Rating: 
Summary: World's Finest Random Access Manuscript
Review: My favorite novel (if it is a novel). I keep two copies, to be able to give one if I run across the right person (so far, just twice). In the fifteen years since first learning about it, I suppose I've read it straight through three times. After reaching a certain point of familiarity though, I realized it made just as much sense to read it in a non-linear manner -- you won't gain any more reading it sequentially and the "ending" does not function as one in any traditional sense. Yes, it is hard to read and disappointing at first. The cut and paste format is a frustrating initial barrier. I didn't finish it the first two times I started it, but every time I put it back on the shelf it acquired more weight than the books around it. So many of these reviews concentrate on the difficulty of reading this, but it's not a "get it/don't get it" book, despite all the comments to the contrary, and reducing it to a simple binary doesn't begin to do it justice. Others may have been written before this, but Gravity's Rainbow is the world's finest Random-Access Manuscript. Drop your cortex on any page and be entertained. You will be placed in the immediate presence of a ferocious intelligence (is there any other fiction work of this stature that has inlaid nature, science and engineering so adroitly?) and, more importantly, a ferocious heart. Don't be fooled by the sex, drugs and gross juvenile humor (yes, there's a lot of all three). This is a passionate, epic evocation of the world at large, and will not be reduced or bound to definition. It is _not_ frivolous _or_ the work of a burn-out. The discipline and energy in it is singular both in the author's writing (no, I don't think that Mason & Dixon is as good, despite its maturity) as well as in literature in general. I like some of the other authors whose names are compared here, but there is no meaningful comparison. A help guide for this book is like the proverbial vivisection -- you may think you're learning a lot, but the frog will be dead when you're done. Challenge yourself: go it alone and leave the tour guides for someone else, or come back to them when you have more familiarity with it. Thirty years after a novel was written about a time thirty years before it, the world has yet to catch up to it, and that's _not_ an April Fool's joke!
Rating: 
Summary: I could do that.
Review: I have read GR over twenty times, first, at age 8 in German. I enjoyed it most in French, however, the language in which I prefer to write my own novels, though the Chinese translation is not without its charm. I have also read Pynchon in Finnish, Swahili, and a monocle. The general reader will have a tough time following the convoluted visceral hynogogia of GR, which is more brash than Pynchon's Mason-Dixon, and less exuberant than his work as Balki on Perfect Strangers.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to love, easy to hate
Review: You could hate this book! Loan it, borrow it and see how you like it before you consider buying a copy. Someone said, "To achieve the impossible, it is necessary to attempt the absurd". GR is a book that almost constantly attempts the absurd... Many times the result seems to be a horrible mess, but there is still so much beauty, humor, horror etc. to be found in the passages of greater coherence. And it helps (for me, anyways) that the allusions and references I could appreciate (mostly those about science and history) were made with some understanding, rather than just being thrown in in an ignorant fashion for 'good' literary measure. I am very happy that somebody mentioned 'Radio Free Albemuth' by P.K.Dick. If you can tolerate sci-fi and would like a similar level of 'weirdness', but prefer a cleaner, more personal (alas, less colorful) voice, you'll find it a much better read.
Rating:
Summary: The greatest book that should never be read
Review: Gravity's Rainbow was written by a genius at the height of his powers--unfortunately it was also the height of his lunacy. He has erased virtually all traces of his existence to protect his privacy--why not just use a pen name? I could go on, but I think that pretty much proves my point--Pynchon has serious issues to resolve, if he has to make his life that complicated. I'm not writing to review "Gravity's Rainbow" as I am to dissuade people from reading anything by him. I've read Gravity's Rainbow and can only pity the poor, alienated, intellectual who would actually read it five times. There is more to life than believing you are one of the 1% of the population that actually "gets" Pynchon. Please, go to a coffee shop, make eye contact with a cute girl, and try to form a meaningful relationship with at least one person in your life. Put the book down, and stop living your Slothropian fantasies. For anyone who hasn't read any Pynchon, please don't read him until after he dies. When that happens, there will be a flood of books from the few people who know him detailing just how crazy he really was. After we know that, then you can read his work, fully enjoying the beauty of "GR", while at the same time realizing that that this is not guy who you should not be taking advice from.
Rating:
Summary: Although not for everybody.
Review: I first read this book when I was 16, and it was the Spanish translation. Later on, I read it in English, and although I consider it one of the best, most complex books I have ever read, I was a little disappointed in the rest of Pynchon's production. I think he reached his zenith with "Rainbow" and it has been all downhill ever since. The book is not easy to read, and the action is not easy to follow, because the author likes to take the scenic route to enrich our view, so we get the whole treatment with physics, engineering, strategy, espionage, sex, love, fear, paranoia, and an assortment of other fields -some strange, some crude- that provide us with the view of a world gone mad from the prizm of an author that seems to have been down the rabbit hole once or twice. The only thing that has always bothered me about "Gravity's Rainbow" is my inability to understand its ending. I want to believe the author designed it in such a way that it would be very ambiguous, but I am really not sure. In any case, a great reading experience, although, reader, beware: those who look for uplifting messages; those who don't like harsh language; those who don't like depictions of sex; those who would not be able to read through very descriptive passages of (one hopes) less than popular and rather grotesque sexual practices; those who would not continue reading after the lavishly descripted love scene between a grown man and a twelve year-old girl; those who dislike "dense", descriptive literature; those who don't really go for the stream of consciousness stuff; those who don't like war books; those who have read this far and already hate the book and the review; all those potential readers should know that in "Gravity's Rainbow" you get hundreds of pages of what I have just outlined, and more. If you don't think you can stomach this list, move on to other books: there are plenty of good ones out there. This one is good, but not for all tastes.
Rating:
Summary: A Book only for the SERIOUS reader
Review: I've read the book all the way through five times and certain parts of it, say, up to ten times. (So obviously I like it.) And it's true, as they say, that on each reading you find something new. And fresh perspective. How to prepare for Gravity's Rainbow to get the most out of it? Well, if style's a problem, I suggest reading W.S. Burroughs, D. Barthelme, and early I. Reed. (Comparisons to light weights like Wallace, Vollman, Stephenson strike this reader as absurd.) Perhaps it's not discussed as much as it ought to be, but GR's style owes a lot to the famous Buroughs "cut-up" method used to great in effect in the Soft Machine trilogy. The only difference being that in GR the splices in the text are made to seem seamless. The resulting style, then, is comparable to the associations in a dream. GR is basically a *dreamscape*. Do our dreams have plots and consistent characterization? Not usually, and so it's no surprise that GR also lacks these. Style aide, as for the content. You don't need an encyclopedia or concordance, etc. to enjoy this novel. Believe or it or not, it's true. Of course, it's also fun to treat it like a big tome of clues. . . and to follow their leads . . . somewhere. But first and foremost it's the beautiful palimpsest of a dream. It takes some practice perhaps for a first-time reader to adapt to the flow, so to speak. How does GR compare to Pynchon's other works? IMO, it far surpasses all them. If I were to assign a second place, it would be to V., definitely not CoL 49 which Pynchon has in fact repudiated (see intro to Slow Learner), nor the rather trite Vineland, nor Manson&Dixon (if only the latter had been written entirely in the style of the opening pages). Anyhow, none of these novels can in any meaningful sense "prepare" the first time reader for GR. It's more than a novel, it's Work. A reader should treat it that way.
Rating:
Summary: This isn't a 'quick read'
Review: Though I have never been so thoroughly confused by a book, this is a special book to me and I know I will enjoy re-reading it and plumbing its depths further. For anyone absolutely bored with the majority of fiction out there today, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Reading this book is like listening to an incredibly intricate piece of music that only repeated listenings can allow you to fully enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: I guess I'm a dolt, but I don't see what's so special
Review: I know I must be missing something because Pynchon gets rave reviews more than he gets panned. However, I have to say I tried no less than 3 times to read this book and each time I ended up putting it down after forcing myself to read 1/4 of it. I have never been so confused by a book in my life (well, "The Bonds of Love" was worse, but that's non-fiction). Many people compare David Foster Wallace to Pynchon. I don't get this either. I love Wallace's work and have no problem understanding his writing style. Neal Stephenson uses a similar style to Wallace's and I get his stuff too. Pynchon simply flies over my head, though. I guess I'll recommend Wallace and Stephenson over Pynchon, provided that the reviews don't lie and they actually do write in a style that Pynchon fans will appreciate. Try as I may, though, I simply can not recommend Pynchon. As I said, I must be a dolt, because there's obviously something severe that I'm missing here. Maybe I'll try to read "V" or some other Pynchon book before totally writing him off. But I have lots of other books I'll be reading first. Maybe by the time I retire I'll be ready to try Pynchon again.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: Gravity's Rainbow, quite possibly the greatest work of fiction this century has seen is essentially the story of Tyrone Slothrop and his search for Rocket 00000, a drug-added romp through war-torn WW2 Europe; clearly a metaphor for spritual transcdence, in the tradition of the great metaphysical quest narratives-the allure of death-what is death but a transcendence of the flesh, and a rejoining of all things in the cosmos? The symbolism of the trocket's secrecy is a symobl of the unknowability but reachability of God. Also involved is a cast of what seems to be thousands, all directly or tangentially involved with the rocket, just as everything on Earth affects everything else...Written in a variety of styles, all with great joie de vivre and jeux des cartes(essentiall for such an ambitious undertaking), Mr. Pynchon glides effortlessly from humor to pathos to romance to vulgarity to the sublime, often in adjacent passages-encyclopedic!-he comes as close to expressing "all things"(as it is just and fitting for any artist to do)as any author ever has, both inside and out of the body, the former heightened by the use of circular consciousness-mise-en-scenes. Combining the best of all authors in a mass of a book dense as a dead star and throwing it back at you in one heavenly literary symphony, T. R. Pynchon has achieved almost the inevitable. The last page with its abstract but emotionally transcendant denoument is beyond compare and description(and completely in accord with narratives intent and with theologians and philosophers from St. Augustine to Kierkergaard). "Gravity's Rainbow" will stay with you for a long, long time. Buy it.
Rating:
Summary: It almost makes lives seem worth living
Review: Gravity's Rainbow probably gets a more outrageously diverse set of responses than any other book by a living author; it's supposed to be either a brilliant, compendious, funny, tragic novel about war, modernity and history or a stupid, slack, paranoid rant by a burnt-out (probable) druggy. The first time I read it it took me nine months, and when I'd finished I didn't know what had happened, but I knew I'd had the most amazing ride of my life along the way. The second time took me four weeks (it's a long book) and this time, it revealed itself as a masterpiece. (Well, Nabokov always said that you only read a book properly the second time around.) Ignore the begrudgers; never mind who Pynchon is supposed to be "better" or "worse" than; don't worry about not understanding all of it first go. Pynchon is one of the most intelligent and well-read novelists of all time, more so than you or I, but he has a rock'n'roll heart; nobody else can leap from zoot-suited craziness to rocket chemistry to diving down a toilet in search of a lost harmonica (twenty years before Trainspotting, kids) to minutely researched accounts of genocide and still keep littering his wildly elastic prose with daft little songs. There were probably people in ancient Greece who thought that Homer was an untalented driveller, too. Ignore them. Dive in. Enjoy. The last page is a killer.
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