The Crying of Lot 49: Thomas Pynchon

Product Information

The novel commences with Oedipa learning that she has been appointed Co-Executor of the Estate of California real estate mogul and ex-lover, Pierce Inverarity. The song "Looking for Lot 49" by The Jazz Butcher alludes to the novel in its title and theme of postal services. [11]

Whatever else was being denied them out of hate, indifference to the power of their vote, loopholes, simple ignorance, this withdrawal was their own, un-publicized, private. The most important and prolific symbol in the novel is the muted post horn. After first seeing it in the bathroom at the bar, the symbol haunts Oedipa throughout the rest of the novel. Before she even knows what it means, she is convinced it is significant. The prevalence and mysteriousness of this symbol convince Oedipa there is some greater secret to discover.The song "Radio Zero" by The Poster Children mentions "Radio KCUF" in the lyrics. They also used W.A.S.T.E. and the post-horn on their first cassette. [14] Mrs. Oedipa Maas received a letter naming her executrix of Pierce Inverarity's estate. Pierce was a California real estate mogul with a great number of assets whom she had an affair with years ago. Pierce died a year before the will was found. Oedipa did errands, trying to uncover what happened a year ago. Finally, she remembered a three A.M. phone call from Pierce. He had spoken to her in different voices. Oedipa's husband, Wendell "Mucho" Maas, arrived home. He complained, as usual, that his boss, Funch, at KCUF was trying to censor him. Mucho had formerly worked as a used car salesman. Mucho had tried not to be a stereotypical used car salesman, but the job overwhelmed him. Oedipa tried, unsuccessfully, to calm his memories. At three A.M., Dr. Hilarius, Oedipa's shrink, called and asked Oedipa if she was taking the tranquilizer pills. She refused to take pills or join his experiment testing hallucinogenic drugs on housewives. The next morning, Oedipa met with her lawyer, Roseman. Roseman played footsie with her. After lunch, he explained what Oedipa would do as executrix. Oedipa thought of herself as Rapunzel, Pierce having reached the top of her tower using a credit card to jimmy the doors. She thought of the painting by Remedios Varos she had once seen with Pierce in Mexico City which had made her cry. Out of the tower in the painting, wove a tapestry that contained the world and forced Oedipa to fear that she could not escape. Most readers approach a complex novel, like a scientist approaches the world or a detective approaches a crime - with an appetite for knowledge and understanding, and a methodology designed to satiate their appetite. All postal systems grew from early attempts to guarantee safe passage of diplomatic correspondence between different States and Rulers in Europe.

Amid the exhaust, sweat, glare and ill-humor of a summer evening on an American freeway, Oedipa Maas pondered her Trystero problem. All the silence of San Narciso—the calm surface of the motel pool, the contemplative contours of residential streets like rakings in the sand of a Japanese garden—had not allowed her to think as leisurely as this freeway madness. Oedipa's psychotherapist, Dr. Hilarius asks Oedipa to participate in an experiment he is conducting on LSD. She refuses. He later goes crazy, hysterically claiming he helped the Nazis and will soon be punished. The main event that is echoed in the play is that a group is savagely murdered and their bones are sunk at the bottom of a lake. Weirdly, Oedipa has recently heard a story from Manny Di Presso about a bunch of American GIs who were massacred in Italy during World War II and who were thrown in a lake. It was not an act of treason, nor possibly even of defiance. But it was a calculated withdrawal, from the life of the Republic, from its machinery.

Select a format:

you proceed to chat, laughing at the length of gravity's rainbow. and you go next door with your new books to grab a cup of coffee, which turns into dinner, whuch turns in to crepes at this great little shop, which turns into a long walk, which turns into a bottle of syrah in your living room over twelve hours later. Royster, Paul (June 23, 2005). Thomas Pynchon: A Brief Chronology (Report). University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her quest drags her from her tower and exposes her to another side of life, just as life in America (well, Berkeley, San Francisco) was starting to get interesting (1966). Every question the reader asks of Lot 49 is also asked by our avatar, the – as she puts it – executrix of Pierce Inverarity’s will, Mrs Oedipa Mass. From the off it is made clear that our lead is a novice, someone who “didn’t know how to tell the law firm in LA that she didn’t know where to begin.” To list the number of occasions in which Oedipa Mass is confused, perplexed, baffled or otherwise thrown by the plot and the world around her would come close to repeating the novel verbatim in a citation which would not so much plagiarise the text as pirate it. She is a stranger in a strange land, having grown up and been educated during the conservative, Cold War 50’s: