SOURCE: Wolfley, Lawrence C. “Repression's Rainbow: The Presence of Norman O. Brown in Pynchon's Big Novel.” PMLA 92, no. 5 (October 1977): 873-89.

In the following essay, Wolfley examines the thematic structure of Gravity's Rainbow.

Since its publication in 1973, Gravity's Rainbow,¹ by Thomas Pynchon, has attained a cult following, which continues to grow. There is even a current vogue of inflicting its tortured 760 word-crammed pages on innocent undergraduates. But, for all this interest, the body of admiring commentary that has sprung up around the novel has so far failed to develop any coherent approach to its central meanings. This essay offers a usable handle on the novel's ideas by demonstrating Pynchon's pervasive indebtedness to the school of psychoanalytic culture criticism best exhibited in the two major works of Norman O. Brown—Life against Death and Love's Body.² I want to caution, however, that this essay does not convey much of the...