Pynchon is such a recognizable figure that it can be hard to remember that I'd never actually read anything that he'd written (until now). Rating a Pynchon novel feels like a loaded exercise, like I'm wading into a generations-old war between one side that believes he's the greatest writer ever to put pen to paper and another side that believes that everyone from the first group is a pretentious know-nothing masquerading as an intellectual. 👇