Crying of Lot 49, The

Thomas Pynchon writes the perfect guide to paranoia in The Crying of Lot 49 (published in 1965). His gutsy and self-reliant heroine, Oedipa Maas (more about Pynchon's fabulously funny names later) is named executor of the far-flung estate of an ex-boyfriend. Pierce Inverarity had his fingers in pies of all sorts, including a possible shadow group fighting the monopoly of the US Mail system over mail delivery. The struggle to control the mail dates back centuries (it really does: Pynchon is not making this part up) and the Trystero conspirators are gearing up for an overthrow, offering clandestine methods of getting mail around. Or are they? That's where the paranoia comes in. As Oedipa finds out more and more about seemingly unrelated (but are they?) subjects such as the history of postal subversion (including the philatelical dimensions of forged stamps bearing small, incongruous details in black), and the bones of GIs left at a the bottom of a lake in Italy during World War II and then brought back to the United States to serve as interest for scuba divers in a lake built and outfitted by Inverarity, and the history and performance of Jacobean revenge plays (including one play considered so pornographic and destabilizing that the Vatican keeps it locked up in its library -- another paranoid conspiracy waiting to be written) and resurgent Nazism in San Francisco (not so paranoid, after all), we are as drawn into the twisted story of Inverarity's schemes as she is, and left with the same question: has he created the whole paranoid conspiracy to punish Oedipa or is it a real conspiracy that he was a part of or are all the concurrent acts and facts just coincidences? And if you cannot understand a thing I wrote in this paragraph, don't blame me: read the book. The book was written over forty-four years ago and yet it not dated. The California he writes about is perhaps a bit more innocent and open-spaced than now, but the groundwork for the future is being laid in spiraling real estate developments, spreading smog, and disconnected persons seeking connection, even if it is only the most paranoid grasping for a connection that does not exist. However, there is a noted difference in The Crying of Lot 49 in the 1965 perspective on the Holocaust and World War II, and in today's. In 1965 many survivors and perpetrators of the holocaust were still alive, and WWII was the war people still talked about as a participatory event. It was not an academic discussion of genocide and war, and Pynchon makes the war and the genocide horrible and immediately relevant to his characters. In a way, the characters are seeking to distance themselves from that history, and aligning themselves with an even older history of the struggle against repression while at the same time flying on the balloon of the sixties, trying to get high and find themselves and get laid. I loved how Pynchon uses the 1960s backdrop for his naming of the characters. Pynchon is a timely and sophomoric (but still funny) version of Dickens with his Oedipa Maas (sometimes called "Oed" and sometimes just "Edna"), married to Mucho Maas; we also meet Manni Di Presso, Dr. Hilarius (a Freudian shrink), Stanley Koteks, Mike Fallopian, Genghis Cohen (who calls Oedipa "Miz Maas"), and so on and so on. Pynchon uses silly humor, slapstick, and sly inversions of reality to hold the readers' attention and it all works. The plot of The Crying of Lot 49 is crazy but Oedipa holds it all together, works out all the kinks and twists for me, and makes me a believer. Our Oedipa is an honest and serious girl (she does have some fun in a very funny scene of undressing layers upon layers); she is also an optimist and as dogged as a pit bull. By the end of the book, she accepts paranoia as a necessary state. And she is right, after all. Better to question and wonder, than to be complacent and therefore, unwittingly compliant in the conspiracy. What conspiracy? Take your pick, there are many out there, so keep your eyes open and your brain open, and your options, open. Great good comes from reading great books. For more go to [...]

I don't normally advocate criminal behavior, but if you're going to read this book, I might suggest you smoke something a bit stronger than tobacco if you're into that kind of thing. It might help to bring this book into focus. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the author was in a similar state when he wrote it. I'm not sure how much I can tell you about the plot. We start off with Oedipa Maas, a young suburban California housewife, who finds out that she's been named executor of her ex-boyfriend's estate. While diligently attending to the estate (not to mention attending to her co-executor), she stumbles upon a symbol scrawled on a bathroom wall with a reference to something called "WASTE". Oedipa develops an obsession with the symbol which seems to pop up with increasing frequency the more she pursues its meaning. Her adventures lead her from person to person, each character more bizarre than the last, and from unbelievable situation to impossible event. This book is maddeningly impossible to get your head around. Nothing ever quite makes sense, but there's always something tantalizing just around the bend. Maybe if you read a few more pages it will start to make sense. But the further you go on, the less sense it makes, but yet the more we feel we might just get rewarded if we read a little further. We follow Oedipa's descent into conspiracy madness through a long-winded description of a five-act Jacobean revenge play, an encounter with a truly mad scientist, an all-night ramble through the seamy side of San Francisco, the intricacies of stamp collecting, and epic accounts of the obscurest points of the history of mail delivery (although, how much, if at all, that "history" resembles reality is more than I can say). At one point in her obsession, Oedipa looks at the possibilities. Either she's stumbled into one of the most elaborate conspiracies in the history of the world, or she's been set up by her late ex-boyfriend in some sort of elaborate hoax, or else she's mentally ill. We sense all along that the author is playing with Oedipa, poking fun at her and her frail human ability to grasp and comprehend. But then we realize that he's poking fun at us too. And at life itself and all of our grand and serious searching for The Meaning of Life. The characters are mostly quite unsympathetic and unengaging. Mostly that's because they don't stick around long enough for us to get to know them. But even the main character, Miz Maas, doesn't arouse our sympathy. That's because none of the characters are actual human beings; they are mere symbols in Pynchon's game of life. Our clue is in their corny, punny names: "Mucho" Maas, Genghis Cohen, you get the picture. The book is not meant to be taken as a literal story any more than "Gulliver's Travels" is. Both are satires. But unlike "Gulliver's Travels", it is unclear who or what is being satirized in "The Crying of Lot 49". Some things are obvious, like America's post-war cookie-cutter suburban blight and the empty lives that accompany such blight. But it's more than that, though what the "more" is, is always just out of reach. Although this is a very slim volume, it's not easy reading. Pynchon's wordy prose can at times go on for pages without completing a single paragraph. It is almost always difficult to follow exactly what's happening and to keep the characters straight. Nonetheless, I recommend this book as an introduction to Thomas Pynchon largely because it is so short. Judging by the reviews, Pynchon has a devoted following and a number of critics. This book is perfect for discovering which you are. For myself, I'm not quite sure yet. I ended up liking the book in spite of myself, but I don't really think it will stick with me. Some ambiguous books leave me puzzling over them for weeks or months to come, but I don't think this will be one of them.

I feel like I have to read this book at least twice more before I could write the review I'd like to write. Perhaps I'll read it again and find time to alter these notes at a later date. For now, I'll just focus on the concept of the entire narrative as farcical critique of upper class Americana. Pynchon reveals anti-heroine Oedipa Maas as an adulteress on the novel's first pages, executor of the wealthy estate of a recently deceased ex-lover, Pierce Inverarity (How great are these names, by the way? All of Pynchon's choices for character names in this book are hysterically funny). Her journey from there is hilarious, surprising at every turn, chock full of conspiracy theory and peppered with meaningless sex and sexual advances. Oedipa's obsession with the mystery she believes Inverarity left behind for her to solve, that of an underground mail service called the Trystero, speaks to the boredom Pynchon assumes for the American upper class of his day, the longing for a purpose and constant uncertainty as to whether that purpose really means anything at all. Here are three quotes where I feel Pynchon writes very directly with regard to American life: "`I came,' [Oedipa] said, `hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy.' `Cherish it!' cried Hilarius, fiercely. `What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by its little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.'" (page 113) "You're chicken, she told herself, snapping her seat belt. This is America, you live in it, you let it happen." (page 123) ". . . maybe even [stumbled] onto a real alternative to the exitlessness, to the absence of surprise to life, that harrows the head of everybody American you know, and you too, sweetie." (page 141) The Hilarius (another fantastic name, of course) quote from page 113 says to me that Pynchon feels we Americans need our fantasies, need an element of craziness in our lives because the easy life here isn't necessarily what people expect it to be. It's set up beautifully by Oedipa's desire at that moment to give up her search. The quote from page 123, Oedipa talking to herself about what she should be able to do, how she should be able to affect outcomes and events, delineates an expectation so many Americans have that's, unfortunately, not always met with success. The most powerful quote of the three, in my opinion, is the one from page 141. Whether Oedipa's mission was real or contrived, worthy or a waste of time, here she describes "everybody American" she knows as living with "exitlessness" and an "absence of surprise to life," and includes herself in that group. Through Oedipa and her adventure and her own conflicting opinions about it, Pynchon conveys a strong desire to break from quotidian life in the leisure class, a yearning for any sort of struggle but an uncertainty about that very yearning. Part of what Pynchon writes in The Crying of Lot 49, in my opinion, presents random sex and infidelity as one answer attempted by people in Oedipa's shoes, the bored housewives and their working husband counterparts, and this purported solution comes up empty time and time again. Oedipa herself seems to realize this as the novel progresses, succumbing to seduction early on but then rejecting it and feeling disgusted by its perpetrators later. Surely a long essay could be written just about Pynchon's treatment of sex in this book, but this review is getting long, so I'll cut it off here. I loved this book for all of its complexity, this review is just a few thoughts on one theme that stuck with me.

First, you have to remember when it was written- and it represents a genre in a way- hard tow read-- and I must say I did not much like the book- but-- I felt I needed to fill in this gap in my literature ! But, as a good fun read, well-- it is a struggle- knowing some will love the book- just not my taste

A big Amazon van and an unmarked large white van were in my driveway. When I went out (in the rain) to check, the Amazon driver told me his van had broken down, the white van was supposed to help it but couldn't, and now everyone was waiting for a tow-truck, The Amazon guy yelled through the rain, "I'm so sorry for the inconvenience." And I yelled back "One of these books is about paranoia, so this is actually perfect !" It's the most fun I've ever had on my driveway.

There are some major lacunae in my reading. Perhaps the biggest was Thomas Pynchon. Literary hero to so many of my generation, I had avoided him. I had my reasons, among them that much of post-modern fiction leaves me cold and the formidable size of "Gravity's Rainbow", "V.", et al. But length is not an operative excuse for the 152-page THE CRYING OF LOT 49, so I finally decided to at least give Pynchon a try with it. It was better than I thought it would be, although I end up somewhat ambivalent about it. I have never been keen on symbolism, and LOT 49 is chock-a-block with (potential) symbols. Too much of the comedy crosses the border into the realm of slapstick for my taste. There is virtually no character development whatsoever -- not unusual for a novel that is comedic and satirical and symbolic, but I happen to value fully developed characters in my fiction. Yes, there are many good lines and much linguistic funnery and intellectual puzzle mongering. But for much of the novel it seemed to be all sizzle and no steak. Gradually, however, there coalesced a sense that there is a there there. What, pray tell, is that "there"? I will do no more than hazard the hypothesis that the novel is an elaborate metaphor for the quest for meaning in life. There may be much more going on, although I have neither the energy nor the inclination to pin any of it down. Many others have strained to do so, however. Courtesy of one of my sons, I glanced through "A Companion to The Crying of Lot 49", which annotates the text with the critical commentary of myriad academics. For example, regarding Pynchon naming two of the characters Mike Fallopian and Stanley Koteks, one scholar finds that it contributes to "the book's theme of transsexuality through their reference to 'the anatomy and sanitation of strictly female processes'." Another reads "the 'flippant' nature of the implied references to sexual reproduction as evidence of the way contemporary society substitutes anxious parody for 'stable metanarrative' in the face of such 'reminders of the body's impermanence'." I can't help but laugh at such weighty maunderings. Indeed, through the character Randolph Driblette, Pynchon too seems to mock such critical analysis. Driblette had directed a play, "The Courier's Tragedy", that may hold the key to the mystery of the muted posthorn. When the quester Oedipa Maas questions him about his production, Driblette responds: "Don't drag me into your scholarly disputes. * * * You guys, you're like Puritans are about the Bible. So hung up with words, words. * * * You can put together clues, develop a thesis, or several, about why characters reacted to the Trystero possibility the way they did, why the assassins came on, why the black costumes. You could waste your life that way and never touch the truth." And yet, spending (wasting?) our lives searching for life's meaning is what many of us do.

Her name is Oepida Maas. Her husband is Mucho Maas. Her lover was Pierce Inverarity who ran Yoyodyne Corporation in San Narciso. He psychiatrist is Dr. Hilarious. You get the idea - there are funny names in this story. Oepida is made the executor of Pierce's estate. Diligently, in this romance, satire, antidetective novel, she tries to find out the extent of her duties and the extent of the estate. Along the way, things go from simple to complex, ordered to disordered, concrete to abstract, just the opposite of the usual novel, and she becomes enmeshed in either a worldwide conspiracy called Trystero or enmeshed in her imagining of a worldwide conspiracy called Trystero, and organization, if it exists, dedicated to alternative culture and government derived from the Thurn and Taxis Postal system started in 1577 in Holland. Oepida's quest reminds me of the Faerie Queene charmed from her human virtues while searching for self-knowledge. Her sensitivity to external events and the hidden meanings in the nature of things (are they really there, those meanings?) reminds me of Emily's sensitivity to external things in The Mysteries of Udolpho. But her and Pynchon's language reminds me of nothing I have ever seen: It is an original blend of erudition, and slang with scintillations, multiple meanings, cross references, parody, outlandish puns, pawky black humor -- all of which is steadily and intelligently directed and reflects an extraordinary writing talent. The characters are everywhere plugged in elsewhere, so Oepida can't connect with anyone except perhaps her two lovers and then only tentatively: one leaves her for a teenager; the other kills himself. The plot is driven by concepts in physics including the second law of thermodynamics and Maxwell's demon as well as by the idea that information theory equations reduce to entropy equations. Indeed the theme is that the world's entropic decline is evidences by its capacity for bureaucracy, atomic war, and domestic violence, all of which can be prevented by an increase in meaningful human communications. I like that idea and I like the comic ribbings of California manners and pop culture gone to rock and ruin. This novel stands with The Great Gatsby in concise attempt to capture dangerous exaltations in the closed entropic system known to us as America and in so doing reasserts the wonder that can animate the novel.

The book is considered the first Postmodernist novel although I think Fredric Jameson's phrase "the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" is a more precise terminology. The book is basically a quest for Adam Smith's Invisible Hand and does much to reflect on the nature of Capitalism at the Dawn of Postmodernism. Pynchon speaks on many aspects of Capitalism and, for example, in the following passage directly to the plight of intellectual workers who find themselves entangled in the corporate world: "...Look what's happened to them. In school they got brainwashed, like all of us, into believing the Myth of the American Inventor - Morse and his telegraph, Bell and his telephone, Edison and his lightbulb, Tom Swift and his this or that. Only one man per invention. Then when they grew up they found they had to sign over all their rights to a monster like Yoyo-dyne; got stuck on some 'project' or 'task force' or 'team' and started being ground into anonymity. Nobody wanted them to invent - only perform their little role in a design ritual, already set down for them in some procedures handbook. What's it like...being all alone in a nightmare like that? Of course, they stick together, they keep in touch. They can always tell when they come on another of their kind. May be it only happens once every five years, but still, immediately, they know.' Metzger...wanted to argue. "You're so right-wing you're left-wing." he protested. "How can you be against a corporation that wants a worker to waive his patent rights. That sounds like the surplus value theory to me, fella, and you sound like a Marxist." The title of the work specifically references the reader to capitalist markets as a crying is the name for an auction. As any ECON 101 student will tell you an auction is the exact intersection of demand and supply, customers and sellers where the magic of free markets is revealed to any observer. I strongly recommend this book for students of Capitalism, Marx, and business in the era of globalization.

Pynchon's 'The Crying of Lot 49' is a labyrinthine journey into paranoia and conspiracy. It's a tightly woven tapestry of intrigue that keeps you guessing until the very end. It's like a rollercoaster ride through a hall of mirrors - thrilling, disorienting, and utterly unforgettable: it even has a bloody full-on play-within-a-play! Unrivalled.

A book that as soon as you finish reading enters the top 3 of your favourite books ever

Ein Meisterwerk Pynchons, das jedem Einsteiger in sein Werk empfohlen sein sollte. Ich hatte bereits andere Ausgaben im Taschenbuchformat. Diese der Erstausgabe nachproduzierte HC-Edition ist für mich die schönste. Ich habe ebenfalls die von V. gekauft und hoffe nun, wie vermutlich so einige seiner Leser, auf einen Nachdruck der Erstausgabe von Gravity‘s Rainbow.

No issues for the quality,but it's a postmodern novel ,if you have not studied detail about what's paranoid self in postmodern time , what's fluid identity then all this meaninglessness in the depiction may seem to u buying worthless.Oedipa's search for truth is meaningless as she feels herself appropriate to be a detective and to collect info about her ex-boy friend she goes trough several steps and on her search she gets nothing even if she's at a moment of reaching the truth somehow it's destructed.The novel also ends with re reality that's misrepresented...

Attention, ce commentaire est totalement subjectif et ne se base que sur mon appréciation de l'histoire car l'objet en lui même est de bonne qualité (c'est un livre quoi). Je déconseille fortement ce livre à tous ceux qui n'aiment pas les livres sans queue ni tête. L'histoire va dans tous les sens mais sans jamais aller au bout, les personnages n'ont aucun charisme, le lecteur n'a aucune empathie pour l'héroïne et enfin, la trame principale est totalement incompréhensible... Pour être totalement honnête, je n'ai acheté ce livre que parce qu'il figurait sur ma liste d'oeuvres à étudier.