Why am I passionate about this?
To me, humor is an essential ingredient, a vibrant medium in which anything can grow. I appreciate a good drama or tragedy as much as the next person, but at the end of the day, if a book doesn’t make me laugh, it won’t resonate. I also believe deeply in the concept of the human comedy. Or maybe I take this too literally. Either way, I consider the exploits of humans to be more often ridiculous than anything else. We are a pompous species and far less intelligent than we believe we are, and we deserve to be made fun of. Well, some of us do, anyway.
Sean's book list on making you laugh and think
Why did Sean love this book?
Pynchon’s most famous tome is one of the 20th Century’s top literary heavyweights, up on the shelf next to Ulysses and To the Lighthouse, and I dove into it as an aspiring literato, eager to add it to my “conquered classics” list. But I was totally unprepared for the novel’s explosive humor. Still one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, it follows the main character, Tyrone Slothrop, through the ruins of war-ravaged Europe, from the rooftop banana farm in London during the V2 rocket attacks, to the Herman Goering Hotel and Casino on the newly liberated French Riviera, to the German rocket factories at Nordhausen, where we learn the secrets behind Dr. Laszlo Jamf’s diabolical Imipolex G. Along the way we meet Roger Mexico and Colonel Ernest Pudding, Darlene Quoad and Geli Tripping, Scorpia Mossmoon and Richard M. Zhlubb, to name a paltry few. Even Mickey Rooney shows…
5 authors picked Gravity's Rainbow as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Hailed by many as the major experimental nov el of the post-war period, Gravity''s Rainbow is a bizarre co mic masterpiece in which linguistic virtuosity creates a who le other world. '