Pynchon In Public Podcast

04.27: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we continue our discussion of Gravity’s Rainbow with a look at chapters 23, 24 and 25 of Book Three. Errata: For a while during this episode, Bo had a bad set-up that caused some extra noise in the recording. We apologize profusely for this. Notes: The myth of Tantalus is […]

04.26: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we continue our discussion of Gravity’s Rainbow with a look at chapters 20 and 21 of Book Three. Note: We intended to cover three chapters, as you’ll hear in the intro, but we only got to two due to time.

04.25: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we continue our discussion of Gravity’s Rainbow with a look at chapters 17, 18 and 19 of Book Three. Notes: Alan and Liam mention the philosopher Herbert Marcuse. Here’s some information about him. Michelle and Bo talk about the geography of Swinemünde. You can find a good map at Wikipedia. […]

04.24: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we continue our discussion of Gravity’s Rainbow with a look at chapters 14, 15 and 16 of Book Three.

04.23: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we continue our discussion of Gravity’s Rainbow with a look at chapters 12 and 13 of Book Three. As this episode covers the great Rossini/Beethoven debate that the novel has been hyping up for some time, here are a few examples of each composer’s work, as chosen by Alan. Rossini William Tell Overture […]

04.22: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we continue our discussion of Gravity’s Rainbow with a careful look at the second half of Book Three, Chapter Eleven – the Pökler chapter. Alan mentions The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse. Here’s a link to it in Google Books, and here’s the summary on Wikipedia. Chris mentions a concept called “the deep state.” […]

04.21: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we continue our discussion of Gravity’s Rainbow with a careful look at the first half of Book Three, Chapter Eleven – the Pökler chapter.  

04.20: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we continue our discussion of Book Three of Gravity’s Rainbow with a look at episodes eight through ten.

04.19: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we take a look at episodes six and seven of Book Three of Gravity’s Rainbow. The Tristan chord, which Alan mentions as the “magic chord” in Tristan und Isolde, is F, B, G#, and D#. It can alternately be any chord with the intervals of augmented fourth, augmented sixth, and augmented ninth. You can find a […]

04.18: Gravity’s Rainbow In which, despite efforts by Them to stop us, we continue our work on Gravity’s Rainbow with a look at Book Three, episode five – the Tchitcherine episode. Notes: Here’s an example of Kyrgyz script. When writing was first developed, a Latin alphabet was used. So “A screaming comes across the sky” would have looked […]

04.17: Gravity’s Rainbow In which our discussion of Gravity’s Rainbow takes us into Book Three, episodes three and four…a little journey made with the help of Iron Butterfly.

04.16: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we continue our discussion of Gravity’s Rainbow with a look at Book Three, episode two.

04.15: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we begin our discussion of Book Three of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow with a look at its first episode.

04.14: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we take a look back at the entirety of Book Two of Gravity’s Rainbow. We’ll be back soon with our discussion of Book Three. Stay tuned!

04.13: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we continue our discussion of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow with a look at sections seven and eight of Book Two.

04.12: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we continue discussing Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow by examining episodes five and six of Book Two. Note: Given that our panelists hail from all about the globe, sometimes various types of electromagnetic feedback and/or interference can produce a less-than-ideal sound-quality. Sorry about this. Note on that Note: We’re not entirely sure that […]

04.11: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we continue our discussion of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow by looking at sections three and four of Book Two.

04.10: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we begin Book Two of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow with a look at the first two sections.

04.09: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we take a look back at the first book of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, “Beyond the Zero.”

04.08: Gravity’s Rainbow In which we continue our analysis of Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow with episodes nineteen through twenty-one.