Usually when I discover a writer, I try to read their works in chronological order. So I began with "V", then "The Crying of Lot 49", and then it broke down and I skipped to "Vineland" for some reason. I am now back-tracking to read "Gravity's Rainbow", which some have characterized as an unintelligible post-modern mess. It is probably on par with "Ulysses" by James Joyce, but I think I can handle it. Since the novel is indeed post-modern, I won't even try to lay out the story line, but instead I will just quote passages that strike my fancy. For a springboard to discuss this book I recommend Wikipedia's entry.
I haven't yet gotten into Joyce's Ulysses as I want to know more literature and nineteenth century background before I jump into reading the novel. This is so that I can appreciate all of the obscure references. In this novel of Thomas Pynchon, I am going to just jump right in, because I have lived most of my life to this point in the last third of the twentieth century and have been exposed to the culture of that century, unlike the nineteenth century that I am currently studying by reading Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, Dickens, Austen, Victorian literature in general, and some American writers of the period.
After I get my head around the whole post-modern warp, I'll probably relapse back a few centuries to get straight.
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