2011 Chunkster Reading Challenge #4...A Tale of Two Books

    Gravity's Rainbow will go down as one of the most challenging books I've ever read, and as this review goes on it's really about two books both within the same cover and on the same pages.  One is a brilliant experiment in fiction, filled with news ideas, new metaphors, jarring imagery, and unrelenting honesty. The other is disjointed, unconventional for the poor excuse of unconventionality, and completely loses the already tenuous grip of cohesiveness in enraging drug fueled stream of consciousness nonsense.  If you look up the history of this books reception by critics you'll see a sharply divided crowd, one side loving it and festooning it in the laurels of a masterpiece, and the other deriding it as drivel and unworthy of praise.  In fact, it was up for a Pulitzer, and all 3 members of the fiction board supported it receiving that award for that year but they were overturned by all 11 other members of the board, or so the story goes.  TIME placed it on its 'All-Time Greatest Novel' list, and it did receive a few other accolades, all of which Pynchon ignored.
    Now, I cannot speak as to why Pynchon disregarded those awards, but I do have my suspicions.  My opinion is that this book was pure experimentation.  On its wikipedia page it is referenced that there are some 400 characters in this book.  I didn't count, but I also don't question that number.  It also says that '...the novel subverts many of the traditional elements of plot and character developement...'.  That I absolutely agree with.  While there is a story in this book I cannot say its at the center, that it is what the rest of the book revolves around, because this book doesn't 'spin' around anything, it is chaos encapsulated.  Which makes this book something of a rorschach, you will only see in it what you've brought with you, because there is quite literally a little bit of everything.
  So, I guess my last word on this book is that its not for everyone, nor do I think that it was the writers intention for everyone to read it.  I will be reading this book again, because I may have scaled many mountains reached their summits, this one beat me, but one day I'll be back to take another shot at the top.