Tyrone Slothrop, a GI in London in 1944, has a big problem. Whenever he gets an
erection, a Blitz bomb hits. Slothrop gets excited, and then, as Thomas Pynchon
puts it in his sibilant opening sentence, 'a screaming comes across the sky', he
ralding an angel of death, a V-2 rocket.
Soon Tyrone is on the run from legio
ns of bizarre enemies through the phantasmagoric horrors of Germany. Gravity's R
ainbow is never a single story, but a proliferation of characters - Pirate Prent
ice, Teddy Bloat, Tantivy Mucker-Maffick, Saure Bummer, and more - and events th
at tantalize the reader with suggestions of vast patterns only just past our com
prehension. It is a blizzard of references to science, history, high culture, an
d the lowest of jokes and among the most important novels of our time.
