SOURCE: McHale, Brian. “Modernist Reading, Post-Modern Text: The Case of Gravity's Rainbow.” Poetics Today 1, no. 1-2 (autumn 1979): 85-110.

In the following essay, McHale investigates received Modernist reading strategies exploited by Gravity's Rainbow.

Welcome Mister Slothrop Welcome To Our Structure We Hope You Will Enjoy Your Visit Here.¹

Thomas Pynchon's novel Gravity's Rainbow (1973) opens, apparently, in medias res:

A screaming comes across the sky. It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now.

It is too late. The Evacuation still proceeds, but it's all theater. There are no lights inside the cars. No light anywhere. Above him lift girders old as an iron queen, and glass somewhere far above that would let the light of day through. But it's night. He's afraid of the way the glass will fall—soon—it will be a spectacle: the fall of a crystal palace. But coming down in...