Read “Gravity’s Rainbow” fifty years later
I wrote my undergrad thesis on Gravity's Rainbow and the book has stuck with me more than perhaps any other. It's a post-modern retelling of Ulysses, for one, but not just that. It's a post-apocalyptic novel but also a novel incredibly concerned with reconstruction following WWII. It's a critique of industrialization, but also a critique of the pop movements resisting industrialization.It's the most difficult book I've ever read--took me several months to work through. But I treat it similarly to how Finnegans Wake should be treated: don't try to understand everything, but rather find something on every page you can relate to or appreciate.