The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon (1989, Paperback, Reissue)

I didn't finish reading this book. It was too irritating for me, and the only thing that kept me from putting it away earlier was that I saw it was originally published in the early 1960s, when I assume its kind of hip wasn't as marketable. I got the book because I heard of it as a modern American classic, and because what I knew of the plot was interesting. I stopped reading after the first 100 pages, during the nonsensical five or six page description of the plot of an invented 17th century play that occurs within the book, which I suspect was supposed to be very symbolic of something. Otherwise, as far as I read, there was nothing really going on, except a lot of complicated sentences and a mystical though not profound outlook on California suburbs. The only other book that I can compare it to, since I also had to put that one down because I found the style too frustrating, was The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe.