Gravity's Rainbow

Someone recommended this to me after I mentioned that I didn't know what to read and liked Infinite Jest/DFW.

I'm looking for some motivation to continue or maybe get some people's opinions on it, I like the writing but it's not engrossing me.

Threads like this are horrible and people shouldn't whine about reading something and looking for motivation but here it is...fuck.

I read the first half of Vineland and fucking stopped.... hope this helps.

  On 3/23/2010 at 12:04 AM, goffer said:

I read the first half of Vineland and fucking stopped.... hope this helps.

You shouldn't have read it while fucking

But fucking stopped

I love Pynchon, and Gravity's rainbow

<<----- (see)

but, seriously, anyone who finishes GR on the first attempt, or says it's a breeze to get through, is just being a twat. It's probably my favorite novel, but it does require a bit of work. There's no shame in reading annotations, either. Every single word is so careful and so wrought with paranoia. . . I'd read it once just for tone and imagery and a general sense of the story, and then do a re-read with some annotations. I know that sounds pretentious as fuck, but it is what it is. . . if you don't want to get lost in GR to that extent then it's just not your kind of book, no harm, no foul.

And Vineland. . . it starts out wonderfully, but it doesn't sustain that sense of wonder to the end. It's kind of universally accepted to be not-great. Although I still think there's a lot to like about it. It's also pretty funny.

I actually think Against the Day, although massive, is a whole lot easier and more immediately likeable than GR. And Lot 49, obviously, is a great, relatively brief way to see if you like Pynchon. Edit: plus the new one, Inherent Vice, which I haven't read yet, sounds pretty straightforward and likable and funny.

You have to fight to focus~!

I was expecting a thread about Klaxons. I'm sad now.

disgusting

i also bought the book last year and only managed to get a quarter of a way through it before i gave up. it's just not an enjoyable book, i don't see how people can like it

the crying of lot 49 broke my brain/

But that's the easy one!

You want hard to read: Burroughs' "cut up" trilogy. Try getting motivated to finish a book when you know from the start it doesnt have an ending - it will just stop at some point. Oh and there's three of the fuckers.

despite its size, i found mason/dixon a lot easier. mind you that was a lot later and after a lot more burroughs (not the cutup stuff though) and RAW and neal stephenson and various other stuff

What Neal Stephenson book is hard to read? He's got a couple that are really long, but they're pretty much total page turners.

I'm reading Interface now and it's like a Michael Crichton novel or something (I'm sure it gets deep at some point. um...).

ahhh interface is his page-turniest! but i love that book, it's total - as you say - michael crichton goes cyberpunky stuff.

with stephenson it's more the level of detail - starting with cryptonomicon, the guy started to get as obsessive about tech detail as, say, the way eco describes an altar in the name of the rose. real loving detail. crypto had, memorably, a perl script as part of the plot and a page-and-a-half about how you'd plot a characters masturbatory habits on a graph, and there are multi-multi-page expositions on *all kinds of shit* in quicksilver. in fact i have anathem sitting on the shelf which actually sounds like stephenson's take on the name of the rose, but i need to be in the right mood in order to start a neal stephenson book - more and more so as they become bigger and bigger doorstops. you could kill a man with my quicksilver hardback.

My friend posted pix from his visit to Bletcheley Park on Facebook a couple of months ago - about a fortnight after I finished Cryptonomicon.

Just from the photos I was able to not just identify buildings and rooms but tell what model an enigma machine was... so yeah I guess Cryptoniomicon is pretty detailed...

  On 3/23/2010 at 3:31 AM, kaini said:

ahhh interface is his page-turniest! but i love that book, it's total - as you say - michael crichton goes cyberpunky stuff.

 

with stephenson it's more the level of detail - starting with cryptonomicon, the guy started to get as obsessive about tech detail as, say, the way eco describes an altar in the name of the rose. real loving detail. crypto had, memorably, a perl script as part of the plot and a page-and-a-half about how you'd plot a characters masturbatory habits on a graph, and there are multi-multi-page expositions on *all kinds of shit* in quicksilver. in fact i have anathem sitting on the shelf which actually sounds like stephenson's take on the name of the rose, but i need to be in the right mood in order to start a neal stephenson book - more and more so as they become bigger and bigger doorstops. you could kill a man with my quicksilver hardback.

I still have wrist pain from reading the Baroque Cycle about 3 years ago. But I also still find myself wishing I was still reading the Baroque Cycle. Quicksliver is pretty dense and expository, but I remember The Confusion flying by.

Anathem is probably my favorite from Neal so far (I've read everything except the Big U and the collabos like Interface). I feel a strong need to go back and re-read it, but I want to let it sit for a bit. It has all the Stephenson elements, but I found the prose to be a little different: it's written in the first person, from the perspective of a teenager, and it's a bit more direct (maybe even intentionally insecure) and less full of some of the silly-but-hilarious wordplay you get in Neal's earlier novels. But Fraa Erasmus is pretty freaking endearing as a guide and world-builder as a result.

interface is well worth your attention because, well, they fucking NEED to make a movie of a stephenson book god fucking damn it. snow crash is in development hell, forever. aronofsky is unfortunately too busy to a direct the diamond age. if there's one stephenson book easily adapted to formulaic hollywood thriller it's interface. and it would probably be ten times better than the majority of things in the same genre.

I always thought HBO should do a series of the Baroque Cycle, but the budget would be enormous.

<--- I obviously like Pynchon and GR...

I got through on the first attempt (twat) but that was only because I was reading along with 2 friends of mine, so we were able to motivate each other. it's very helpful to have others who are reading with you so you can discuss the infinite WTF moments and not give-up.

As for Stephenson, Snow Crash & Cryptonomicon are excellent, but I couldn't get past Quicksilver.

Cryptonomicon really seems like Neal Stephenson trying to do Gravity's Rainbow... but I still love it.

I've got the opportunity to get in a few hours of reading today so GR it will be!

As long as the writing's enjoyable might as well go along for the ride.

Some good motivational posts here.

  On 3/23/2010 at 3:35 PM, blicero said:

<--- I obviously like Pynchon and GR...

 

I got through on the first attempt (twat) but that was only because I was reading along with 2 friends of mine, so we were able to motivate each other. it's very helpful to have others who are reading with you so you can discuss the infinite WTF moments and not give-up.

 

As for Stephenson, Snow Crash & Cryptonomicon are excellent, but I couldn't get past Quicksilver.

 

Cryptonomicon really seems like Neal Stephenson trying to do Gravity's Rainbow... but I still love it.

same, but I had no friends who read it with me (still took me ages to make it to the last page)

I love how every detail you discover totally blows your mind, although I only recognized/looked things up every few hundred pages.. next time´ll be with annotations I guess.

one of my friends had the companion, which was great for helping to decode the last hundred pages of WTF

btw, how can anyone deny the awesomeness of a WWII epic novel based largely on a man with a clairvoyant pen0r.

we need a watmm book club

edit:

agreed.