One of the biggest challenges for me so far has been reconciling the fact that I will not understand everything I read in Gravity's Rainbow. I started off with the companion in hand, looking up every term or cultural reference I did not recognize, but it was taking me forever to get through it. I finally set the companion down, let myself get caught up in the convoluted prose, and began to really enjoy it. One of my favorite passages was in the tenth section, pages 61-72, which described Slothrop's vision of his journey into the sewer: "...noise growing like a tidal wave, a jamp-packed wavefront of shit, vomit, toilet paper and dingleberries in mind-boggling mosaic..." (67). I love how disturbing Pynchon can get. I find myself most interested in the Roger/Jessica relationship, my favorite quote being "They are in love. Fuck the war" (42).

Did anyone else notice that there seemed to be a lot of water-related images in this section of the book? As I was reading, I noticed that water and fish seemed to turn up relatively often.

Some of these are coincidental. The Poisson equation is named after a real person, and is an actual equation that one might find in a book. The weather is often described as wet, but since the book is set in England, I suppose that is to be expected. However, some instances must be intentional. The PISCES group, for example, is not a real historical entity, so Pynchon must have chosen the name. Along with dogs, Pointsman conditions a giant octopus named Grigori, who was caught somewhere off of the Ick Regis jetty. Weisenburger says that Grigori will reappear in the narrative farther into the book. In a scene that begins on page 74, Reg Le Froyd jumps from a cliff and into the ocean, after claiming that he is “related, by blood, to the sea.” On page 157, Franz Pokler is described as a “Piscean husband, swimming in his seas of fantasy,” and on page 177, two goldfish are described as “making a Pisces sign.” It seems like fish are coming up far too many times for it to be unintentional.

Sorry to be a bit (hah, an understatement!) redundant, but, as is the recurring sentiment, I felt this reading to be slower than I had expected. I was confused at first because stylistically, Pynchon’s narration seems discombobulated. The plot is set up in a subtle way that is not especially customary. The paragraphs containing multiple clauses of description and observation provide information contributing to the setting and the characters without ever really stating anything explicitly. (Or, if they did, I didn't pay as much attention to it because I was swamped with all these other things to keep in mind.)

I echo what appears to be general sentiment: the first 150 pages were slow going, at times exasperating, but also rewarding in a gestalt sort of way. I, too, was reminded of Catch 22 –Pynchon’s versatility really comes through during moments of wry comic relief, which provided welcome opportunities to catch my breath from the stylistically- and content-heavy prose (my favorite little pocket of humor was definitely the scene where Slothrop is being force-fed “unspeakably awful” candy).

I was intrigued by the prevalence of the second-person voice; it seemed to implicate the reader somehow in the events of the story’s universe, prohibiting the kind of safe retrospective complacency with which one could easily read Gravity’s Rainbow. Pynchon periodically asks questions like “Is the baby smiling, or is it just gas? Which do you want it to be?” which give the distinct impression of the author directly interrogating the reader (133). Moments like this force cathexis, problematizing the possibility of remaining detached from, say, Roger Mexico’s bemusement about the limitations of statistics/rationalism for understanding the world. Did anyone else get this sense from the second-person structure? The theme of voyeurism also seemed to contribute to the overall sense of reader’s complicity. After the description of Slothrop and Darlene’s sexual encounter (right after the candy scene), Pynchon off-handedly asks, “And who’s that, through the crack in the orange shade, breathing carefully? Watching?” (122). This question – regardless of whether it was intended to refer to a peeping tom inside the story or not – wakes us from our voyeuristic lull, offering a jarring reminder that by reading we are, in fact, watching without being watched; and, furthermore, that this occupation applies not only to sex scenes but across the board. In other words, reading is always voyeurism. But Pynchon clearly wants us to read; I understand him as simply hoping to inspire a little critical self-consciousness about the seer-seen imbalance between reader and novel, and for us to not let the (necessarily) voyeuristic mode of engagement with the text cloud our compulsion to engage actively with the difficult questions it evokes. It reminded me, in this sense, of the David Lynch film Blue Velvet, which plays with the notion of voyeurism in similar, self-consciousness-inducing sort of way.

I had a hard time with these first 150 pages in many respects. First, they just took so long to read! I also struggled with comprehension at points, especially with Pynchon's "stream-of-conscious"-style writing. It's also hard for me to believe that there are still 600 or so pages left in the book. I feel like I should be near the middle, as opposed to really just starting out.

One element that I noticed fairly early on was Pynchon's concentration on forms of light. It seems as though once a page or so Pynchon mentions the color, or the intensity, or the effect of, or the lack of light. Some of the imagery that comes from his descriptions of light is really cool; my favorite was "Globular lights, painted a dark green, hang out from under the fancy iron eaves, unlit for centuries"(4).("Unlit for centuries" was the part that got me hooked; it's interesting to think that the last people to light the lamps were long dead at that point in the narration.)

Wow...that reading took forever! Or, so it seemed. I'm used to flying through books, so this was a surprise for me. I like the book. I think. Sort of. It also is really painful. It is very confusing. I truly struggled through these 150 pages.

Nonetheless, there were moments that did really get my interest and attention. I really like Pirate as a character. The small comic parts in the beginning made me think of Catch 22. Bloat falls from the sky (in a way) and Pirate kicks the cot underneath him. “One of the legs collapses. ‘Good Morning,’ notes Pirate. Bloat smiles briefly and goes back to sleep, snuggling well into Pirate’s blanket” (5). Awwwwww (in a bizarre way, that is). Not much of the book is cute. Often the characters are much more dirty (physically and sexually) and not childlike. Here, the atmosphere is innocent and silly. The same silliness occurs when someone actually slips on a banana. I guess the author had to get that out of the way.