Just Finished Reading Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

A few years ago a couple of professional critics from Time Magazine compiled a list of what they thought were the 100 greatest American novels since 1923, the beginning year of that publication...here's a link to that list: [link].  One of their selections was Gravity's Rainbow, written by Thomas Pynchon and published in 1973.  I just finished reading it...or should I say, trying hard to read it...and just completed the arduous and frustrating task...

The general setting of Gravity's Rainbow is Europe in 1944-45 during the final months of World War II and the first few immediately thereafter.  Germany has been launching V-2 rockets at England and is causing terrible civilian damage and casualties.  British intelligence, composed of numerous organizations as engaged in infighting as they are against the enemy, has made a startling discovery: an American private's personal map boasting of the locations of his many different sexual encounters around London corresponds precisely to that of the V-2 landings.  What could possibly be the connection between the two?  This character, Tyrone Slothrop, is sent to the French Riviera on a mission and then escapes and wanders across Europe, gradually losing his own personality and being...which is implied to depend in large part on how others see him.  In the meantime, a new rocket is being developed and various parties are vying to get it before it is launched.  But with this general...extremely general...plot structure, don't get any ideas that it will help you to understand what's going on in Gravity's Rainbow the overwhelming majority of time...

Pynchon is described as a postmodernist writer, and if that means abruptly switching settings and hundreds of characters, transitioning from reality to dreams, present to past times...all without any hint of warning...then I must not be a very good postmodern reader, for I feel that any affectations of writing that seem to go out of their way to interfere with my comprehension are just that: affectations.  Don't get me wrong: any particular "pocket" of narrative can be easily read and understood.  It's just that very little of it connects, i.e. very little flow here, either in terms of character development, plot, or tone...

I'll let others with more substantial academic credentials go on about the philosophical and psychological issues Thomas Pynchon raised in Gravity's Rainbow...let me just put forth one little observation.  The author seems to be of the school of thought that, unlike the traditional view of history as made of great figures and events, history instead arises from the "bottom-up" as the total effect of the actions of ordinary individuals.  In World War II, society was ostensibly very centralized and controlled through power hierarchies, but I perceived that Pynchon was saying that everyone instead was pretty much on their own, following their own particular agendas while superficially retaining the trappings of that external, structured society.  Well, at least that's what I got out of this wearisome, confusing book.  Gravity's Rainbow is definitely not on my "Top 100" list and I don't recommend it, but should you decide to "take the plunge" and read it, I welcome your reactions...