[jandrese]

It seems like after 100-200 pages of Gravity's Rainbow one of two things can happen:

1. The reader can't figure out what the hell is going on anymore or who anybody is. They give up and stop reading.

2. The reader can't figure out what the hell is going on anymore or who anybody is. They stop trying to make sense of the book and just read the words.

"Sure this guy has a toilet stuck to his foot now, and can prevent bombs from landing on him by magic or something. That's great, oh I think somewhere in that sentence it became 20 years earlier in a different part of town and there are two entirely different characters I don't know talking about something else. That's neat."

[asimpletune]

The literary device in the novel is effect preceding cause. Like, very early in the book the hypersonic v2 - and how series it is for things to blow up and then you hear it - is introduced, but if you miss it then that then you miss all the other times we see the same concept.

[jandrese]

That's not effect preceding cause, that's just sound moving slower than something else! The sonic boom didn't blow up the tenements, the faster than sound missile did.

[nemo44x]

And to be fair, Pynchon reiterates that quite a bit throughout the novel. And it is a fascinating thought every time. Terrifying really.

[XorNot]

I'm definitely category 1 there: couldn't tell where it was going or why (was a blind pickup because little said it was important) and Wikipedia'd a synopsis to see if I was missing out on anything. Didn't seem like it.

[nemo44x]

I think this is a good summary of the themes explored throughout the book:

https://americanaejournal.hu/vol6no2/lacey

Reading a synopsis of the story sort of misses the point of the book. The plot is pretty limited.