Summary (Magill's Survey of American Literature, Revised
Edition)  The questions of free will and determinism in a
universe which may be subject to entropy are most sharply
defined by Pynchon in his longest and most complete novel,
Gravity’s Rainbow. Set in the closing days of World War II and
the months immediately following the end of the war, this novel
takes the themes and techniques of the two earlier novels to
higher levels. Gravity’s Rainbow—in part because many regard it
as a masterpiece and in part because it is so complex, involves
so many strands of action, and poses so many unanswered
questions—has been the subject of more critical attention than
any novel in English since James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922).  The
central symbol of Gravity’s Rainbow is a new type of rocket
developed by the Germans at the end of World War II, designated
the A-4. The first rocket designed to carry a human being into
space, it is a triumph of technology. It suggests the
possibility that humankind may have found a way to tra