Gravity's Brainblow and Update

I'm forty-some pages into Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and I'm ready to declare it one of the hardest books I've ever read. The sentences are very complex and often require multiple passes to get any idea of what the hell's going. I'm enjoying the "absurdity of war" tone that reminds me of one of my favorite books, Catch 22.

Luckily, some nerds have created an entire wiki site for the book. Unfortunately, most of the contributors wish they were Thomas Pynchon and the annotated guide is less than helpful. Most of the annotations don't explain the book's many references, merely point out inconsistencies and errors in someone else's critical companion book. Nerds.

The one piece of worthwhile Gravity's Rainbow interweb ephemera is Zak Smith's collection of Illustrations of Every Page of Gravity's Rainbow (see page 26 above). It also reminded me that I've completely abandoned my illustration blog. Complete Illustrated Sot-Weed Factor anyone?

So far I've finished four of the books in my project. I hope to actually finish before the end of the year and resume my regularly scheduled reading.

The Sot-Weed Factor by John Barth (819p)
The USA Trilogy (The 49th Parallel, 1919, and The Big Money) by John Dos Passos (1,144p in 3 volumes)
The Recognitions by William Gaddis (956p)
Ulysses by James Joyce (768p)
The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (1056p)
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (721p)
Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham (704p)
The Complete Novels (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, and The Dalkey Archive) by Flann O'Brien (787p)
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (776p)
Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (773p)
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne (720p)
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (853p)
Rabbit Angstrom by John Updike (1,516p)
Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (1,079p)
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn (729p)
Women and Men by Joseph McElroy (1192p)
NEWThe Early Stories: 1953-1975 by John Updike (864p) NEW

Wabbits

Apologies for the black and white photo.

I've just finished the last of Updike's four "Rabbit" novels. I really enjoyed them and am glad that this project and his recent death (and many subsequent appreciations) encouraged me to read Updike. Much like with Mailer, I didn't know what to expect from him other than he was a respected American author who could be a bit of a bastard. Updike had quite a bit more style than Mailer and more of an ability to turn the boring beautiful. Also, Updike was able to write Rabbit Angstrom (at least in the early novels) as the type of shitty person that Mailer was in real life.

Reading the four novels in succession had it's rewarding moments; particularly being able to see the parallels between Rabbit's early and late lives and the similarities between Rabbit and his son when they are at comparable ages. If it weren't for an all-day jury duty session during which the featured, alternate entertainments were the films Radio, Flightplan, and Calendar Girls; I probably wouldn't have blazed through them quite so quickly.

Next up, Gravity's Rainbow. A random goal: Read Ulysses before Bloomsday, possibly rereading The Odyssey beforehand, and watching O, Brother throughout.

Note: "Updike, fight" didn't yield any videos.

Down With Howie Z

I had only watched one documentary about Howard Zinn before I started A People's History of the United States last week. I finished it last night and thought it was a great supplement to a lot American history that people already know. Some of the motives that Zinn assigns to the Founding Fathers might be a little too sinister but are probably at least a little true. It was a surprisingly easy read both because of Zinn's style and the fact that I wasn't concentrating on remembering names and dates but more on tracing the themes of oppression and struggle through more than 500 years of history. All that being said, it's not a very uplifting read, and I'm glad I'm done it. Onward to the snobby whiteness of Updike's Rabbit novels.