Looming apocalypse. Paranoid conspiracy theories. Rocket-obsessed oligarchs. I could be describing the current state of the world. But it's also a perfect description of the mind-bending world created by Thomas Pynchon in his seminal novel Gravity's Rainbow. As what one critic dubbed "perhaps the least-read must-read in American history" turns 50, writer John Semley explores how we are all living under Gravity's Rainbow. A controversial literary sensation when it was published—Gravity's Rainbow was infamously snubbed by Pulitzer higher-ups, despite unanimous recommendation from the fiction jury—the novel has since gathered a daunting reputation. Like Ulysses, The Recognitions, and Infinite Jest, Gravity's Rainbow is the kind of book people pretend to read to appear smart while riding the bus. This reputation does an obvious disservice to the work itself, and to a potential audience of curious readers. The time to pick up Gravity's Rainbow is now. It is at once a busy almanac of its era and a sort of field guide for our own. It echoes eerily in the new-ish millennium. In a way, our own age's greasy stew of absurdity and apocalypticism, creeping death tinged with clown-shoe idiocy, suggests a world that has finally, fatefully, caught up with Pynchon. —Jon J. Eilenberg | Articles Editor |
0 Comments:
Post a Comment