YMMV / Gravity's Rainbow

• Award Snub:
  • The Pulitzer Prize committee awarded the book a prize in 1974, but were overruled by the Pulitzer board, who called it "turgid and overwritten."
  • Pynchon did this in reverse when he won the National Book Award, sending Irwin Corey to accept the award in his place.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Many moments, such as the Toilet Humor odyssey where Slothrop dives down one and goes on a journey beyond, the many gross and taboo sexual acts - some of them Played for Drama! - and the rocket limericks.
  There was a young fellow named Hector,
  Who was fond of a launcher-erector.
  But the squishes and pops
  Of acute pressure drops
  Wrecked Hector's hydraulic connector.
• Designated Hero: Slothrop, who spends his entire quest on various sidetracks.
• Faux Symbolism: What Do You Mean That Comma on Page 642 Is Not Symbolic?: More in the case of the Wild Mass Guessing around elements of the book than the author himself.
• Heartwarming Moments: "There's never much talk but touches and looks, smiles together, curses for parting. It is marginal, hungry, chilly — most times they're too paranoid to risk a fire — but it's something they want to keep, so much that to keep it they will take on more than propaganda has ever asked them for. They are in love. Fuck the war."
• Iron Woobie: Bianca, who keeps her composure despite being surrounded by depravity and a mother who's lost her mind.
• Squick: Where to start? Slothrop's adventures in a nightclub toilet bowl; the early sexual experiments on infant Slothrop involving Imipolex G; Pudding's coprophagia; Blicero's threesomes with Gottfried and Katje; the possibility that Franz's girl may be his long lost daughter; Gottfried being built into a rocket.
  • Used Symbolically, no less!
• Tear Jerker: The Franz Pokler subplot. Despite his questionable feelings towards a young girl who may or may not be his daughter, Franz being manipulated by Weissmann/Blicero into helping build the 00000 is a tragic situation.
  • The implied murder of Bianca is also disturbing and sad.
  • The love triangle with Roger Mexico, Jessica, and Jeremy is a surprisingly profound one. It can pull at one's heartstrings to see Roger realizing he'll lose Jessica once the War is over, and in the end he does.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: Arguably even more so than with Pynchon's other novels.

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