
Gravity's Rainbow
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Narrated by:
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George Guidall
About this listen
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 20th 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.
©1973 Thomas Pynchon (P)2014 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Underworld
- By: Don DeLillo
- Narrated by: Richard Poe
- Length: 31 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Nick Shay and Klara Sax knew each other once, intimately, and they meet again in the American desert. He is trying to outdistance the crucial events of his early life, haunted by the hard logic of loss and by the echo of a gunshot in a basement room. She is an artist who has made a blood struggle for independence.
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CYBEX burned into my eyes
- By Ruth Ann Orlansky on 07-01-12
By: Don DeLillo
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The Recognitions
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 47 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Wyatt Gwyon's desire to forge is not driven by larceny but from love. Exactingly faithful to the spirit and letter of the Flemish masters, he produces uncannily accurate "originals" - pictures the painters themselves might have envied. In an age of counterfeit emotion and taste, the real and fake have become indistinguishable; yet Gwyon's forgeries reflect a truth that others cannot touch - cannot even recognize.
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Breathtaking, Dizzying, Stimulating, Funny
- By andrew on 11-17-10
By: William Gaddis
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JR
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 37 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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Absurdly logical, mercilessly real, gathering it's own tumultuous momentum for the ultimate brush with commodity training, JR captures the listener in the cacophony of voices that revolves around this young captive of his own myths. The disturbing clarity with which this finished writer captures the ways in which we deal, dissemble, and stumble through our words - through our lives - while the real plans are being made elsewhere makes JR the extraordinary novel that it is.
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Possibly superior as an audio book
- By Peregrine on 12-12-10
By: William Gaddis
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Libra
- By: Don DeLillo
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 18 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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In this powerful, eerily convincing fictional speculation on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Don DeLillo chronicles Lee Harvey Oswald's odyssey from troubled teenager to a man of precarious stability who imagines himself an agent of history. When "history" presents itself in the form of two disgruntled CIA operatives who decide that an unsuccessful attempt on the life of the president will galvanize the nation against communism, the scales are irrevocably tipped.
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Narrator's Monotonous Tone Ruined Book
- By Dan in DC on 12-03-16
By: Don DeLillo
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Carpenter's Gothic
- By: William Gaddis
- Narrated by: Nick Sullivan
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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This story of raging comedy and despair centers on the tempestuous marriage of an heiress and a Vietnam veteran. From their "carpenter Gothic" rented house, Paul sets himself up as a media consultant for Reverend Ude, an evangelist mounting a grand crusade that conveniently suits a mining combine bidding to take over an ore strike on the site of Ude's African mission.
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the dialogue is superb
- By Monti Korbelle on 07-01-19
By: William Gaddis
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2666
- By: Roberto Bolaño
- Narrated by: John Lee, Armando Durán, G. Valmont Thomas, and others
- Length: 39 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresa - a fictional Juárez - on the U.S.-Mexico border.
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The Best Book I Read or Listened to in 2009
- By William on 01-05-10
By: Roberto Bolaño
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The Pale King
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 19 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Illinois, appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. And he has arrived at a moment when forces within the IRS are plotting to eliminate even what little humanity and dignity the work still has.
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The King is dead, long live the King!
- By Darwin8u on 10-31-16
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The Sound and the Fury
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Nathan Osgood
- Length: 10 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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The Sound and the Fury is a multi-narrative novel that tells the story of the Compsons, a once-proud Southern aristocratic family in decline. The novel is divided into four sections, each told from the perspective of a different character, using stream-of-consciousness narration, non-linear time, and shifting viewpoints to create a fragmented portrait of their lives.
By: William Faulkner
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White Noise
- By: Don DeLillo
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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When an industrial accident unleashes an "airborne toxic event", a lethal black chemical cloud floats over the Gladneys' lives. The menacing cloud is a more urgent and visible version of the "white noise" engulfing the Gladneys - radio transmissions, sirens, microwaves, ultrasonic appliances, and TV murmurings - pulsing with life yet suggesting something ominous.
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Designed to be analyzed by an English class
- By RI in Canada on 10-15-16
By: Don DeLillo
If any readers were holding out because of what other reviews have mentioned, you no longer need to worry, as the audiobook has been properly re-edited.
Fixed!
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Perfect for A Few
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This is a hard book to listen to it
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I found it nearly impossible to figure out wtf was going on most of the time without a guide; even then, you can't have a guide for every sentence.
I gave it 5 stars because it is a brilliant work of art, but that certainly doesn't mean it will appeal to everyone - many will hate it or simply give up on it.
Despite the inherent difficulties of narrating this beast of a book, I didn't care for the staccato style presentation. The chapter breaks seemed random.
Psychedelic Romp
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For those who didn’t live through the era, it says a lot about how the tension and ecstasy of victory in WWII turned almost instantly into the Cold War, with a killer that would get you without warning.
Interesting and dark Cold War novel.
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What made the experience of listening to Gravity's Rainbow the most enjoyable?
I have Guidall's original recording of GR. Both are excellent. He doesn't try to act the characters too much...something which I find annoying in many other audiobooks. He also has a good sense of how to narrate this book.What other book might you compare Gravity's Rainbow to and why?
People compare GR to Ulysses...I don't see that. Ulysses is a different beast of a book with a different writing style. Don't let the comparisons scare you away, or make you think you need to read Ulysses first to "get" this book.Any additional comments?
My advice to those working your way through GR is to read a section first, then go back and listen to the section while reading along. You'll be amazed at how much you pick up and understand during that second pass. Also, this isn't a book to plough through over a weekend. Its going to take some time, so work slowly...you'll be rewarded. There is a reference guide to GR which you may find helpful but I don't think it's necessary. Just have fun.Excellent
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This is a difficult book for audio because it's hard to keep up with the author's constant shifts in scene, exposition, stream-of-consciousness, and so on. I would not recommend audio for one's first time through this book. On the other hand, much of Pynchon's prose benefits from being read out loud, and I don't just mean the songs and doggerel. It helps to have as good a narrator as George Guidall. Another thing that makes this challenging is all the topical references to World War II-era pop culture and earlier. It helped to have a written concordance to refer to, of which there are several for this seminal work. Still, it is possible to follow the overall flow of the story and the characters without knowing all those details. It is an amazing book despite not having much in the way of emotional involvement. Just don't press me to explain what it all means.
Pynchon's work is known for his quirky characters, and this book has more than its share. They are not deeply drawn, and few of them are possible to relate to in a meaningful way. His protagonist is little more than a picaresque symbol on which to hang all the complicated episodes, plots, and subplots. One thing that makes Pynchon rewarding is the complex structure; and all the clockwork parts do hang together in their peculiarly messy way if you can make the effort to follow along. Not only is he incredibly inventive as far as plots, episodes, and narrative structure, he is also densely allusive with hints from pop culture and the historical context. The other thing that makes Pynchon rewarding is his prose style. While it's not for everyone, it is clever, literary, fluid, and brilliant. It's sort of like that overinventive college buddy we all had who could keep everyone laughing with his verbal precocity for hours. Try to imagine that for 700+ pages. If that sounds appealing, this may be the book for you.
Postmodern masterpiece
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Only trouble was that atleast my audio version had a couple of 1h double recordings, where suddenly the narration was back to where it started about an hour ago and just went through it again. Nothing too difficult to skip, but yeah. a bit annoying if you can't control the audio straight away and have to listen to stuff again. It was hard enough to follow even without this.
Interesting...
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This book was WAY over my head.
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Listening to him read gave it me confidence that I would understand at least a little of the Insane rollercoaster of descriptive genius that is Gravity's Rainbow.
Pynchon is clearly one of the most well read and well spoken writers to have ever been born, even if I still have little idea what the story is really about. Comparisons to Joyce and perhaps Prost are deserving as this is certainly of the best novels ever written.
Understanding Gravity's Rainbow is secondary to experiencing it, and what I experienced was Hilarious, and Vulgar, and Deeply Insightful while never drifting for too long down any one tributary from the story line, if story line is actually the right word.
I have to stop now, so I can learn more about this amazing author, this book, and of course...listen to it again.
A Masterpiece of multiple dimensions.
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