Gravity's Rainbow (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)

A headache of a novel. Keep some aspirin handy. I have never been more relieved to finish a book. At moments the language is incredibly beautiful, even Shakespeare-esque, but 99% of the time I found myself frustrated, trying to figure out what the hell was going on, and wondering why this book is so highly-acclaimed. The book seemed intentionally confusing, but without any kind of payoff at the end. Unless you are a very patient reader who doesn't mind getting jerked around, then don't bother.

"Some joker put hashish in the hollandaise, causing a run on the brocolli." Just another event in the life of Lt. Tyron Slothrop, who was attending the wild party in question in the Herman Goering casino as part of his search for the Schwatzgerat--the V2 rocket (serial no. 00000) which carries the mysterious Imipolex G device--all over wartime Europe, while the British secret service, and assorted others, search for *him*. Why? You'll have to read the book. Along the way, he meets--among many others--a British captain with black-market connections that allow him to have fresh bananas in London's wartime winter in return for homegrown "magic mushroom" drugs; an African tribe whose members serve in the SS as V2 crews; an insane American Major whose solidiers sing diry limmericks about the V2's various components; an Italian nobleman--and a British Brigadier--with odd sexual practices (even by Pynchon's standards); and that's just the start of it. The adventures of Lt. Slothrop in this mad looking-glass world are funny, amusing, bizzare, and complex. What's more--and this is what makes the novel a masterpiece--Pynchon integrates so many actual facts into his fictional world that it makes it and its inhabitants have much more versimilitude than the people described in most *non*-fiction works about WWII. Slothrop is more "real" than the Hitler we read about in most biographies of the man; his friends and enemies more real than, say, the defendants in Nuremberg are in most books about the trial. If Pynchon speaks, say, of a car used by a lieutenant in a specific sub-department of the German Army in 1944, you can be damn sure that particular car model was in fact used by just such lieutenants at the time in reality; that pynchon took into account the wartime shortages that made the car's quality to deteriorate from 1944 to 1941; and that the lieutenant's resentment of this would be relevant to the plot. To be sure, the lieutenant might then want to kill Slothrop in order to fulfill an anient prophecy based on Mayan star charts (which you can bet are also accurately portrayed); or to have a homosexual affair with him; or to do any number of bizzare or absurd things that one would expect in the looking-glass world where the novel is set. But that is just what makes this novel so great: Pycnhon doesn't research to teach us facts about WWII--even if a lot of the facts he puts in the novel are probably unknown even to WWII history buffs (like myself). He *uses* his research to create his funny, bizzare, and incredibly engaging world. Read it--perferably, with a glass of wine (or something stronger) at your side. You will laugh, chortle, be shocked, and be amazed. Rarely had a better novel been written.

It's more than a novel, of course--it's an experience. A few suggestions to first time readers: 1) do not, I repeat, *do not* refer to annotations or any other academic ramblings on the first read. This point is essential if the novel's venom is ever to seep under your skin. I don't care how many degrees you have, where you went to school, etc., the first time you read this novel it must be an act of faith that becomes a direct experience in the making. Later on, if you want to engage the lit-crits in their game, then by all means read all their po-mo stuff on Pynchon. But always remember--Pynchon did not write this novel to serve as a topic for some grad student's dissertation.2) Embrace chaos (not as easy as it sounds).4) Re-read periodically over a specific period of time (you'll figure out exactly how long).5) And finally, to quote a famous rock song, "Roll with the changes to get to what's real."

Because we have launched the first V-1, we have launched the final bomb that will be our undoing. This book is the Ocham's Razor of literature, infinitely bisecting the line or the arc, trying to single out the desired by eliminating the unwanted. In this case, it appears to be working on a most disturbing result--as if it were a warning to us. We cannot, in reality, bisect the line forever. ***** On a lighter note (and the book is filled with hilarity), yes I love this encyclopedic book. When I feel I cannot write, I get it out and read the first few pages (through the great "banana breakfast" episode), or the story of 'Byron the Lightbulb' (one of the stories-within-the-story), or Slothrop's adventures in the giant pig suit.... If you can't get past the first 50 pages, and many people have encountered this (as did I), start again. The rewards are on every page, on every line. And keeping a copy of the OED handy won't hurt, either.

In scope, scale and ambition Gravity's Rainbow is similar to Ulysees and for this reader the enigmatic Thomas Pynchon matched the achievement of Joyce.