Just finished reading pic related. Where's my prize, Veeky Forums?

It's hard to say, but I no longer feel the need to know everything that's happening. I can sort of put off something that I don't understand and wait for the story to come back around. I also feel like I'm no longer a 'surface reader' thanks to Pynchon.

This. No way can everything be understood from this book on the first time through, even with copious note taking.

Also this. GR made me realize that good books require rereading in order to fully understand and appreciate them. I also realized that symbolism isn't as simple as it sometimes seems. Also came to really enjoy the use of pastiche.

Did you taste the rainbow?

Book of the New Sun did all that for me, but the truth is I never really felt the need to understand every little thing about a book, I just like the experience.

Question for anyone in this thread. How useful is Slow Learner for understanding Pynchon's writing and themes? Would V. and GR become significantly clearer?

I made a thread about it two weeks ago when I finished. Honestly, it's next to impossible to even have a discussion about it.

Anybody else take a few minutes to be fully sure that Slothrop had even died? I liked the touch that he was looking at a billboard of a pretty woman right as the rocket hit, subtly implying that he was becoming aroused, thus foreshadowing his doom. Pretty sad end for the character imo, and one of the few parts in the book that made me feel something.

take notes, major characters are Slothrop, Katje, Tchitcherine, Enzian, Pointsman, and Major Marvy I guess. There are too many characters to give equal attention to (on a first read through anyways) so if you pay attention to these guys when you start you can be sure you at least sort of know what's going on. Oh, and the rocket, which goes by the schwarzgerat, the 00000, the Imopolex G, and maybe a few other names I can't recall right this second. That's another huge characters, if you want to call it that. Also, leave this fucking thread, I already posted spoilers here you won't want to read.

There's no need of understandin Pynchon's themes, just read the books.

Nah dude, the themes are the main aspect you'll get much out of, at least for GR. The plot is kind of entertaining, but a lot of the book is abstract or prose driven, and considering it thematically is the only way to really get much out of it, other than just appreciating the prose itself.

Are you seriously disagreeing with me ? Where do you live faggot? lets settle this once for all

No

I'm staying with your mother, be home for supper by 6.

He doesn't die friend, he goes on to play harmonica and kazoo in the obscure 1960's rock band The Fool. (p742)

I took that as being myth. It talks about the fragments he's blown into developing lives of their own. Although it is a nice thought, and certainly fitting, I think in the end he's just become an urban legend.

Yes, it certainly feels like the investigation of a cheesy tv-documentary, but I choose to take the ending as fact.

Despite that he gets hit with the rocket and scatters across the zone?

M&D is better

The prize is reading it again

Not necessary, but it definitely helps. If you read one story from it either Entropy or The Secret Integration

no he just got high and wandered off