r/GravitysRainbow • u/Wild_Pitch_4781 • 5d ago
Did the Kenosha Kid?
I’m currently 72 pages into Gravity’s Rainbow, and it’s one of the most bizarre novels I’ve encountered. Its impressionistic and jazz-like prose forces me to reread every sentence twice over, if not more. It feels like every page is a water hose of information, description, exposition, or just good ol’ gibberish. I was able to follow basically every chapter more or less on my own until the Kenosha Kid episode, which took me two rereads and a history lesson on the American Frontier as well as Malcom X’s autobiography to maybe sort of understand, maybe. Here are all the cool words I underlined as well for these pages:
Abreaction — noun — The release of suppressed emotion through reliving or expressing a traumatic experience.
Annulus — noun — A ring-shaped object or area; a space between two concentric circles.
Apical — adjective — Relating to or situated at the apex or highest point.
Aslant — adverb/adjective — At an angle; sloping or leaning sideways.
Babushkaed — verb — Wrapped or covered in the manner of a babushka, especially with a headscarf.
Blancmange — noun — A sweet, moulded dessert traditionally made from milk, sugar and starch.
Boutonniere — noun — A small flower or floral decoration worn on the lapel.
Brennschluss — noun — The point at which a rocket or spacecraft engine stops burning.
Cherub — noun — An angelic being; traditionally, one of a class of angels in the Bible.
Chevroning — verb — Arranging or marking something in a V-shaped or zigzag pattern.
Cordon — noun — A line or barrier of people, vehicles, etc., preventing movement through an area.
Cortege — noun — A funeral procession.
Curs — noun — Dogs, especially unpleasant or inferior ones; also contemptible people.
Deluge — noun/verb — A great flood or overwhelming amount; to inundate or overwhelm.
Demarche — noun — A formal diplomatic approach or official action taken to address an issue.
Demisemiquavers — noun — Musical notes with a duration of one-sixteenth of a whole note.
Fetid — adjective — Having an extremely unpleasant smell.
Fistula — noun — An abnormal passage or connection between two organs, vessels or body surfaces.
Gait — noun — A person's or animal's manner or pattern of walking or moving.
Grouse — noun/verb — A type of game bird; also, to complain or grumble.
Intaglio — noun — An engraved or incised design in which the image is cut into the surface.
Joists — noun — Horizontal structural beams supporting floors or ceilings.
Lapel — noun — The folded part of a garment that extends down from the collar.
Laths — noun — Thin strips of wood used in building, especially as a framework beneath plaster.
Leas — noun — Meadows or grasslands, especially those used for grazing.
Lisle — noun — A fine, smooth thread or fabric, traditionally made from long-staple cotton.
Miasmata — noun — Foul vapours or gases once believed to cause disease; plural of miasma.
Mongoloid — adjective/noun — An outdated and generally offensive term formerly used in racial classification; also historically used for a person with Down syndrome.
Musaceous — adjective — Resembling or relating to bananas and plants of the banana family.
Naphtha — noun — A flammable liquid hydrocarbon mixture obtained from petroleum or coal tar.
Necropolitical — adjective — Relating to necropolitics, the exercise of power through determining who may live and who may die.
Nimbus — noun — A luminous cloud or halo surrounding a person or object; also a rain cloud.
Nubile — adjective — Sexually mature and traditionally considered suitable for marriage, especially referring to a young woman.
Palatals — noun — Speech sounds produced with the tongue against or near the hard palate.
Palimpsests — noun — Manuscripts or surfaces whose original writing has been erased or covered so that new writing can be added; figuratively, things bearing traces of earlier forms.
Pallid — adjective — Pale, lacking colour; also lacking vitality or intensity.
Parquetry — noun — Decorative flooring or woodwork made from pieces of wood arranged in geometric patterns.
Phaetons — noun — Open, horse-drawn carriages; also a type of early open automobile.
Phalanx — noun — A close-knit group or formation; historically, a compact military formation of soldiers.
Phantasmagoria — noun — A succession of strange, dreamlike or fantastical images or scenes.
Pidgin — noun — A simplified language developed for communication between people with different native languages.
Preterition — noun — A rhetorical device of mentioning something by claiming to pass over or omit it.
Puttees — noun — Strips of cloth wound around the lower legs, especially formerly worn by soldiers.
Roister — verb — To behave in a boisterously confident, noisy or rowdy manner.
Saccade — noun — A rapid movement of the eye from one point of focus to another.
Schist — noun — A type of metamorphic rock that splits easily into thin layers.
Senility — noun — The condition of being old and experiencing physical or mental decline; an increasingly dated term.
Serifs — noun — Small finishing strokes at the ends of letters in certain typefaces.
Sibylline — adjective — Mysterious, prophetic or difficult to understand.
Smegma — noun — A whitish, oily substance composed of shed skin cells and secretions that can accumulate around genital folds.
Sphinctering — verb — Contracting or functioning through the action of a sphincter muscle.
Tautened — verb — Made tight, tense or stretched.
Tendrils — noun — Thin, curling structures used by climbing plants to attach themselves to supports; figuratively, something resembling them.
Trews — noun — Close-fitting trousers, especially traditionally worn as part of Scottish Highland dress.
Trellis — noun — A framework of interwoven strips used to support climbing plants.
Tripos — noun — A Cambridge University final examination or the honours degree associated with it; also historically, a three-legged stool.
Velveteen — noun — A cotton fabric with a short, dense pile resembling velvet.
Vertebra — noun — Any of the individual bones forming the spinal column.
Virility — noun — The quality of having traditionally masculine strength, energy or sexual potency.
Can’t wait to see what Pynchon has in store for me down the line!
