Gravity's Rainbow

De: Thomas Pynchon, Frank Miller - cover design

Narrado por: George Guidall

Duración: 37 h y 21 m

Resumen del Editor

Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity's Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the 20th century as Joyce's Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.

©1973 Thomas Pynchon (P)2014 Penguin Audio

Excellent

What made the experience of listening to Gravity's Rainbow the most enjoyable?

I have Guidall's original recording of GR. Both are excellent. He doesn't try to act the characters too much...something which I find annoying in many other audiobooks. He also has a good sense of how to narrate this book.

What other book might you compare Gravity's Rainbow to and why?

People compare GR to Ulysses...I don't see that. Ulysses is a different beast of a book with a different writing style. Don't let the comparisons scare you away, or make you think you need to read Ulysses first to "get" this book.

Any additional comments?

My advice to those working your way through GR is to read a section first, then go back and listen to the section while reading along. You'll be amazed at how much you pick up and understand during that second pass. Also, this isn't a book to plough through over a weekend. Its going to take some time, so work slowly...you'll be rewarded. There is a reference guide to GR which you may find helpful but I don't think it's necessary. Just have fun.

This book was WAY over my head.

I'm sure it is a literary masterpiece, but I could not keep up with the plot or characters. I only made it two hours in.

Postmodern masterpiece

This is definitely in the front rank of all the postmodernist books. If you are a fan of postmodernism, you will definitely enjoy this. If you are not a fan of postmodernism, stay away. If you don't really know what postmodernism is, this is not the book to start with. I suppose I should say a little about the subject of the book. It's about the human experience as condensed and distilled into the paranoid journey of an obscure American wandering through Europe in the days just before and after the end of World War II.

This is a difficult book for audio because it's hard to keep up with the author's constant shifts in scene, exposition, stream-of-consciousness, and so on. I would not recommend audio for one's first time through this book. On the other hand, much of Pynchon's prose benefits from being read out loud, and I don't just mean the songs and doggerel. It helps to have as good a narrator as George Guidall. Another thing that makes this challenging is all the topical references to World War II-era pop culture and earlier. It helped to have a written concordance to refer to, of which there are several for this seminal work. Still, it is possible to follow the overall flow of the story and the characters without knowing all those details. It is an amazing book despite not having much in the way of emotional involvement. Just don't press me to explain what it all means.

Pynchon's work is known for his quirky characters, and this book has more than its share. They are not deeply drawn, and few of them are possible to relate to in a meaningful way. His protagonist is little more than a picaresque symbol on which to hang all the complicated episodes, plots, and subplots. One thing that makes Pynchon rewarding is the complex structure; and all the clockwork parts do hang together in their peculiarly messy way if you can make the effort to follow along. Not only is he incredibly inventive as far as plots, episodes, and narrative structure, he is also densely allusive with hints from pop culture and the historical context. The other thing that makes Pynchon rewarding is his prose style. While it's not for everyone, it is clever, literary, fluid, and brilliant. It's sort of like that overinventive college buddy we all had who could keep everyone laughing with his verbal precocity for hours. Try to imagine that for 700+ pages. If that sounds appealing, this may be the book for you.

Interesting...

This was very strange with absurd scenes and funny stuff. I think I'll have to read it some day to get it better.

Only trouble was that atleast my audio version had a couple of 1h double recordings, where suddenly the narration was back to where it started about an hour ago and just went through it again. Nothing too difficult to skip, but yeah. a bit annoying if you can't control the audio straight away and have to listen to stuff again. It was hard enough to follow even without this.

A Masterpiece of multiple dimensions.

George Guidall is The Perfect Choice to read and interpret this masterwork of literary smorgasbord.
Listening to him read gave it me confidence that I would understand at least a little of the Insane rollercoaster of descriptive genius that is Gravity's Rainbow.

Pynchon is clearly one of the most well read and well spoken writers to have ever been born, even if I still have little idea what the story is really about. Comparisons to Joyce and perhaps Prost are deserving as this is certainly of the best novels ever written.

Understanding Gravity's Rainbow is secondary to experiencing it, and what I experienced was Hilarious, and Vulgar, and Deeply Insightful while never drifting for too long down any one tributary from the story line, if story line is actually the right word.

I have to stop now, so I can learn more about this amazing author, this book, and of course...listen to it again.

Shitty novel, great poem.

Awful lotta sex and dope in this one kids. Kinda sad thinking about that apocalypse and all.

#1 all-time novel

I was stunned by Pynchon’s use of the language and his depth of knowledge on so many technical issues (described so clearly that the reader never loses attention). Be prepared for some bad language, but once you settle into it, there’s no distraction.

I’ve probably listened to 200-300 Audible books, and this narrator is the best ever.

I’m only recommending this book to people who love literature. Those who enjoy crappy writing wouldn’t get it.

Fixed!

I'd just like to point out that as of currently (Dec 2017) the audiobook has been fixed, and the repeated sections have been edited out.

If any readers were holding out because of what other reviews have mentioned, you no longer need to worry, as the audiobook has been properly re-edited.

Perfect for A Few

There are three books that changed my life after I read them. The first was The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, the second was Moby Dick by Herman Melville and the third was - yeah you guessed it - this one. Gravity's Rainbow is funny, beautiful, gross, ridiculous, wistful, heartbreaking, evocative, rebellious ... any word you can think of describes it. Except for short. Not a day goes by where this book doesn't come into my thoughts. This audio version is very well read. One of the masterworks of American fiction. Check it out

This is a hard book to listen to it

George Guidall does a great job of narrating this complicated novel, but I found it challenging to follow the plot of the novel. If you want to really understand this book I think reading it visually is a better strategy. However, I still enjoyed the book and accepted that I would be confused a lot. It's a strange, compelling, and frequently disturbing story, and Pynchon does not tie up a lot of the threads he introduces. I found that it gets much more engaging after the war ends and the story becomes much more colorful.