Chemical connections

摘要

Do you have a list of books that you will get around to reading one of these days? I do, but it's a short list and the candidates are there because their Length is daunting and a special effort is required to tackle any of them. One of these days (or rather one of these weeks) arrived this year, and I settled down to the 730 pages of Thomas Pynchon's 1973 novel Gravity's rainbow. I wasn't sure what I was looking for, but like that genealogy ad on TV, I just had to start looking ... and I found several sections of Pynchon's masterpiece that had chemical connections.Much of the action revolves round the German V-2 rocket, which was fuelled with aqueous alcohol and gaseous oxygen generated on board from hydrogen peroxide, so there's a chemical connection for a start. I think 'gravity's rainbow' is an allusion to the more-or-less hyperbolic path taken by the rocket.