// War Literature

First and foremost, I have to admit that I am unsure as to how one is supposed to read Gravity’s Rainbow – do I try to break everything down and understand it piece by piece? That seems ridiculous, because there’s simply way too much going on in any given paragraph. And honestly, most of the time, I’m not even sure what’s going on. That being said, I am going to focus on themes and motifs in the first 90 pages because really, it’s all I’ve got at this point.

I have to mention the bananas – and seriously,  what’s with all the bananas? There’s the scene with Pirate preparing the Banana Breakfast, during which Teddy Bloat staggers in covered with Pirate’s blanket, slips on a banana peel and falls, muttering, “Kill myself” (which is pretty funny). There’s a banana song on the next page, and then Pirate is contemplating a lengthy list of uses for bananas. Other than finding it mildly amusing, I have no other feelings toward this constant mention of bananas but at the same time, I feel like trying to find meaning in them would be stupid. Maybe they’re not meant to signify or symbolize anything. Maybe Pynchon just had a fondness for bananas, or knew some other guy who did. The bananas might be irrelevant.

What isn’t irrelevant, however (or at least I don’t think it is), is the mention of the V-bomb and the emphasis on the fact that you hear it before you see it, that it soars up into the air before it comes back down for impact. Its seemingly parabolic path, the return to “Absolute Zero,” all this imagery about roads getting narrower when they should be getting broader, it feels like there’s a connection somehow or somewhere, but I’m just not quite sure what it is. Clearly this novel is about weaponry, particularly about this new bomb. But that’s about as far as I’m getting with this train of thought.

There’s also quite a lot in this first section about Roger and Jessica’s love affair. Again, I feel like I have no idea what’s really going on, because the picture that I’m getting as I read shifts so rapidly as Pinchon jumps from scene to scene, but I think it can be summed up with, “They are in love. Fuck the war.” So perhaps this is an attempt to capture the reckless, ordinary, human side of war, as well as the incredibly technical, detail-oriented, militaristic side of the war.

Seeing as I can’t make much sense of what I’ve been able to get through thus far, I am instead going to appreciate what I can – and for me, that’s the very first line of the entire novel: “A screaming comes across the sky.” Now I don’t know much about bombs or the experience of war. I haven’t been near a battlefield or a war zone. Our war today seems so remote, you don’t have to try too hard to pretend it doesn’t exist. But I know the meaning of words and a well-crafted sentence when I read one, and I think this is one of the best I’ve ever heard.

I’ve read that Gravity’s Rainbow has been considered one of the greatest American novels of all-time, so while I may not understand it just yet, I would love to eventually see the truth in this statement.