Read the first part of this review here.

The speeding train that is Gravity’s Rainbow settles into a normal, steady chug of actual narrative here in Part 2. Pynchon, our conductor, has come down from his hazy cloud of substances to hold our hands a bit, which is a definite relief.

Around every page, They are watching. They watch our American war correspondent Slothrop as he makes his way from London into France and settles into the Casino Hermann Goering with soldiers from the war. He’s feeling paranoid, rightly so, as his new-found pals turn out to be spies from a secret organization, presumably PISCES or The White Visitation, which are fringe government departments that deal with otherworldly events. They’re now being phased out as the war winds down, though they’ve got an agenda to fulfill, seems like.

Even the sultry Katje is working for Them. Slothrop clings to her, ladies’ man that he is, after rescuing her from a random octopus attack — made possible somehow through operant conditioning. But it seems not so random after all. It’s all part of the plan. Theirs is a scheme to probe both Slothrop’s mind and his private parts.

And then, one by one, the supporting cast seems to vanish, and Slothrop flees. He creeps around Europe in Zurich and Nice, dons a zootsuit hiked up to his chest, and searches for clues, always disjointed, about the 00000 rocket made of some strange plastic called Imipolex G. The very smell of it gives him a hard-on. The plastic’s creator, Laszlo Jamf, must be connected to Slothrop’s obfuscated past. This section is best read with noir-inspired tunes playing in the background.

We don’t hear much about Roger Mexico and Jessica Swanlake here, who are off having a tiff. Yet a bit more is revealed about our psychologist Pointsman, who seems to be overseeing Slothrop from afar. He’s investigating his “relationship” to the V-2 and could possibly be the one who conditioned him as an infant. Yet the order of things is unclear. Pointsman hears “Yang and Yin,” showing that the conditioned responses are what beget their stimuli. And while Pointsman watches Slothrop and guides his team, he too is being guided (conditioned?) by another, even more shadowy organization lurking around somewhere. Are the voices from the other side whispering in Pointsman’s ear a more evil, deeper Them? The novel’s layers are labyrinthine.

However wobbly the way, we thankfully tread more solid earth in this part of the novel. But as with everything happening so far, my personal thoughts come with a big disclaimer: I can only guess the above is actually what happened. Yet, I’m sure I’m intrigued by it all.

I can’t leave off mentioning that Part 2 has one of the most disturbing scenes in any piece of fiction I’ve ever read. It involves sadism and even more poop than the novel’s first section. There are hints that the dominatrix from this particular stomach-churning scene is Katje, though she may be dominated herself through psychological tricks by Pointsman. But for what reason, who knows. Pynchon, you are a clever sicko!

We’ve gone Beyond the Zero, left the Casino, and now move into the Zone. All aboard!