Rating: 
Summary: Believe The Hype
Review: It was April 1999 when I first stumbled across Pynchon - in the twelve months between then and now I have read all of Pynchon's books, but left this daunting masterpiece till the end. Probably right. I can now judge it in all its glory. This is undoubtedly all those things everyone else has said: the Great Postwar Novel, the Great American Novel, one of the top five novels of the century. I was simply astonished by its sheer brilliance and technical trailblazing in every department. No book has ever seemed so unique to me. And, although it will sound stupid, this is the only book that I have finished feeling a different person. I'm not aware of any book that has so much in it, in terms of ideas, emotions, characters, cultural and scientific references - there is something for everyone here, everyone has their own favourite passage, their own favourite scene, their own favourite quote.As a Brit I'm always interested as to how Pynchon portrays us, and for the most part in all his books (particularly Mason and Dixon) he does it well. However, in GR there were two points I wanted to rectify before the great American public. First, Pynchon falls into the usual trap of thinking "Britain" and "England" are synonymous - they're not. England is just one part of Britain, as are Scotland and Wales. It's inaccurate and annoying to think they're the same thing. Secondly, there's a grating slip early on, on p.38, where Pynchon mentions "downtown Tunbridge Wells". Let's get this quite clear - no town outside America has a "downtown", and certainly not Tunbridge Wells which is a deeply conservative little place. It may pass unoticed by foreign readers but for Brits is is a slight hiccup. Anyway, these trifles pale in comparison to the genius and epic stature of this book. What amazed me is that it seems even more relevant today, with out concerns about globalised companies controlling the world. This is an important work of fiction that will never leave you. Read it now!
Rating:
Summary: Postmodern Vanguard
Review: This novel arcs across modernism to give the coup de gras to the first 75 years of the 20th century. It is the black instrument of American fiction, a novel that explores the space between reality and its projected image. Man serves technology to reach his inevitable end. Death is an aphrodisiac. We anticipate death falling from the sky. Reality is the land and the dream is the landscape. Pynchon shows us what lies beneath the surface, a depth of half a millimeter below the skin, everyone's true face, by way of sexual indulgence, paranoia, oneiric fantod, pigs, antibiotics, and rockets. This book is challenging, but not impossible. For those who don't pursue literary analysis it might be the novel to initiate such interest. More than a singular novel to be read and put aside, Gravity's Rainbow is a doorway into the deepest wellsprings of fiction's capabilities, and by that route the human imagination. Reading it is an encompassing experience, and like anything that is prodigious, understanding it and appreciating it take work. One can't read one book and become a doctor, and because Pynchon's ideas are referenced from physics, chemistry, history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, sadomasochism, Porky Pig cartoons, and strange candy, reading a bunch of science fiction novels does not prepare one for it. Delving into the vast sea of human knowledge, as Pynchon has done, will benefit the reader, within the novel and outside the novel. Gravity's Rainbow can lead you on an adventure through the great body of human knowledge, but you have to want to go there. If you don't seek knowledge, and aren't willing to go to the far reaches of knowledge that this book can take you, then you don't want to understand it, and create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Rating:
Summary: Greatest American Novel of the Last Century
Review: This book is woefully underappreciated, in large part, I suspect, because of all the terminal 'glitz' surrounding it- in re its opaqueness, its fairly mammoth scope, its discursiveness, it's dizzying rage of reference. I dare sa, however, that if you liked or appreciated Ulysses, you can't miss this one. It is very much of a tradition in American letters going back at least as far as 'Moby Dick' and, so far as I am concerned, is every bit as noteworthy. Wade through it- go gently- you will never forget this book, and it will alter the way you look at the world.
(I wonder that the Modern Library didn't even include it in it's list of the "100 best Novels" of the 20th Century. Incidentally.)
Rating:
Summary: A 1-10 menu makes it appear I rated this book.....
Review: It's fun to read these reviews, especially the ones where the reader "didn't get it." GR is now used to stand for all of Pynchon's writing, and is panned for being too long (poor babies, is all them words too much?), too complicated, not funny, and so on. Well, sorry, but "The Crying of Lot 49" isn't any less difficult, and "V" isn't any more enlightening. In this book Pynchon takes the literary device of the omniscient narrator (which I imagine was considered obsolete by many people in the 60's) and uses it to show the unknowability of the whole world, in all of its technology, biology, and culture. Instead of exposing the mysteries of natural science technology has placed another world between us and the natural world, and everything looks planned - the war, the bombs (the crater patterns of which appear disturbingly designed to some of the characters), our lives and the 'accidents' we have. If you find the book difficult, hooray. It was not written to be easy. I don't think it matters if a book is easy or hard. But to say that readers have been scammed or taken in (like some of these reviews state)? Well, since those same reviewers say they don't 'understand' GR, what good is their word?
Rating: 
Summary: Read it for reading's sake
Review: Before I throw in my two cents, I should admit that, aside from Faulkner, I believe Pynchon to be the most gifted American writer of the 20th Century. I've read all of his books (as I have Faulkner's), and some of them more than once. Therefore, the following remarks are not those of a dispassionate and objective critic, but of a fan. That being said, the first time I read Gravity's Rainbow, I was as perplexed as most. And yet, even in my confusion, I couldn't help but recognize the beauty of the writing. Say what you will, Pynchon's prose is undeniably some of the most beautifully written stuff out there. The second time I read it, I did so in conjunction with Weisenburger's annotations, and both before and after the second reading, read some articles and essays presenting possible themes, interpretations, intentions of the author, etc., etc. I was really getting into Pynchon at this time and was reading his other novels as well. All of this reading, research, whatever, sparked new ideas about the book, clarified, and sometimes reaffirmed, notions that had arisen in my first, and more strongly, my second reading of the novel, and gave me a fuller understanding of Pynchon's influences, his ideas, and how he was attempting to present those ideas in his work, especially this, his "masterpiece." But there was no revelation, no comprehensive understanding of the book, no "Oh, I get it" (although overall, when appraising the novel as a whole, I did feel less confused) and those seeking such a thing when reading fiction, I feel, are somewhat misguided. "Comprehensive understanding," to me, sounds a little oxymoronic, and very likely nonexistent. Even the worst stuff out there, in its own way, resists definitive interpretation, which to my mind, is the greatest thing about literature, or any form of art, in that anyone who experiences it, can take from it what they wish. A year or so later, on a whim, I picked it up one afternoon and began reading the first few pages to kill some time. Before long, I had dropped everything else I was then reading and read nothing else until I had finished it yet again. This third reading was the most enjoyable, and I believe the reason for this was that for the first time I wasn't seeking understanding, or instruction, or entertainment, but was simply indulging my admiration for technically brilliant and beautiful writing. The prose is poetic (some would say overwritten, depending on what you go for), even in its descriptions of very shocking and disgusting acts (Brig. Gen. Pudding's copraphagic (sp?) encounter with Katje being one of these), but especially in its treatment of relationships familial and romantic, unrequited desires, etc. (e.g. Roger's yearning for Jessica, Slothrop's for Katje, Enzian and Tchitcherine's first and only meeting). The novel, in it's own quirky and eccentric way, is incredibly sad at times, sentimental even, nostalgic (for a spiritual innocence that's been lost, maybe, a faith in mysticism, magic, prior to what is modern as symbolized by the 20th Century before technology, so in- and per-vasive, became man's faith and paranoia an ideology (It's no coincidence the setting is the end of World War II on the eve of cold war, before the Bomb became just another fact of life, one of many what if? points perhaps) yet you have to really look for this sadness behind the despairing humor and all of the information and allusions and puns and wordgames with which Pynchon bombards the reader (this bombardment, in my opinion, having a thematic purpose rather than the shameless self-glorification that so many readers assert, however, just thinking about trying to explain why I think this is so seems very wearisome, and I'll gladly spare the both of us.) Enough. I'm rambling. Just read it, or at least try. Have no expectations, ignore your ideas about fiction, and how you think a novel should be constructed. Read it simply for the brilliance of the writing. If a shedding of conventional expectations is possible, perhaps in doing so, you'll realize that Pynchon's treatment of old fears and concerns, i.e. his humanity, is not so unconventional as once thought.
Rating: 
Summary: absolute garbage
Review: Maybe it's entertaining if you take huge quantities of lsd, otherwise it's a nightmare. Pynchon forces offensive, sexist, nonsensical free-associations at the reader for hundreds of pages. As an author he comes over like a sad juvenile craving attention. It might have been different and unique in the 70's, but there are better examples of this kind of writing available now. All I wanted a well-written, cool story (sort of sci-fi/literature), unique characters, good setting and thought this might be the book, boy was I wrong. You suffer reading this "book", but that doesn't make it worthwhile. Miss this one. Repeat - miss this one. It is terrible.
Rating:
Summary: Singing! Dancing! Debauchery!
Review: This book has an undeserved reputation. People I've known refer to it as though it were some kind of monolithic, unapproachable text, like the Bible, or the Greek translation of the bible. Yes, it's not an easy read, but it's only really trying if you're reading it as a 'great novel,' trying to figure out what Pynchon is saying all the time. If you just read it, I think, you'll enjoy yourself, and maybe some resonance of a point will emerge afterwards. There is a motive here, but basically the book is just fun. I hear GR condemned as 'pretentious' all the time. But how can you say that about a book in which ten pages never pass without some character bursting into song, in which the protagonist is chased in a hot-air balloon by a gang of limerick-reciting thugs, in which a girl is attacked by a giant octopus, a book which sheds light on the great Mother's Conspiracy? One thing GR never is is boring. At the beginning, the narrative is perfectly coherent with only a few eccentricities of style; by the end, when it really starts disintegrating, you've gotten used to it. And although I've said it isn't that difficult, there is some prestige in having finished a book which has defeated so many intellectuals. Read it, and the next time you hear someone complaining about the dense prose, say brightly: "Oh yeah, I loved that book! Especially the limericks!"
Rating:
Summary: doorstop
Review: Certain books are written (and read) in order to impress other people with how smart one is. The technique is simple, invented by Joyce and imitated here by Pynchon: adopt an arcane, stream of consciousness prose style; thereby inflate a thousand word idea into a few hundred thousand words; and in the end say nothing at all worth saying. A bunch of pseudointellectual pretenders will proceed to lap this up, in order to build up their self-images by being able to brag about reading such a thing (note the long, dense, verbose reviews this doorstop gets). Well, let me tell you something, smart people. IQ tests are a valid, if approximate, measure of intelligence, which is indeed a real quantity, as demonstrated by the fact, among others, that it is highly correlated to physical characteristics such as reaction time. Reading books won't make you any smarter, you're born with it. I personally have a verbal IQ somewhere over 160. In other words, I'm smart enough that I don't have to give a damn about impressing anybody by saying I've read some silly overblown excuse for a book, even though I did read Gravity's Rainbow, to my lasting regret. I smart enough that I don't have even a little trouble understanding a trifle like Pynchon's "masterpiece", nor did I when I first read it at age 16. Here's the scoop: this is trash, Pynchon is a mountebank, and all the people whose praise has earned this thing a "classic" distinction need to read some real classics, so they will be able to identify the species in the future. And the fact that you types will perceive me as an arrogant philistine for saying so is only you projecting your own psychological disease on me, or anybody who disagrees with you, which is why the kinds of people who like this kind of junk, or Picasso, or Joyce, or Piet Mondrian, or any other similar hoax perpetrated by modern art, are so impossible to convince of its utterly specious quality, as in the Emperor's New Clothes.
Rating:
Summary: amazingly worth it
Review: Fantastic prose, a great cast of characters, and a series of events that leave you alternately amazed, pensive, and completely pulled into the book. This book is absolutely worth reading, one of the best books of the twentieth century. The beginning feels a little slow the first time, because it's hard to get used to Pynchon's writing style if you haven't seen it before, but stick with it and the rewards will definitely be worthwhile. Like a cross between Hunter S. Thompson, James Joyce, and J.R.R. Tolkien (for the songs, you see).
Rating:
Summary: The big one
Review: Endlessly fascinating. Look up every word and get a college education for free.
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