Tyrone Slothrop, a GI in London in 1944, has a big problem. Whenever he
gets an erection, a Blitz bomb hits. Slothrop gets excited, and then, as
Thomas Pynchon puts it in his sibilant opening sentence, 'a screaming comes
across the sky', heralding an angel of death, a V-2 rocket. Soon Tyrone is
on the run from legions of bizarre enemies through the phantasmagoric
horrors of Germany. Gravity's Rainbow is never a single story, but a
proliferation of characters - Pirate Prentice, Teddy Bloat, Tantivy Mucker-
Maffick, Saure Bummer, and more - and events that tantalize the reader with
suggestions of vast patterns only just past our comprehension. It is a
blizzard of references to science, history, high culture, and the lowest of
jokes and among the most important novels of our time.Winner of the
National Book Award.