To start off, I’ll admit it that I am a bit biased against Pynchon because I think that he’s overrated.

Sure, he’s a really smart person, but I don’t like to read a book that makes me feel stupid like Gravity’s Rainbow.

I’ll admit that this book was much, much readable than his other books, and I’m sure Pynchon took a lot of flak for that, but I applaud his effort to make his ideas readable.

The problem with this book was, though, that by stripping away much of the complicated prose of his other books such as run on sentences, we find that he has little to say.

The book is very fun and playful, but like other characters in Pynchon books, nobody really engaged me. I just couldn’t care about anything nor anyone.

Worse, like other of Pynchon’s books, the plot was so ridiculously arbitrary.

At a certain point, he just got more and more silly, and I lost any impetus to continue reading.

So eventhough this was actually kinda readable prose and a semi-good idea, this promising start got crushed beneath the weight of randomness.

I guess this review says more about me than Pynchon. I like a book that has something to say about life, something that makes a point. Plus, I like a book that actually goes somewhere plotwise. Finally, I need to have some kind of human connection to the characters in a story for it to hold my interest.

Over the years, Pynchon seems to have got by primarily by befuddling people with his amazing grasp of grammar, and his intense skill in putting together sentences. But I’d rather read more prosaic prose that actually tells me something about humans I can relate to.