How to Read Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

Video Description

📚 Read the Great Books with Hardcore Literature: https://www.patreon.com/hardcoreliterature/about ———————————— 🎙️ https://open.spotify.com/show/70IZA24... (Subscribe to the Hardcore Literature Podcast on iTunes & Spotify) 🏫 https://hardcore-university.teachable... (Hardcore University, Exam Preparation Courses) ✍🏼 https://benjaminmcevoy.com My Personal Website ———————————— Hardcore Literature Lecture Series ———————————— 📔Contents Page: https://cutt.ly/CmNhRY3 🎖️ War and Peace: https://cutt.ly/U3nzGma 🎭 Shakespeare Project: https://cutt.ly/B3nxHH7 🐳 Moby Dick: https://cutt.ly/K3nzVKf ☄️ Blood Meridian: https://cutt.ly/P3nz6Qp 🍂 Wuthering Heights: https://cutt.ly/N3nxxYt 🇮🇪 Ulysses: https://cutt.ly/x3nxQmN 🚂 Anna Karenina: https://cutt.ly/vmNhAWv 💀 Crime and Punishment: https://cutt.ly/rmNhFt5 ⚓ Persuasion: https://cutt.ly/amNhX7b ☕ In Search of Lost Time: https://cutt.ly/5mNh8oD ⚔️ The Hero’s Journey: https://cutt.ly/UmNjrE3 🌸 Siddharta: https://cutt.ly/YmNjuzi 🎠 Don Quixote: https://cutt.ly/cmNjoK4 ❤️Shakespeare’s Sonnets: https://cutt.ly/nmNlW7V 🇫🇷 Les Misérables: https://cutt.ly/J3YixoA 🕯️ The Turn of the Screw: https://cutt.ly/nToAQQ3 🖋️ Dickens Seasonal Read: https://cutt.ly/9ToAybt 📖 Middlemarch Serial Reading: https://tinyurl.com/45rv965c ———————————— 0:00 how to read Gravity’s Rainbow 1:00 great books are inexhaustible 1:40 why read Gravity’s Rainbow? 2:30 Pynchon’s postmodern masterpiece 3:56 reading Pynchon as a community 4:44 the difficulty of Gravity’s Rainbow 7:56 Pynchon’s encyclopaedic novel 8:32 the story of Gravity’s Rainbow 8:50 the V2 vs V1 rockets in WWII 10:00 life during the London Blitz 12:44 gallows humours in times of war 13:25 on fear of death in WWII 15:00 atomic fear and Cold War anxieties 16:33 first epigraph for Gravity’s Rainbow 17:13 who was Werner Von Braun? 19:20 paranoia in novel form 21:27 reader relationship with Pynchon 22:25 characters in Gravity’s Rainbow 23:00 the character of Tyrone Slothrop 24:00 central plot line for Gravity’s Rainbow 25:00 the Pulitzer’s reaction to Pynchon 25:45 experiments in classical conditioning 28:15 reversal of cause and effect 30:00 meaning of Gravity’s Rainbow’s title 30:37 the quest of Tyrone Slothrop 32:00 repression and religious allegory 33:19 the line between life and death 34:27 how we deny our mortality 35:00 Time Magazine’s review of the book 36:30 attaining freedom through play 37:55 why did Pynchon write this book? 38:48 humour in Gravity’s Rainbow 40:00 Pynchon works on the unconscious 40:30 literature as coping mechanism 41:00 the rocket threatening all of us 42:35 the reputation of Gravity’s Rainbow 43:22 James Joyce and Thomas Pynchon 44:10 Thomas Pynchon’s cult following 44:33 Pynchon as ‘reclusive’ writer 45:10 Gravity’s Rainbow first published 46:00 why is Gravity’s Rainbow difficult? 46:50 modernism vs postmodernism 48:40 collapsing high and low culture 49:20 pastiche, parody, and irony 50:15 two kinds of Pynchon reader 50:45 metafiction in postmodernism 51:40 strange loops and paradoxes 53:10 companion to Gravity’s Rainbow 53:50 dealing with Pynchon’s allusions 54:10 reading Pynchon with a community 54:52 active reading and marginalia 55:30 confusion is preface to understanding 57:00 proposed pacing for Gravity’s Rainbow 58:15 some words of encouragement 1:00:00 your relationship with this book?