Gravity's Rainbow
In the closing months of WWII, American lieutenant Tyrone Slothrop is stationed in London, where his sexual encounters appear to predict the locations of V-2 rocket strikes days in advance. Pynchon's 760-page novel follows Slothrop as he is recruited, deployed, and eventually scattered across the Zone of postwar Germany, chasing a mysterious rocket designated 00000 through hundreds of characters, songs, dream sequences, and conspiracies. The book builds an encyclopedic portrait of the war as a closed bureaucratic system, where corporations, militaries, and rocket scientists move pieces while the soldiers underneath try to stay alive.
Where Gravity's Rainbow keeps showing up
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What you might want to know about Gravity's Rainbow
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
An American lieutenant whose erections predict V-2 rocket strikes is hunted across postwar Europe in Pynchon's encyclopedic anti-war epic.
Yes, famously. Gravity's Rainbow is around 760 pages with hundreds of characters, baroque digressions, and constant shifts of register. It is one of the most challenging novels in English. Many readers attempt it multiple times before completing it.
No, despite the Pulitzer fiction jury voting unanimously for it in 1974. The Pulitzer board overturned the jury's choice, calling the novel obscene and unreadable, and gave no fiction prize that year. It did win the National Book Award.
Gravity's Rainbow was written by Thomas Pynchon, published in 1973 by Penguin Books.
Gravity's Rainbow is 776 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Gravity's Rainbow takes most readers 12 to 17 hours to finish.
Gravity's Rainbow is a standalone novel by Thomas Pynchon, not part of a series.
Gravity's Rainbow is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
