Spanning the period between the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 and the years just after World War I, this novel moves from the labor troubles in Colorado to turn-of-the-century New York, to London and Gottingen, Venice and Vienna, the Balkans, Central Asia, Siberia at the time of the mysterious Tunguska Event, Mexico during the Revolution, postwar Paris, silent-era Hollywood, and one or two places not strictly speaking on the map at all. With a worldwide disaster looming just a few years ahead, it is a time of unrestrained corporate greed, false religiosity, moronic fecklessness, and evil intent in high places. No reference to the present day is intended or should be inferred. The sizable cast of characters includes anarchists, balloonists, gamblers, corporate tycoons, drug enthusiasts, innocents and decadents, mathematicians, mad scientists, shamans, psychics, and stage magicians, spies, detectives, adventuresses, and hired guns. There are cameo appearances by Nikola Tesla, Bela Lugosi, and Groucho Marx. As an era of certainty comes crashing down around their ears and an unpredictable future commences, these folks are mostly just trying to pursue their lives. Sometimes they manage to catch up; sometimes it's their lives that pursue them. Meanwhile, the author is up to his usual business. Characters stop what they're doing to sing what are for the most part stupid songs. Strange sexual practices take place. Obscure languages are spoken, not always idiomatically. Contrary-to-the-fact occurrences occur. If it is not the world, it is what the world might be with a minor adjustment or two. According to some, this is one of the main purposes of fiction. Let the reader decide, let the reader beware. Good luck. -Thomas Pynchon
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"Pynchon Gumbo. Part revenge tragi-comedy, part mathematical mystery, part existential slapstick, part little rascals meets Tom Swift, part theological meditation on the themes of invisibility and grace. Riffing on the major themes and narrative approach of Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon kept my interest for all 1200 pages. I'll have to read it again some eon to be sure about whether the resolution(s--definitely plural) follow through on all six thousand ninety-one characters and themes. On first read, my sense is that the first 80% is better than the last 20%, but it's possible readers fatigue is a factor. Much much better than Mason & Dixon, but not the place to start with Pynchon. (My advice on that front remainds 1. The short story Entropy; 2. The Crying of Lot 49; 3. Gravity's Rainbow; 4. Inherent Vice."
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Craig (5 out of 5 stars)