{"id":272926,"date":"2009-08-05T13:32:09","date_gmt":"2009-08-05T13:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2009\/08\/05\/a-screaming-comes-across-the-sky\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T17:19:42","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:19:42","slug":"a-screaming-comes-across-the-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2009\/08\/05\/a-screaming-comes-across-the-sky\/","title":{"rendered":""A screaming comes across the sky.""},"content":{"rendered":"

This summer the National Book Foundation<\/a> has been posting reader reactions to each of the 77 fiction winners from its 60-year history. Along with Casey Hicks (whose overview is great—Byron the Bulb!), I wrote a short bit about Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow<\/em>,<\/a> which went online today. (Perfect timing with Inherent Vice<\/em><\/a> releasing yesterday.) I can’t say for certain, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my piece is the first time both The O.C.<\/em> and Paris Hilton are mentioned on the National Book Foundation blog . . . Here’s the opening:<\/p>\n

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\u201cA screaming comes across the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

This is arguably one of twentieth-century literature\u2019s most recognizable opening lines. A \u201cCall me Ishmael\u201d for the paranoids, the pot smokers, the conspiracy theorists who see patterns in everything. \u201cNo, this is not a disentanglement from, but a progressive knotting into . . .\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

I first read Gravity\u2019s Rainbow the summer after graduating from college and was instantly convinced that this was THE<\/span> BOOK<\/span> OF ALL<\/span> BOOKS<\/span>. Everything is here\u2014high level musings on philosophy, physics, chemistry, psychology, s\u00e9ances and the beyond; outrageous names (lots of outrageous names: Pig Bodine, Teddy Bloat, Pirate Prentice, Captain Dominus Blicero), songs, and a surreal trip down a toilet; information about \u201cThem,\u201d V-2 rockets, and absolute fear. High culture and pop references. History and trivia. And out of all that comes a the obsessive feeling that all these pieces might add up to something of Monumental Importance, or might just be a fun way to kill a few months . . .<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

It\u2019s almost impossible to even summarize this novel, which features more than 400 different characters and dozens of plot threads. I mean, this is a novel that starts with a top-secret military group studying data on how each of Tyrone Slothrop\u2019s sexual encounters takes place at a location that is hit by a V-2 rocket days later. Is this just coincidence? Or is it a result of experiments done on Baby Tyrone by Laszlo Jamf involving a mysterious substance called Imipolex G? And what the hell is the significance of the \u201c00000\u201d rocket and the S-Ger\u00e4t component?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Click here<\/a> for the entire piece. And you can find all 77 write-ups at the NBA<\/span> Fiction Blog.<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This summer the National Book Foundation has been posting reader reactions to each of the 77 fiction winners from its 60-year history. Along with Casey Hicks (whose overview is great—Byron the Bulb!), I wrote a short bit about Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, which went online today. (Perfect timing with Inherent Vice releasing yesterday.) I can’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[26476,7666,26466,26376,6656,4296],"class_list":["post-272926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-casey-hicks","tag-chad-w-post","tag-gravitys-rainbow","tag-inherent-vice","tag-national-book-foundation","tag-thomas-pynchon"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":351636,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272926\/revisions\/351636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}