We wrap the first part of Gravity's Rainbow (chapters 18-21), which sees Pointsman getting lucky, Slothrop shipped off to the Riviera, and Roger and Jessica checking out a cheeky Christmas panto.

In this episode, we're joined by David Cowart, author of Thomas Pynchon and the Dark Passages of History and Thomas Pynchon: The Art of Allusion, to talk about the history of the postmodern novel, and how Gravity's Rainbow defines the form.

Other topics include: Chaucer, Joyce, Christmas Parties, if the British put a moratorium on German art during WWII, meta-narratives, Jerry Garcia, Weimar Germany, Marxists, the cult of the rocket, poster pasting, probability, the mechanical model of the human mind, Newtonian reality vs. Heisenbergian reality, entropy.

Read Proverbs For Paranoids, John's guide to Gravity's Rainbow.

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