Read the other parts of this review here: One, Two, and Three.

It’s taken me almost a year (yikes!), but I’ve finally managed to finish Gravity’s Rainbow. It almost finished me. I’m so conflicted right now: relieved and amazed and confused by this work of art.

Pynchon’s crazy plot train has taken me beyond the Zero, through the Casino Hermann Goering, all throughout the Zone, up and up out of gravity’s hold, until finally we had to come back down.

The book traces the path of a storytelling “rainbow,” where the overwhelming force of gravity makes for the descending arc of Part Four. What’s here at the end of the rainbow? More madness, of course.

Our main man Slothrop has literally come apart, evaporating into the Zone itself like some sort of gaseous vapor that can’t hold itself together under the intense heat (the heat of war?). Certainly one of the oddest ends to a character arc I’ve ever read. He never made it home to America, becoming part of the permanent fabric of the Zone instead.

Roger and Jessica are still apart. Katje ends up with Enzian the Scwartzkommando leader. Pointsman is still around, doing who knows what kinds of observations. And Blicero stuffs a boy named Gottfried into his latest Nazi rocket, which blasts off in the book’s final pages. Not a satisfying end to a story really, but more of a plot crash that leaves bits and pieces all over the place, flying in every direction.

However, I still enjoyed Pynchon’s childish humor, like the scene showcasing composer Hadyn’s kazoo suite, interspersed with disgusting alliterative dishes such as mold muffins, crotch custard, diarrhea delight, etc. Yep, Pynchon revels in humor for 10-year-olds. He toggles easily between this kind of absurdity and deadpan seriousness, between fantasy and the horrors of war.

Here, at the end, I do feel like I’ve come to grips with this writing style, which is forever switching between moods. As apart from this tonal flip-flopping, Pynchon tends to “zoom” in on topics, seemingly at random. There are thousand points of focus (kazoos being one, toilets another), while readers receive a detail-laden stream until Pynchon pans over to another random topic and zooms in all over again. These scenes flow together quickly, sans rhyme or reason. As I’ve said, it’s a disorienting style, but impressive once you’ve learned to recognize it.

Pynchon’s a maximalist master, but it’s admittedly an acquired taste. And in Gravity’s Rainbow, the pot of gold at the end is less about the wealth that readers’ gain, and more about looking back at the insane journey you’ve just been on. And what a ride it was across that rainbow.