At the conclusion of the Summer of Pynchon—nine books in nine weeks—I am disposed to assign Gravity’s Rainbow, most of the last 450 pages of which I took in from a folding chair lap-deep in the American River an hour downstream from Lake Tahoe—pride of place. This is not to disparage the other novels: that would be like slamming Sir Edmund Hillary: “Yeah, he climbed Mount Everest. So how come he never scaled a higher peak, huh?”

Gravity’s Rainbow was, just, the Fucking. Greatest. Novel. I’ve. Ever. Reread. Period. Caps. Italic. Bold. Neon. Et cetera. I vaguely understood that forty years ago; am reinforced in the impression now.

You lot, you need to acquire a copy. You need to gear yourselves down and read it. Reach the end, and I fucking guarantee it that you will regard it as a life-changing experience, if you are the kind of human being who is capable of having his life changed by a novel. I was.

cordially,