Gravity’s Rainbow
New York: Viking Press, 1973. First Edition. Hardcover. 1st edition. Fine, tighter than tar and feathers, in a fine, unfaded, and brilliant dustjacket, nearly phosphorescent (take it outside and it’ll be visible from outer space). 50 or so 1st editions in jacket are for sale online right now, a clear warning to stay away, because when that many copies are for sale, the laws of supply and demand attests that the book is priced far too high. Except here. fine / fine. Item #487
Some people suspect nothing, and some people suspect everything, both are fools, but only the gullible and naive would buy this book for any price higher than our price or in any condition less than perfect. That said, when Quinn the Eskimo gets here, all the pigeons gonna run to him. The historian’s cardinal question is, how did this come out of that? For the historiographer the question is, what else was going on? They are 2 questions worth asking about any novel as unprecedented as Gravity’s Rainbow, a narrative that’s wound up from the ground up. It’s a great book despite all the people who say it’s a great book, a 300,000 word direct descendant of Melville’s Moby–Dick and Joyce’s Ulysses, and a harbinger of Wallace’s Infinite Jest on the miniscule list of encyclopedic novels that are both momentous and satisfyingly adept. All 4 are testing, lavish, intimidating, multidimensional, crowded, and deep, and all 4 display a disorienting command of intellectual artillery, bold linguistic risk, a surreal maze of references, and a fluid and divergent transition between styles and subjects, and their plots and sub–plots are replete with an overwhelming and disparate range of knowledge. Without claiming the tribute for themselves, Gravity’s Rainbow, Moby–Dick, and Infinite Jest, are a 3 pointed pin that punctures any puffed–up pretensions about somebody else writing The Great American Novel, but here’s the rub. If you pick up Gravity’s Rainbow at 2:00 and read for 3 hours, when you look at your watch it will say 2:30. And if you like your books to ally with some movie, then clearly, Gravity’s Rainbow is not for you.
Calling Sweden. You carelessly missed your chance with Joyce and Wallace. Give Pynchon his Nobel Prize for Literature before he’s as dead as the others.
Looking for a surrogate? We have 3 copies of the 1st edition of Pynchon’s Slow Learner left in stock. Fine in fine dustjacket. 14.95 net (the flap price).
Price:
$500.00