4/5 stars
Finally got through the whole thing, and am frankly not much the wiser, and still not sure how to explain what it’s about.
A plot made of innumerable MacGuffins and deliberately incoherent sidetracks, writing that is at once beautiful in its flow and incomprehensible in its meaning, packed with schoolboyishly deliberate attempts to shock through the gamut of sexual taboos (paedophilia, coprophilia, incest, bestiality) and postmodernisms piled so densely on top of postmodernisms that you can’t help feeling that Pynchon was, at least in places, taking the piss. (Hell, the plot centres on magical erections, so…)
Did I enjoy it? For the most part, and in places I loved it. Did I understand it? Well, I think I get the overarching point, which is something.
But as much as I like “difficult” books and have enjoyed every Pynchon I’ve read so far, (including the much-maligned Vineland), there’s something to be said for plots that can be followed. Mason & Dixon is similarly episodic, yet works as a narrative as well as a concept. Against the Day has significant flaws, but its multiple narratives are at least internally coherent and enjoyable to read. V becomes hard to follow in places, like reading while drunk, but always pulls you back.
Gravity’s Rainbow, meanwhile, works as a concept, but I’m not convinced that it does as a novel. It’s simply too sprawling, too vague, too unconcerned with helping the reader to keep up, or in delivering a satisfactory resolution. Which is, of course, part of the point that the book’s trying to get across about the meaning and nature of life, so I guess I shouldn’t complain.