Cartoon Dog, Bear or Cat

I finished Gravity's Rainbow over the weekend and the only thought I've been able to come up with is a description of the author in the Achewood patois.

Pynchon: The dude is just bursting with elements.

This is probably more of a Ray Smuckles comment (though lord knows why he's reading post-modern fiction) as all of Cornelius Bear's books are leather-bound.

..and I'm OK

I passed the halfway mark of Gravity's Rainbow on my train ride home today. I am enjoying it, but I'm having a tough time getting through it and motivating myself to pick the book back up. The "main plot" (if there is one) is constantly pushed aside in favor of dense digressions into random, mostly fictional European towns, myths, and weapons. The digressions themselves are mostly good, but I rarely remember what the hell was going on in Slothrop's quest each time I pick it up.

I can say that I really don't like the "silly songs" throughout. I guess they remind me too much of the higgledy piggledy/double dactyl crap that always seems so damn forced and only amusing to "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me..." commentators. Silly songs should be sung (see above), not shoved into otherwise funny WWII postmodern fiction.

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