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Okay. The Crying of Lot 49 is very, very similar to BE and about a fourth of the length. I prefer BE because it uses a culture I'm more familiar with, but if you're looking for a taste test Lot 49 is it. All Pynchon is fundamentally the same. His characters are less characters for their own sake and more reflections of the atmosphere and surroundings in which they've been placed. He spent a long time in NYC so he's got a fantastic grasp on its idiosyncrasies -- and on top of that he somehow has his finger to the pulse of turn of the millennium dotcom culture. I love Manhattan and I grew up in the dotcom mess so I really, really loved BE. But if you're looking for answers and airtight plots and stuff Pynchon is the wrong novelist.