I'm not saying his more recent novels are bad, per se, but I would only read them if you exhaust the earlier works and still want more.
Inherent Vice is extremely funny. It’s like a more successful Vineland, itself a good book. They are extremely good.
The Crying of Lot 49 is also good but it feels somewhat rushed. It was written to get some money while writing Gravity’s rainbow and it shows.
It reads a lot like a Douglas Coupland novel, especially JPod.
I'm not saying his more recent novels are bad, per se, but I would only read them if you exhaust the earlier works and still want more.