I wonder why people try to read this book when it's not really comprehensible?
Sometimes art is hard to understand and sometimes it’s good art because it’s deliberately hard to understand to make you think…
And other times it’s just incomprehensible garbage that someone managed to sell and everyone is too embarrassed to admit it’s terrible.
The fact an artist can be a bit of a troll sometimes adds to their work… just look at the partially shredded Banksy and how it was still worth lots of money since it was clearly the artist’s intention to have it shred… I’d argue that the shredded pieces would probably have retained just as much value if it had fully shredded since it would have been relatively easy to reassemble…as it’s a known artwork not unknown dense text.
I also wonder if the fact that I found Gravity's Rainbow much easier going has to do with the fact that the culture I grew up in is much more like the one Pynchon grew up in (northeastern USA, mid-to-late-20th century) as opposed to Joyce's origin in early-20th-century Ireland. It's not _that_ much of a difference in terms of years, but I don't think I need to tell you that the 20th century was, as a rule, a very busy and chaotic time.
It's an interesting point about trollery being part of the art--I guess you could classify it as one of the performing arts like dance or theater. Maybe its closest relative is stand-up comedy.
Having read Gravity's Rainbow I have come to the conclusion that there is a non-zero chance that every single person who claims to have liked Gravity's Rainbow is lying.
I read it 30 years ago as a self-righteous macho flex. Now that I am older and wiser I regret the time I wasted on it.
I would have been better served reading the Yellow Pages from cover to cover.