Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

The first sentence:

A screaming comes across the sky.

I bought this book back in 2009, when I was still in Dubai.  I read about the book from a high school classmate who is also into reading classic novels.  Somewhere in his journals, I read that he was already somewhere in the pages of the book and still couldn't understand a lot of things.  I'm afraid this is happening to me now.  I'm already a few pages on, and still, I couldn't seem to dig the author.

Apart from the many characters of the book, there are a lot of (what I call) insertions that distracts me from the plot of the story.  At least that's what it is to me.  I am close to putting it off and not finishing it when I decided to read the comments of the readers of the book from goodreads.com.  One of them gave several advises and one of the advises was to have a little patience, at least until you reach the second part.

I am still a long way from the second part (I am only on page 64 of 902 pages), and I am trying to gather all the patience I have in putting it off and not finishing it at all.  At these point, a lot of characters are being introduced and the only one I can remember was the psychologist (whose name I need to remember).  There's a guy named Mexico who at first I thought was the country.  And there's a girl in a relationship with one of the characters.  Again, I need to remember her name.

Still, one of the advises said that it would be better to read the V book first.  But I don't think I'd go through that.  I am in this reading quest where I am to read one classic book from one author and that's it.  I just need to experience the author, his style, the way he makes the story, and how the world looked like at the time he wrote the story.  That's just about it.  Now, if Thomas Pynchon wrote about the future, then I may have a little problem with that.  Because one of the reasons why I am reading classical novels is to read about the past.

I guess I may have bought the wrong book for my quest.  But I still have the patience to read it right now.

I don't know how further more my patience will take me.  But I do hope that it's all worth it.

What's on page 68:

Mind to mind, tonight up late at the window while he sleeps, lighting another precious cigarette from the coal of the last, filling it with a need to cry because she can see so plainly her limits, knows she can never protect him as much as she must - from what may come out of the sky, from what he couldn't confess that day (creaking snow lanes, arcades of the ice-bearded and bowing trees... the wind shook down crystals of snow:  purple and orange creatures blooming on her long lashes), and from, Mr. Pointsman, and from Pointman's... his... bleakness whenever she meets him.  Scientist-neutrality.  Hands that - she shivers.  There are many chances now for every shapes out of the snow and stillness.  She drops the blackout curtain.

* Please note that on this page 68-quote, I double-checked my typing and there are no errors.  It's just the author's style of writing.