Gravity’s Rainbow was a book I squinted at fruitlessly when I was a teenager. It was a book for which I developed a note taking system consisting of several glyphs, the same as the PlayStation buttons, incidentally, with unique functions that were meant to document the text in an attempt to improve my understanding. That system has long since been abandoned. I glossed the book again several years later, and I finally appreciated it with a third reading. As it was an original subject of my proprietary note taking, and as I know it is a struggle to take meaningful marginalia for fiction, I return to it with Papertrail to see what I can learn.
Conclusion: Having completed the book, I find that my notes were of a great facility to myself, in terms of comprehending the work, and think that it would likely do similar for others that make use of Papertrail alongside their reading of Gravity's Rainbow. Where my note taking lapsed, I was mistaken, or where another reader might like to augment my notes, they can do so by either taking their own or replying to mine.
👥 = character introduction
🗂️ = organization/entity introduction
🎪 = an event
📍 = a place
💎 = an object
?? = might need to read this page again
Absolute Zero is a concept returned to again and again in Gravity’s Rainbow.
Partial summary: Remembering or dreaming of a bombing and the evacuation, the question of whether the rocket will kill before or after its own light is observed leads to “Pirate” Prentice’s waking from a dream. He is in an apartment where a bunch of service members have been drinking and are still passed out.
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If I recall, Pirate has esp of some description that one or another agency makes use of.
& this, it seems, is relevant to the book’s opening sequence. The evacuation may have been someone else’s experience accessed by Pirate.
Adenoid monster fantasy.
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👥 Teddy Bloat
A book like this requires a level of immersion that note taking may disrupt. So be it.
Tantivy & Lt. Slothrop, an American at cubicles in ETO.
Slothrop can summon missiles by sleeping with women, I think.
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Slothrop & Tantivy compare v2s to bullets.
The Nazis, or a force beyond the Nazis, are interested in getting rid of Slothrop.
I recognize how influential this style was to me when I began writing. I probably became infatuated with the idea that you could be entirely discursive, as this was the natural modality of my writing, although when discursive writing is good it only has the appearance of being discursive. Young writers, perhaps especially young American writers, forget this. My focus has increasingly become bringing depiction almost entirely in line with narrative elements.
Partial summary: A history of the Slothrops. Describes their special relationship to events of the sky.
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A seance.
Jessica Swanlake wonders if her covetous thoughts of the frock are heard because of the persons with ESP at the facility or whatever it is.
Milton Gloaming is studying the language distribution of the seance.
Bloat to Pirate to Mexico
Pirate has been in Bahrein
Pirate to Scorpia, married to the Imperial Chemicals expert is to Mexico, Jessica, and one Beaver