I started this book 2 or 3 years ago, got very slowly through the first 320 pages or so, but as the book still wasn't making any sense to me, it sat on my bedside table, unopened, until now. Any reasonable person would have abandoned it completely, unfinished, but I'm not a particularly reasonable person and I have a thing about leaving books unfinished, no matter how much I might dislike them.

So, when it was time to pack some reading for a vacation, I had the bright idea of taking Gravity's Rainbow along. I could read four or five normal books in the time it would take me to finish this one, resulting in lots of weight saved in my luggage. Also, since I wouldn't have anything else to distract me, I would probably be able to better concentrate on the book.

When I started reading the book again, I discovered I had forgotten nearly everything I had read previously. Luckily, this soon turned out to be irrelevant, as I was reading the long Section 3 of the book, which mainly consists of Slothrop's adventures in Germany. It was also surprisingly readable; the narrative held together and you had a feeling of things progressing towards something.

When Section 4 rolled around, it all evaporated. Gone was the narrative, once again replaced by long sections of uncomprehensible text. Only the fact of being so close to the end of the book kept me going at this point. When the end finally came, I wasn't surprised it didn't tie anything together; no, it only muddled things up even further.

This book is a good example of why you shouldn't take literary criticism too seriously; they're not concerned whether a book is any fun to read or has anything relevant to say. What they are concerned with I couldn't say, since they use meaningless language themselves that can't be deciphered, only interpreted.