It's a damned shame that literature students must bury their noses forever in the so-called great books while being denied the beauty and adventure to be found in smaller, lesser-known works. Pynchon's first novel is one of these jewels. An extended flight of fancy and intrigue set in the Eisenhower years, V. is packed with symbolism and heady prose that The Crying of Lot 49 crystallized, and Gravity's Rainbow beat to a bloody pulp. )

Steve Champeon