During the spring of 1973 Thomas Pychon's Gravity's Rainbow, J huge novel, appeared. Its bulk, ambition, obscurity, and technical mastery made it much more than a book to be relegated to the "New and Novel" column in the New York Times and then forgotten. Pynchon's learning overwhelmed readers; he seemed to have ransacked entire libraries. Then, rather than strewing around bits of this information, he formed them into a coherent mosaic that gratified the reader's aesthetic faculties. Pynchon instantly became more than a coterie writer, a favorite of those who scribbled muted post horns on lavatory walls, imitated the Whole Sick Crew or, more sedately, used him to fill out yet another grouping of writers — the most frequent method of bringing order to current American fiction's disheveled state. The brief collection of critical studies on Pynchon grew slowly as some incisive and adulatory reviews were published. Pynchon attracted several major critics, such as Richard Poirier and Tony Tanner. Until now all his critics, however, although certainly not blind, have described only small parts of his most recent, elephantine book. Clearly Gravity's Rainbow demands a more thorough examination not only of itself but also of Pynchon's other works.