Am I a dumbass for not getting this?

I've been wanting to read this book for years. It's referenced all over the place by some people I really respect and just wanted to see what all the excitement was about and I've just come to the conclusion that I don't get it.
I like the way it parodies postmodernism and conspiracy theorists. I love the idea of the international reprocussions of something as comparably mundane as an underground mail delivery system, and I like many of the characters in the novel, but none of it seemed to gell into anything really worthwhile for me. It all just seems too clever for its own good. As a disclaimer, this is my first Pynchon, so his just may not be a style I understand as of yet, so I'm going to try and read some more Pynchon and see if that changes anything for me.
Another problem might be that I'm not particularly versed in the culture (pop or un-pop) culture of Southern California during the action of the novel and it's apparently largely concerned with satirizing slash making tongue-in-cheek references to said culture.
For me, swing and a miss. oh well. (5/10)