out of the muddling.
Help!
Updated – 8/6/6 – I’ve given up, for now. I may go back to it later but another 50 pages last night proved that I just wasn’t going to get anything out of it. Darn it.
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It is a really hard read. There is so much strangeness going on that it gets so muddled. How far did you get before you surrendered?
Strangeness and muddled, totally describes the experience.
I got to page 165 before I threw it to the foot of the bed!
TW picked it up and she started out doing well with it but put it down after about 50 pages.
I hope to try again, after I get more of my summer reading challenge books out of the way. Maybe three books from now and I’ll try again. We’ll see.
Good luck with it. From a distance of months after finishing it, I can piece together a little of what I think was going on. Pynchon was certainly off his meds when he wrote this. Maybe a glass of absinthe or some other literary psychotropic substance would help.