Gravity's Rainbow
WWII paranoia, rocket trajectories, behavioral psychology, entropy, and the systems that govern human life. The Pulitzer committee refused to give it the prize (calling it "obscene, unreadable, overwritten"); it won the National Book Award instead. Pynchon invented the "systems novel" here in 1973. The encyclopedia as narrative form.
Pynchon builds his hero for six hundred pages and then deliberately misplaces him: Slothrop dissolves, plotlines drop unresolved, and the final quarter scatters into fragments and vaudeville songs. One scene involving Brigadier Pudding will test you sorely. Read with a companion guide or read twice; there is no third option, and you only have so many fifty-hour books left.
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
