"Difficult"?

[Paul York]

I, too, have always read for pleasure.  So, in that sense, I've never 
found Pynchon to be difficult.  This doesn't mean I catch every little 
thing that's going on in his books (but, then, I can't really remember 
reading any books lately where this was the case), it just means I have 
no trouble enjoying the books.

Pynchon's books, like Joyce's, are too often treated as if they were 
written in some esoteric code.  In part, maybe this is due to the 
scholarship that surrounds this work and gives it the aura of a terra 
incognita into which one is advised to bring some sort of guide (the 
scholar).  People get hung up about figuring out "what's going on" that 
they don't ever let themselves relax and let themselves, as you say, be 
swept along by the author.

GR and M&D both are perfectly easy to read and enjoy without once having 
to dip into a "Companion" source or any other reference material (OK, I 
always keep my Webster's Third New International close by, but that's 
just because I'm a nut for words).

Too, I have always thought that the true beauty of hugely complex works 
is that they are much bigger than the one who wrote them.  So, you can 
go and hunt down every little source for every 
historical/technical/scientific/literary/et so on reference that appears 
in Pynchon's work (and, hey, for plenty, this seems to offer some real 
pleasure) but even without all of that you still have in your hands this 
enormous "thing" that is so rich in detail and scope of imagination that 
you can't help but begin to make associations and imaginative leaps of 
your own, of which the author has not necessarily anticipated (and I'm 
talking textually justifiable leaps here, not "Yeah, Gravity's Rainbow, 
like, it's all just some metaphor for a lousy prom date the guy once 
had.  I know cuz, like, I've been his shoes and thought exactly the same 
thing.")  I mean, if there were some sort of true key to these works, 
we'd all figure them out and they'd stop being the huge, 
mysterious, entertaining monsters that they are.

	Paul