Gravity’s Rainbow

Gravity’s Rainbow, novel by Thomas Pynchon, published in 1973. The sprawling narrative comprises numerous threads having to do either directly or tangentially with the secret development and deployment of a rocket by the Nazis near the end of World War II. Lieut. Tyrone Slothrop is an American working for Allied Intelligence in London. Agents of the Firm, a clandestine military organization, are investigating an apparent connection between Slothrop’s erections and the targeting of incoming V-2 rockets. As a child, Slothrop was the subject of experiments conducted by a Harvard professor who is now a Nazi rocket scientist. Slothrop’s quest for the truth behind these implications leads him on a nightmarish journey of either historic discovery or profound paranoia, depending on his own and the reader’s interpretation. Despite its historical setting, the work resembles science fiction in its elaborate fabrication of sinister technology, particularly the enigmatic V-2 rocket. But its rich characterization, exuberant language, and ultimate ambiguity defy the conventions of genre. The novel won the National Book Award for fiction in 1974.