Rating: 
Summary: Unusual and good (but not unusually good)
Review: No plot (in the "traditional" sense), unusual characterization and more poetry than prose, "Gravity's Rainow" is certainly worth reading. It's not the "best book I've ever read," as other reviewers seem to think, nor would I recommend it as a general practice. But I'm glad I got through it
Rating: 
Summary: What do bananas and rockets have in common?
Review: I read this book mucho anos ago, but if memory serves me right, Slothrop had telekenetic powers he used to direct V-2 rockets onto the locations where he had had sexual liasons with English girls during World War 2. Slothrop was subconsciously driven to obliterate those places out of guilt of adultery. This book is an absolutely halucinagenic romp. Soldiers singing dirty rocket limericks, Argentine homosexuals sailing around in an abandoned U-boat, intelligence officers who grow bananas on London rooftop solariums during the winter of 1944-45, Soviet superspies, and that crazy scene with the harmonica in the Chelsea jazz joint, one of John F. Kennedy's favorite haunts! You probably figured it out by now, this book is as crazy as good literature can be. With all this weirdness going on, it's surprising the writing is so good. Some would give it a 10
Rating:
Summary: Life-changing
Review: Read it once, twice, three times. Devote a life to its study, for the story, the themes, and the literary style. My favorite book of all I've ever read. It's so much more than the story, that to tell you what it's *about* would be a misleading exercise. Except maybe to say it's about erotic paranoia, life in the zone, and the horrors of British candy
Rating:
Summary: The Pot of Gold at the end of Gravity
Review: To say that this novel is disarming, indeed even more than a bit disorienting, would be an under-statement. But it is one of the very few books that i really remember from that era. Indeed, the humor of a man pinpointing the location of each german U2 attack, by where he has had sex, (with an exceedingly interesting array of woman, I might add,) is a perfect analog of the hero's dismay at the seeming random and chaotic nature of the universe. The pathetic and foolish attempts by the british, to figure out the "mechanics" of his strange ability, only add to the comedy. Needless to say, you will either love, or hate this book, there can be no inbetween
Rating:
Summary: Simply sublime.
Review: This is one of my favorite books. The humour and intricate plot of this book made it one of the most engrossing reading experiences I've had. It may seem a little confusing at first, but the last thing you should do is get Weisenburger's guide to the book unless you like to read things like "this is important later on when..." and don't mind having the reading experience tainted. It may seem a bit more difficult than most books, but you have to make an effort if you want to fully appreciate a work of art such as this. While you will find people who feel to need to belittle this book, it reached a level that has not even been approached by any American novel that has been published since
Rating: 
Summary: A waste or more trees (even recycled)
Review: "Like wow uh I feel like yeah I can like really uh sure that's my, like you know 'space' and yeah, DRESDENlike FIRE BOMBSLondonwow FISH AND CHIPSStPauls angstwithdifferential equations for ballasticV2 trajectories visionholocaausthellburning and hey what the heck even like..you know it's a micro or maybe macro of like multi-layered something, you know?". Give us a break! Read this psycho-babble when first published- of course "highly praised", must read as "really significant" by all the literary luminaries. Thought it was my "just not getting it" so what the heck, another go round - terminal obtuseness and incomprehensibility leads to only more dead trees and wasted ink
Rating:
Summary: Masterpieces can't be repeated !
Review: Once a master is made, the original goes to pieces. Quite often, the creator of the master seems to go the same way. See what happened to Pynchon and Heller and other modern(?) writers. Their later works are not only dissapointing, but quite bad, though the majority view is that once an author has created a masterpiece, he/she remains a master ! However, masterpieces can't be duplicated (not even by the author), so buy THIS book. The peculiar feature of these books (Gravity's Rainbow & Catch-22) is that there is much more in the book than the author intended to write or, is capable of writing. The reader tends to put more of himself/herself in the book & therefore, these type of books tend to be self-revelatory. Gravity`s Rainbow is bursting with energy. Energy fuelled by emotions which would make Freud salivate behind the couch and Jung discourse on the Unconscious. And this energy is what allows the characters to perform super-human tasks, the least of which, is being able to predict where the German rockets will land. The book is re-readable and every time you read it, it is new and suprises you with your new you.
Rating:
Summary: Easy to see why Pynchon inspires slavish adoration.
Review: Yeah, it's hard. But imagine for a second that you've been walking around all your life with a blindfold on, and one day you start picking at the fabric on your face, and you say, 'Hey, wait a minute.' And then you unwind the blindfold and see for the first time. You can feel impulses running down every axon and dendrite and making a thousand brand new neural connections a millisecond. Every second you're getting smarter and smarter as you actually grow a bigger *brain*.
Well, this book is like that.
Rating:
Summary: Simply amazing.
Review: Far and away the best book I have ever read. Strange, quirky, funny, and, of course,
incredibly difficult to fully understand... I doubt anyone really does. But don't let
that stop you from reading it, it is pure fun on every level you can think of. Pynchon rocks.
Rating:
Summary: Pynchon is God
Review: Almost a quarter-century after its publication, this remains the state-of-the-art postmodern novel. Don't be put off by the warnings about its difficulty: begin it. You may need a couple of running starts, but you'll know right away that it's like nothing else out there (including, unfortunately, most of Mr. P's ouevre--on the other hand, it's a heck of an act to follow). I'm pretty well-read, so I'm continually surprised by how head-and-shoulders this novel remains above its competitors in the literary landscape of my brain. I think that's because Gravity's Rainbow is in many catagories the most superlative book I've read: that is, it is the funniest, saddest, stupidest, most profound, sacred and profane novel around. It's pretty good. Plus: impress your friends by figuring out arrangements to the musical interludes
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