12/17/22 I started the book. I will update this record of my reading. I read about half of it in the 90’s. I’m going to try again. This is a collection of references, I'll try writing essay later.
Links:
3.5 hour video: GRAVITY'S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon (Leaf by Leaf). He's very excited about the book. I'm not so sure I enjoy how he pronounces Pynchon.
(Started 11/28/22, last updated 12/24/22)
It starts:
“Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transfor-mation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. -Werner von Braun”
“Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transfor-mation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death. -Werner von Braun”
I'm going to read Steven C. Weisenburger's companion: "In many ways doing this book was fun. It meant readings in American pop and material culture, the occult, varieties of pseudoscience, real science, vernacular geography, and forty-year-old news periodicals—to mention just a few fields I wandered into."
Robert Crayola's Handbook: "“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.”
Zak Wilson has a book where he makes a drawing of every page (Pinterest)
Pirate smoking on the roof looking at the rocket contrails (p. 5).
Trivia: Book shared 1974 National Book Award for Fiction with A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Links:
Wiki support: The first thing I looked up: "Naptha is the flammable liquid obtained from the distillation of coal and used to fire gaslights and heaters."
The Wiki quotes this about bananas for page 7: "The Sweetest Strawberry: Buddha told a parable in a sutra: A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!" -Paul Reps, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith
I think about that story every day.
p. 10 "like a rude metal double-fart" Telephones in the UK use a double-ring, sounding like bzzt-bzzt.
3.5 hour video: GRAVITY'S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon (Leaf by Leaf). He's very excited about the book. I'm not so sure I enjoy how he pronounces Pynchon.
News:
Huntington Library acquired Thomas Pynchon archives: “When The Huntington approached us, we were excited by their aerospace and mathematics archives, and particularly attracted to their extraordinary map collection,” Jackson Pynchon said in a statement released by the Huntington. “When we learned of the scale and rigor of their independent scholarly programs, which provide exceptional resources for academic research in the humanities, we were confident that the Pynchon archive had found its home.”
"Lawrence said both Thomas and Jackson Pynchon were in close communication throughout the acquisition process. Pynchon’s wife, Melanie Jackson, is a prominent literary agent who counts him among her clients."
"What drew Pynchon to the Huntington was, in part, the impressive range of its collections, Lawrence said. In addition to rare works by Shakespeare, Chaucer and Joyce as well as a Gutenberg Bible, the library also houses the collections of authors including Octavia E. Butler, Eve Babitz, Christopher Isherwood, Paul Theroux and Hilary Mantel."
"The Huntington is also home to the papers of Stephen M. Tomaske, a UCLA librarian whose side gig was collecting as much work by and about Pynchon as possible, from yearbook clippings to recorded interviews with Pynchon’s Navy shipmates."
"Lawrence said both Thomas and Jackson Pynchon were in close communication throughout the acquisition process. Pynchon’s wife, Melanie Jackson, is a prominent literary agent who counts him among her clients."
"What drew Pynchon to the Huntington was, in part, the impressive range of its collections, Lawrence said. In addition to rare works by Shakespeare, Chaucer and Joyce as well as a Gutenberg Bible, the library also houses the collections of authors including Octavia E. Butler, Eve Babitz, Christopher Isherwood, Paul Theroux and Hilary Mantel."
"The Huntington is also home to the papers of Stephen M. Tomaske, a UCLA librarian whose side gig was collecting as much work by and about Pynchon as possible, from yearbook clippings to recorded interviews with Pynchon’s Navy shipmates."
Podcast: Pynchon In Public: Episode Zero. One.
Podcast: Overdue Episode 319
Orbit Magazine.
Music: In the Pynchon Wiki of Gravity's Rainbow there's a reference to Pirates of Penzance. I've never watched the movie, so I'm going to watch it. But Gravity's Rainbow came out in 1973, and Pirates of Penzance the movie came out in 1983. But the musical came out 1879. I was really psyched when Linda Ronstadt appeared. I find her utterly bewitching.
I found a bunch of songs called Gravity's Rainbow.
Words I liked:
Words I liked:
Brennschluss: is either the cessation of fuel burning in a rocket or the time that the burning ceases: the cessation may result from the consumption of the propellants, from deliberate shutoff, or from some other cause.[1] After Brennschluss, the rocket is subject only to external forces, notably that due to gravity.
"...clattering of chairs..." p. 10. Clattering is a soccer word, when someone runs into someone else, and I guess it's full body with parts touching here and there.
(Started 11/28/22, last updated 12/24/22)
End of day page
12/17/22 p. 4
12/18 p.7
12/19 p. 17
12/20 p. 28
12/21 p. 32
12/22 p. 37
12/23 p. 37
12/24 p. 66
12/25 p. 67
12/26 p. 76
12/27 p. 81
12/28 p.88
12/29 p. 97
12/30 p. 97
12/31 p. 100
Comments
Post a Comment