Weisenburger's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow

Steven Weisenburger’s A Gravity’s Rainbow Companion (Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press, 1988) was an important contribution to understanding basic elements of Thomas Pynchon’s complex and controversial novel. As readers of Gravity’s Rainbow know, the text is rich in allusion to a wide array of people, places, events, ideas and cultural artifacts. Weisenburger did a great service for readers and scholars in explicating and clarifying many references and issues in the book. However, as Weisenburger himself acknowledges, there are gaps and errors in his guide, many of them having to do with film and other aspects of popular culture.

Professor Donald Larsson's "A Companion's Companion to Gravity's Rainbow" website filled in many of the "misses" in Weisenburger's original Companion and Weisenburger appropriated (and gratefully acknowledged) most of Professor Larsson's website (as well as others' websites) into his second edition (Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press, 2006). However, Weisenburger has still missed a number of connections and references, as he would probably again acknowledge.

Professor Larsson has graciously allowed this Gravity's Rainbow wiki to copy over the content of his Companion's Companion to the wiki's page-by-page annotation section, thus allowing the hundreds of fine Pynchon Wiki contributors to bring to bear their collected knowledge and insight to continually expand the novel's interpretations and reveal its seemingly endless structures.