Gravity’s Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon

Written by Thomas Pynchon
Read by George Guidall
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Series: Penguin Audio Classics
Publisher: Books on Tape
Release date: October 16, 2014
Duration: 37:21:49

Winner of the 1973 National Book Award, Gravity’s Rainbow is a postmodern epic, a work as exhaustively significant to the second half of the twentieth century as Joyce’s Ulysses was to the first. Its sprawling, encyclopedic narrative and penetrating analysis of the impact of technology on society make it an intellectual tour de force.

The book combines elements of science fiction and historical fiction. Gravity’s Rainbow is composed of four parts, each segmented into a number of episodes. The narrative is set primarily in Europe at the end of World War II and centers on the design, production and dispatch of V-2 rockets by the German military. In particular, it features the quest undertaken by several characters to uncover the secret of a mysterious device.

“Pynchon’s masterwork is vast, sprawling, and chaotic. Here its frenzied prose is balanced and stabilized by George Guidall’s calm voice. Pynchon is the poet laureate of paranoia, so the reassuringly sane narration helps us pretend that this is all happening in something like the real world. Guidall doesn’t try to create individualized voices for all the major characters, but neither does Pynchon, really. You can tell who is speaking at all times, and that has to be enough. This is an audiobook to immerse yourself in, and if you don’t quite follow the story–and you won’t unless you’ve already read the book a few times–just have faith that you’re in expert hands..”—AudioFile