I've never actually read any Pynchon, I should give him a try.
IJ is my favourite book too, displacing Catch-22 which was at the top for years.
Did you ever see the Infinite Summer thing, with fans and newcomers doing a coordinated read-through and discussing sections of the book as they went? So much interesting comment and speculation and theorising - it's an absolute labyrinth though, you could spend days reading it all!