Anyone reading/read this novel? I know Doormouse has read The Crying of Lot 49. . . . maybe?

I've been reading this novel on-and-off for over three months with help from an annotated reference book published in the late 1980s, the Pynchon Wikia, and several other scholarly articles, just to get through the paradoxical anachronistic scenes and complicated WWII and post-bellum period details. People compare the novel to a modern day Moby Dick or Ulysses, which I think is a bit of a stretch, but by far it is giving Ulysses a run for its money in difficulty.

I wonder if anyone here can give me some tips on how to read the novel. I'm currently on Chp. 3 "The Zone," and I have to admit I'm reading the annotations more than the novel.

I have been "reading" this novel for years, in that I probably read the first 50 pages or so once every year or two but inevitably get distracted by something that I find more interesting.  It's currently sitting on my desk, where I imagine it will continue to sit until I fully move in with my fiance in February.

I read and liked both the Crying of Lot 49 and Vineland, but I honestly agree with the Pulitzer Prize board's assessment that Gravity's Rainbow is "turgid" and "overwritten".  I may power through it someday, but I think the only way to do it is either to sit down with a reader's guide, or to try to take notes and do research along the way on your own.

I did take notes on the first 30-40 pages. Hampered by the intensely esoteric subject matter and vocabulary, I decided it best to hold off.

I haven't read Vineland though I have heard mixed reviews. The only materials I've read from him: preface to 1984, "Entropy," Crying of Lot 49, and the first chapter of Against the Day. After I finish GR, I had hoped to move on to V.

Recurring themes in his stories/novels: thermodynamics, entropy, Maxwell's demon, Pavlov, anarchism & anarchists, love of another>altruism, altruism>selfishness, fetishism to explain disconnection with love, and women are overwhelmingly empowered especially when interacting with male protagonists (see Katje in GR).

One character that has, despite his roundedness in the novel, has escaped legitimacy after the middle of the second part of the novel is Dr. Pointsman. Although I am waiting for his transformation in the third part as he closely inspects Slothrop's mysterious erection/V-1 rocket connection.

i've read it. it's a difficult book. i've gotten through it a couple of times. the first time was for a class, so i had people being like well this is this and that is that and that was helpful, although not as hepful as one would hope. the second time i read it i tried to forget everything i know it to be about and pretended it wasn't about anything. that was better.