Mic Breaks Only discussion

This topic should have NO spoilers. Feel free to discuss your preconceptions/notions about the book here. Also, open discussion of:



* The cover:


* Title Page(s)
* Copyright page
* Dedication: For Richard Fariña
* Epigraph (opening of chapter 1): Nature does not know extinction; all it knows is transformation. Everything science has taught me, and continues to teach me, strengthens my belief in the continuity of our spiritual existence after death.

-Wernher von Braun


I'll start making categories for chapter sets soon. The official start date for reading is January 1, 2015 but feel free to join us anytime since that was yesterday.

Gravity's Rainbow e-book purchase links:


Kindle: amazon.com:

Gravity's Rainbow (Currently $9.99)

Nook: barnesandnoble.com:

Gravity's Rainbow (Currently $12.99)

This novel has languored on my to-read list for many years. The whole mess really started after I loved Infinite Jest and yearned for something that was in the same meta-postmodern ballpark. Instead of this novel I instead came at the whole thing sideways by starting and not finishing both V. and Mason and Dixon.

Why those books instead of this? I can't answer that. It was a time in my life when I made plenty of choices and left many books unfinished. I know Ulysses has been moldering on my currently reading list but (insert awesome excuse).

My future wife eventually picked up and finished both those books, among others, and likes to point that out to anyone who will listen.

This is a collection of covers we've only seen matched by Murakami's novels! What a fabulous variety of awesome. I have the blue "blueprint" cover and it's nifty. I also kind of like the Where's Waldo cover but can't quite blow it up big enough. My favorites are definitely the two pop-art collages with blondes on the front, they are so stunning that if I like the book I'm going to try to find some poster versions. Finally, what am I looking at in that last blue/black/gray cover? Someone in the safety position on a plane?

I'm not at all familiar with Fariña's works, most likely due to his untimely death well before this novel was published.

Braun has been called "without doubt, the greatest rocket scientist in history". I am always interested in genius' viewpoints on spirituality. This quote also makes me contemplate how there was a time when genius seemed to flourish and great works were completed. Is it that these works fade into the background due to the amount of informational noise in the modern world? Because people were pushed to great lengths by the great wars?

I am simultaneously titillated and frightened by the prospect of starting this book. Alas, this is not my first foray into Thomas Pynchon. I hope Gravity's Rainbow falls somewhere in between the mind warping hallucinogenic plot of V. and the linguistic rollercoaster of Mason and Dixon. I may have used my husband's guilt from starting and not finishing two Pynchon books to my advantage in "daring" him to pick this book for our 2015 starter.

I have the second cover which looks like a schematic blueprint. I prefer covers #5, 6, 7, 9, 10 and 11. I am a child of the 70's and can't shake my affinity for those old school covers. I have a vague recollection of seeing #10 the black cover in paperback form when I was a kid. If I could just remember who from my past would have been reading it.

The quote reaffirms for me why humanity is hard-wired for hope. We feel in our very cells the power of transformation and the certainty that there is always something just ahead around the bend.