The Crying of Lot 49

Rating:
Summary: Comes together fantastically
Review: This is Pynchon's most accessible text. It's funny, it's interesting, and the plot borders on surrealism. From the outset, the puns tickle the reader, and the situations Pynchon describes are absolutely charming.

But what's amazing about this book is the way it comes together. In the middle of the book, I started thinking that this was just a book of eclectic symbols and a bad plot, but towards the end, the symbols start interweaving in amazing ways. Different experiences that Oedipa has suddenly fit together into a dazzling symbolic puzzle; philosophical tangents based on each key scene in the novel all come together in Oedipa's intense struggle to find the Real Thing, to decode the message inscribed in the enduring image of the printed-circuit urban planning of Los Angeles.

Each character in the story seeks the real thing in his or her own way, and Oedipa almost succeeds. In the end, her random encounters with the Trystero come together, but she'll never know whether the unity of her experiences symbolizes any real coherent meaning, or whether it's all a cruel joke.

Just a fantastic, enjoyable quick read that culminates in a glowing, mysterious, enigmatic feeling of narrative triumph: the triumphant fitting together of Pynchon's symbolic order. A subtle look at the fragmentation of American culture, a charming book about the very human Oedipa, a haunting reflection on the struggle for meaning.

Rating:
Summary: the elusive pynchon at his most accessible...
Review: ...although that's still not very accessible. But this book is worth the trouble of grappling with the author's obscure allusions, open-ended questions, and maddening mixture of the deadly serious and the utterly nonsensical. Still, compared to his massive tomes GRAVITY'S RAINBOW and V., for instance, the general outline of CRYING OF LOT 49 is relatively comprehensible. Oedipa Maas, a confused child of the sixties, stumbles upon what may or may not be a centuries-old conpiracy as a result of being named "executrix" of her wealthy, eccentric former lover's estate. The sinister, fascinating glimpses of the "tristero" that increasingly obsess her may be genuine insights into a real but previously hidden reality, an indication of her descent into paranioa and madness, or a colossal practical joke. She has no way of determining which, and neither do we. On some levels this is frustrating, but Pynchon's hilarious, eccentric, beautiful prose and the original, fascinating plotline keep your interest, and certainly satisfied me, at least. His irreverant takes on the superficiality of both the counterculture and suburban America, the banality of bad Jacobean revenge melodramas, and the illogic of scientists, historians, and almost everyone else continue to delight me on rereadings. It may not be as great an achievement as his longer masterworks, but I would rather read this more enjoyable and accessible (although still profound and troubling) little book anyday.

Rating:
Summary: The Crying of Lot 49
Review: The Crying of Lot 49 was Pynchon's response to people who considered his first novel, V, to be too difficult, too complex and just plain old too weird to stomach. It is considerably shorter, clocking it at only 152 pages, but each one is jam packed full of patented Pynchon weirdness, with zany characters, ridiculously implausible scenarios and plots within plots within plots.

Speaking of plot, there are two ways to describe it. One is to say that it is about Oedipa Maas wandering California trying to figure out a conspiracy that seems to involve everyone she knows. The other is to read the book. There really isn't any middle ground. The problem with that is that the former doesn't mention Vatican cover-ups, child movie stars, highly lethal cans of hair spray, horn symbols, a band by the name of the Paranoids who aren't, LSD-addicted radio announcers or archaic postal systems trying to destroy American society, while the latter would take up just over 150 pages, far beyond the scope of this review.

The writing is typical Pynchon. Some sections meander into ruminations on a character's psyche, or page-long sojourns into plays, conspiracies, wanderings, etc. Other paragraphs are so fast paced that if your mind wanders for a second, you'll miss something important and have no idea what is going on. Often these crucial sentences are buried within a morass of extraneous information, so readers should pay attention at all times.

The names are fun and ridiculous. Mike Fallopian, the duchy of Squamuglia, Yoyodyne, Wharfinger, Chiclitz, Dr Hilarious, the list goes on. Settings are predictable only in the way that they will be completely unpredictable, in essence, you never know when or where the story is going to take you next.

Does it end satisfactorily? Can Pynchon recover all the myriad threads into a cohesive whole? No. But then, if he did, the story wouldn't make sense. By being about paranoia and conspiracy, an actual concrete resolution would hurt the book more than it would help. The closing sentence is a perfect example of this, and will probably seem frustrating to a casual reader, but if you sit back and think about it, no other ending would suffice. A masterful work, one that is extremely accessible for those people who are (rightly) intimidated by the monster that is Gravity's Rainbow.

Rating:
Summary: Going Postal
Review: Pynchon lets the threads dandle in this oblique satire of suburban sprawl, conspiracy theories, and sixties hipness. Oedipa Maas, wife of Mucho, sleuths her way to uncertainty. She's cold on the trail of a shadowy organization called the Tristero that competes for the postal trade and uses a muted trumpet as its symbol. Who knew that Miles Davis was part of a worldwide mail delivery feud? A cat with no shortage of curiosity, Oedipa fumbles into some memorable, slightly perverse encounters. She flees the clutches of a randy esoteric, witnesses the breakdown of her psychiatrist, and meets The Paranoids, faux mop tops who write songs about frugging. The more Oedipa learns about the Tristero the less she knows; further, she cannot dismiss the possibility that she's the victim of an elaborate practical joke.

In one overly long stretch of this short post-modernist novel Pynchon indulges in some sanguinary Jacobean drama. More satisfying is his description of southern California: several decades before Orange County morphs into a diorama of the body snatched, Pynchon anticipates the dislocating effect of exit ramps, strip malls, and those fathomless planned communities that are everywhere and nowhere. The search for order and meaning, the novel implies, ultimately leads to frustration, to some realization that the universe is chaotic, even random. Pynchon is all head, no heart. His other novels are maddeningly inaccessible, which of course makes them a kind of template for the current crop of young wise-acre American writers who favor clever gimmicks and shun human feeling.

Rating:
Summary: Left me feeling kind of stupid
Review: I haven't felt like this after reading a book in a long time. This is not to say that I dislike difficult books. I typically enjoy a challenging read. It was suggested that I would like this book because I have given books by DeLillo, Ellis, and Danielewski high ratings.

What makes this different? Most importantly, I think, is that I felt no great attachment to any of the characters, especially not Oedipa Maas. Therefore, the intrigue is not nearly as compelling as it could be. Who cares about the conspiracy, W.A.S.T.E., Tristero, or Thurn and Taxis? Especially given the final outcome.

I do, however, give it three stars because it has some moments of brilliance. The revenge play is fantastic, the word play is often amusing, and it does have a hallucinatory feel.

Obviously, some people will like this more than I did. I fully accept that. If you're up for a challenge, enjoy language, and don't put a high premium on characterization or plot, then this is worth the read.

Rating:
Summary: Buy It - Point Blank!
Review: The crying of lot 49 is a self-conscious literary masterpiece that draws on most literary genres to present a series of pastiches of the sentimental child-star movie, Victorian hymnody, Travellers' tales from darkest Europe in the 17th century, histories of the Wild West, and a magnificently sombre Jacobean tragedy on steroids, a play which makes The White Devil seem like Peter Pan. The style of much of the writing is 60s hip, and there is often a conflict between the example of the genre depicted and the metalanguage used to describe it. The book is funny where the conflict is not laboured. In plain english, it's a terrific purchase. 2 other quick Amazon picks: The Loser's Club by Richard Perez, [e-mail] by Tom Grimes

Rating:
Summary: .94 toL fo gniyrC ehT
Review: An outstanding novel and a wonderously imaginitive story.

Rating:
Summary: I don't have much to say, really
Review: Although I could go on about this book until your ears bled. I just wanted to let sdfsdf (whose review graces the first page of this entry) know that he really oughtn't try so hard. So you are (or want to be) a logophile. Congratulations! But you, unlike Pynchon, scarcely warrant the reading of your review, much less looking up your impressive-looking (but lousily contextualized, and oft-misused) words. If the literati were more along the lines of the illuminati, you'd have been cut long ago. (It's nothing personal. It's just that I trip over people like you every day, where I'm at, and I'm pretty tired of having barked shins.)

Rating:
Summary: sdfsdf
Review: With a mordant pen and an incisive wit Pynchon playfully attacks the epistemological naivetes of the credulous and anthropomorphic philosophy serving as the backbone for many of our conventional beliefs about our universe. His slyly allusive and intricately woven prose serves as the stylistic equivalent of a misleading, chaotic, and jumbled cosmos where the only certainties are interpretative freedom and ceaseless dubeity. It is a testament to Pynchon's genius that he's able pack his narrative with so many hints and glints of profundity that the ordinary reader, disorientated from the sheer speed with which disparate and seemingly irrelevant information is dispensed, never pauses to reflect upon the implications of adopting Pynchon's alternative perspective on knowledge and existence.

Characters are typically one of two things: either the particulate projections of the author's personality, or the hoppled slaves of a demanding and unifying idea thought up by a wily and self-absorbed member of the literati. Pychon's character clearly fall into the latter category, with plastic personalities and rigid, affectless actions the norm, and mawkish tenderness strictly verboten. The main character, Oedipa, whose likability depends entirely upon whether or not you automatically like or dislike persons you know nothing significant about, is named by a former paracoitus as the executrix of his will. After some initial fumbling she, with assistance from legal-eagle Metzger, embarks on a quest that involves her in the shady shenaningans of secret societies whose dealings with a deceitful and delusive postal service (Tristero) are never fully uncovered by either the protagonist or the reader. The recurrent clues involving the corniculate emblem of Tristero lead Oedipa on an epic journey through an artfully constructed constellation of ideas that leaves her mystified and nonplussed. As you've probably deduced by now, the arc of the plot is non-existent; concepts and abstractions supply the riverbanks to Pynchon's stream of consciousness rather than story and character development.

Recondite tralatitions, regardless of their underlying contents, are exquisitely pleasurable to encounter when they're properly executed, and Pynchon's novella Lot 49 is no exception. I extracted more than a modicum of pleasure ferreting out the solutions to the symbolic puzzles and ciphers he sportively sprinkled throughout his peripatetic text despite their aimless and arbitrary nature. While many readers will be nonplussed and perhaps repulsed by the inky ooze of the text itself, those readers who see not a turbid river but a limpid stream, the bottom of which has been inscribed with the generative principle of all of Pynchon's puzzle books, will find its perusal a thrilling oblectation. A purely cerebral indulgence, bereft, however, of all human tenderness and emotion (the point, of course, but a sorry point it is).

One feels compelled to provide a brief antiphon to those who would lump Vladimir Nabokov into the same literary category as Thomas Pynchon. Primo, Nabokov isn't a post-modernist in any way, shape, or form. He was an avowed believer in indivisible monism, and expressed his recognition in more than one of his texts of the logical necessity of their existing an irreducible medium of existence; secundo, Nabokov wished to indict injustice and cruelty, whereas Pynchon simply wishes to convey "existential angst" and a banal form of claustrophobia. T hey both concoct puzzles, sure, and they both mastered prose, but one's a genius and the other a trifling epigone.

I am indifferent to whether or not you purchase this book. If you enjoy puzzles and have a large working memory, go nuts; if not, your time would be better spend flipping through Grisham or King.

Rating:
Summary: Short Stunning Epic
Review: At a slim 150 pages, this novella works as a good, and indicative, introduction to Pynchon. Perhaps it is far more impressive, formally, than his other longer novels (Gravity's Rainbow, V., Mason & Dixon, Vineland), all of which are between 500-800 pages, except for the latter, simply because he manages to weave the same intricacy and texture at a fraction of his usual length.

Enter the journey of Oedipa Maas, who follows the trail backwards in time of her dead husband. Is somebody following her? Or is she the one who is following? Pieces start fitting together, slowly- the etching of a muted horn on a bathroom stall, old stamps with spelling errors, a man-made lake with an interesting bottom, characters in a play with a little bit too much information- all this and much, much more.

Pynchon's novels are about 'information', regardless of how historical, accurate, absurd, erronous, redundant, symbolic, inconsistent, incomprehensible they are, or seem. Most authors create an objective autonomous system of values, characters, and logic within their novels. Pynchon trangresses these conservative formalisms- his writing is so distant and awkward, yet so humane and flesh-like. He is like no other writer. He stuffed an epic into a novella, about a woman who found out what was happening to her all along, in the end.