Thomas Pynchon has a new book out this week. Gravity's Rainbow is my literary white whale mainly due to my inability to finish it after numerous attempts.

"All that most maddens and torments; all that stirs up the lees of things; all truth with malice in it; all that cracks the sinews and cakes the brain; all the subtle demonisms of life and thought; all evil, to crazy Ahab, were visibly personified, and made practically assailable in Moby-Dick." ~ Herman Melville