Rating: 
Summary: Positive though critical of hyperbolic reactions to GR.
Review: There is a danger in reading reviews of this book that one may be put off by the hyperbole and the general diacritical hysteria. Responses to Pynchon are often as good and chaotic as his work is, but rest assured this book is worth your time. No it is not Ulysees, let alone Finnegan's Wake, nor is it quite Gaddiss' The Recognitions. But it has an elemement that those other works contain and that is its great aesthetic quality. It is enjoyable and rewarding, but perhaps in the end not so groundbreaking as to be the totem of Modern American Fiction
Rating:
Summary: Pynchon is good...but not as talented as Gaddis
Review: I want to make it very clear that I regard this novel as one of the best that America, in her short history, has offered to the world and history at large. But...I find it incredibly disappointing that Pynchon (even as talented as he is) has overshadowed an American novelist who has written what will likely be regarded in a hundred years time (and is already now in some circles) THE great American book. The book I am referring to is William Gaddis' "The Recognitions." If you have the intellectual interest and passion to get through "GR" then you will appreciate " The Recognitions," for its rigor, intelligence, and curiosity
Rating:
Summary: Reviews of this book are basically pointless.
Review: There are a number of reasons one might write a review of a book. Most of these reasons aren't all that helpful when it comes to Gravity's Rainbow.
One reason is to provide potential readers with a sense of the book (plot, structure, style, characterization). The best way to get a sense of Gravity's Rainbow is to read the first page. It basically goes on like that for another seven or eight hundred more.
Another reason is to enlighten the world with your sparkling insight into the subtlties of symbolism and layers of meaning in the book. With regard to Gravity's Rainbow, you can save that stuff for your weekly book club. The symbolism and layered meaning in GR are about as subtle as a rocket attack on a movie theater. This is why GR is often compared to Finnegan's Wake. If you've ever watched Joseph Campbell explain that novel, you realize that the search for deep intellectual insight is a conceit. These novels require your best effort just to understand the LITERAL stuff.
Another reason to review a book is to provide your own subjective opinion about the overall quality of the experience. I've found that many such GR reviews fall into one of two camps: "I read 'X' pages and couldn't/didn't finish it" or "Thomas Pynchon is God". The problem with reviews like this is that they say more about the meta-experience (sorry, but that is the appropriate word) of reading the book than they do about the book itself. Those of us who finish it are subject to a kind of "Iron John" machismo which falls apart if we are forced to admit that the whole thing might be a colossal put-on. On the other hand, those who give up can't help feeling that perhaps they are missing the big IT and don't like feeling that they might be unable to appreciate genius.
So is it the Emperor's New Clothes, or Pearls Before Swine? It doesn't matter. The question is probably meaningless anyway.
If you like incredibly obscure cultural references, if you like dense imagery, if you like chilling portrayals of paranoia and the dire consequences to humans when people with power succumb to it and if you like conspiracy theory, you'll dig this book.
I do, so I did.
On the other hand, if you're hung up on little things like narrative structure, characterization, plot, etc., I'd stay away.
Rating: 
Summary: Gravity's Rainbow: I beg to differ
Review: What can you take away from this book with any certainty? Pynchon seems to talk around and around his great "themes" (paranoia, homosexuality, drugs, decadence, etc.) a great deal, but does he ever actually say anything? It seems to me it's very easy to be "a literary master" in this way. It's much more difficult to write something very clear and simple that people can easily understand (and yet still be profound and say something new).Pynchon likes to impress. He seems to enjoy fact dropping like a groupie dropping names at a cocktail party. (This earned him the crooning admiration on the back of my paperback edition: '...the learning of a John Barth...') But like the groupie, there is always that suspicious lack of depth, of detail... Try to pin him down and whoah! there he goes off on something entirely different again. And here he is reeling off more shallow "facts" and references, preferably in German, preferably things he doesn't expect you know much about... GR has often been likened to Ulysses or Moby Dick. But all it really has in common with these true greats is a large number of pages and a "difficult" style. This is why it's held in such esteem. It's just so damned long and difficult. Those who don't finish it (the majority) don't feel qualified to comment. Then there's the holier-than-thou, "emperor's new clothes" attitude of those who grit it out. Would it have got the same acclaim at 250 pages? When the buzz dies down, I rather doubt GR will stand the test of time. And then there's this issue of humor. "Desperately funny" (whatever that means) trills the back of my paperback edition. I didn't find anything in the novel even the slightest, remotest bit funny. To me 'funny' means when you laugh. A real laugh. Not an "Eh!" to indicate you "got" a complex bit of sophistry, but a prolonged "Ha ha ha ha!", preferably incapacitating you for a short period of time. Woody Allen used to be funny. Monty Python was occasionally funny. Hell, even bits of Gargantua and Pantagruel were funny. Gravity's Rainbow is *not* funny. Humor needs specificity, characterization, familiarity. Pynchon has a hard time with specificity. When he gets bored of a scene-- zip zip we're off somewhere else again. Characterization is practically non-existent. Characters are just names thrown at us that occasionally crop up again. In more than a few scenes the novel is actually embarrassing to read, where Pynchon is obviously *trying* to be funny-- such as the scenes where he does horrible boffo parodies of homosexual characters. There's an underlying meanness to GR that is antithetical to humor. The characters are often sadistic. The novel itself is mean to its readers. Humor needs an underlying generosity. With its sidelines admiration of drugs and decadence, GR is a novel straight out of some 1970s nightmare. It uses slang (natch) to try to be hip-intellectual and then fires out frequent volleys of "facts" and "references" to cover its tracks. But ultimately I think you'd have to be pretty naive to fall for its patter. It's just "Jitterbug Perfume" or any other Tom Robbins novel with a Phd. instead of a major in auto shop, a Jaguar instead of a Camaro, and a gold card instead of a pay packet. But it still wears the same nasty cologne and has the same fulsome desires. Tell it you're not that kinda girl.
Rating: 
Summary: Sheer poetic brillance
Review: Thomas Pynchon can be considered one of the greatest novelists of the 20th century for this book alone. The extreme scope of the book, the huge (nearly four hundred characters!) cast, coupled with Pynchon's unsurpassed ability to go from thought-provoking comments on humanity and its state of decline to hilarious slapstick make this a difficult but satisfying and eye-opening read. Anybody interested at all in contemporary literature owes it to themselves to pick up this book and read it. You won't be sorry
Rating:
Summary: In my house, this is "The Good Book".
Review: A work to be savoured while listening to Pink Floyd turned all the way up to "11" and injecting opium into your eyeballs. If you only read one book in your LIFETIME, this should be it. For me, the summer of '74 was Gravitys Rainbow. It was a very good summer. This isn't so much a book as an experience. I envy those of you who have the opportunity to read it for the first time. The investment of your precious time will be amply rewarded. The word "masterpiece" was invented to describe this monumental achievement. Yes, I liked it quite a bit
Rating:
Summary: Thomas Pynchon, literary tyro treats words like brushstrokes
Review: Thomas Pynchon is one of American literatures better kept secrets. Somewhere, in some alternative universe, his spangled, incredulous world is being reverse-engineered, alien balloon scientists checking for any loose ends that might resemble three dimensional reality. Pynchon is unorthodox, thoughtful, obtuse and occasionally touches on the scatological and the obscene. Gravity's Rainbow must rank in the top ten must-read lists of free-associative thinkers along with Bill Burroughs more mathematical cut-ups and naturally, Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Protagonist Tyrone Slothrop is aeronautically troubled, attracted to a young girl and in danger of getting harassed by bananas in WWII London. I'm lost for words except to say when I was eighteen and in college, my dad pulled it off my bookshelf and started reading it - he eventually tossed it on the fire, saying it was pure pornography. I now own a hardcover edition that I keep away from Dad. Thomas Pynchon has no agenda as a writer and no modus operandi that could ever see him accused of pushing any kind of barrow, political or otherwise. Is it true he is an engineer by profession? I love his work and fans of literary satire as pungent as anything Swift or Burroughs ever did will find this as good a place to start.
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Summary: Paranoia and sexual perversion
Review: In 1980, at a major midwestern university, under the subject heading of "Paranoia" at the library, you would have found a listing for this book. The nature of this disclaimer is that I have not been at that midwestern university since then.
Imagine, that you feel that everyone around you is particularly interested in you! And in the case of Tyrone Slothrop, and this book, you would be absolutely right, cheers!
If you have less than a 359 degree perspective on life this book will broaden you. The sexual perversion will, of course, come along later. and you will have to (I would say be prepared, but that would be expecting a lot, so we'll leave it at deal with) deal with that.
Should you? Read this book? Well, unless you have a total picture of human behavior, and of all of the ramifications of that statement, YES, you should read this book, you will also have to alot some time to this endeavour as my 1974 edition has 885 pages, and each one is worth the time. Time well spent? Time well spent Time to leave, Mason & Dixon, lays incompletely read.
Rating: 
Summary: The strangest book I ever never finished reading
Review: I am very surprised to find this on a modern book list because I attempted to read it many years ago. At the time I thought I was a pretty avant-garde sort of reader, but I couldn't quite make it through the weirdness! Maybe I should try it again? NOT
Rating:
Summary: Intentionally Unreadable
Review: One of the most important works of at least this half of the twentieth century. Read all the above reviews, and then consider this theory: Written in 1973, as the current Information Revolution was just starting to take off, it was a presagement of the growing impossibility of staying abreast of all current events. In other words, this book was written deliberately to overload the reader, much as we all have become during the last twenty-five years
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