Rating: 
Summary: You need to like the writing style to like the book
Review: I was told that this book was a very good intellectual read. I am someone who had previously struggled through Joyce's Ulysses. As difficult for me as that book was, this one was a lot tougher to get through. I am not big on stream-of-consciousness writing and enormous difficulty understanding and following what was happening in this book. I can see that the book has some good writing. I am sure that the book is quite good if it is your style. That is why I am still giving it 3 stars. It is quite possible that this book is like an IQ test. Only people with Mensa stats can get what's going on here. I guess I have not arrived at that level.
Rating: 
Summary: Deeper than I can see.
Review: There are many better reviews of this book than mine, so I will keep it short. I read a selection from this book out of my Postmodern Literature and Film class and decided to go out and buy the actual book. There is level upon level upon level in this story. You can read it ten times and still see new things and make new connections. Very confusing at first but very rewarding. And as a bonus, it is based on fact. Search the internet for Thurn and Taxis and you'll come across websites that detail in fact and pictures what this book talks about. Fantastic book. Very short. Good for a weekend.
Rating:
Summary: Profound and Fun!
Review: The Crying of Lot 49 was written by Thomas Pynchon and set against the turbulent sixties. No, this isn't a historic book per say; yet it combines examples of pop culture and people in the sixties. The Crying of Lot 49 has a complex mix of quirky characters, conspiracy theories, and weird occurrences, yet still manages to be entertaining. Also recommended: Will@epicqwest.com by Tom Grimes
Rating:
Summary: This is the Other Book.
Review: I'm ready for the shouts of "Madness!" and possibly "Oh, the humanity!" but I tell you, if you squint and kinda read this book sideways, you'll see it's really the 21st century MOBY DICK. LOT 49 leads you slyly and almost gently to the Grand Inescapable Conclusion that Melville brought you to thrashing and sweating: There is no America, there never has been an America, there never will be an America. That's America.
Rating: 
Summary: Quite an Introduction
Review: I'd heard that The Crying of Lot 49 was a short and (comparatively) easy introduction to Thomas Pynchon. It certainly is short, but I would still say Pynchon beats most writers at their worst for writing a dense, challenging novel. I'm not going to expound on what the deep significance of this novel is, but rest assured that it'll take all your attention and talent to "get it" the first time through. However, that is not to say it is a bad novel. The story surrounds Oedipa Maas and the adventure she begins when she is called upon as executrix of the estate of her deceased ex-lover Pierce Invererity. Her quest forces her to confront her beliefs about the workings of society, her own lack of perception in the world around her and ultimately her own sanity. Pynchon writes in a dense, overflowing style where one often has to slow down or reread in order to fully absorb the utter volume of information that is either explicitly or implicitly stated in Pynchon's furious and emotional prose. Character depth is notexistant, but that is evidently Pynchon's plan as they are merely his tools to explore the various issues he raises and are not as vital to the work as his often philosophical pseudo-interpretation of events. If you are into dense, high-intensity literature of the postmodern persuasion, then The Crying of Lot 49 is highly recommended. However, if you are looking to be entertained and don't want to sit around for hours afterward trying to puzzle out the implications of what you have read, Don DeLillo or Jack Kerouac are easier introductions to similar themes.
Rating:
Summary: Awaiting Silent Tristero's Empire
Review: The Crying of Lot 49 is an amazingly rich and complex work, especially when you consider its slim, novella-like size. Thomas Pynchon is widely recognized as among the most brilliant of postwar writers, and this is the perfect introduction to his work. It has the themes, the multitude of characters, and the diverse interests of Pynchon's more sprawling tomes, but its size makes it more manageable. Which is not to say that it is a breeze--in fact, I'm sure I missed things in my first reading that will become more clear the second or third time around. The plot itself is quite complicated, and when you consider the book's brevity, the cast of characters can seem almost Tolstoyan (they tend to walk on and disappear later in an endless stream). Also, Pynchon makes good use of some richly gothic prose equal to anything by the deadly serious Faulkner or Cormac McCarthy--but we can rarely be sure if we should take Pynchon's prose at face value. The first thing you'll probably notice here is the sheer humor. Just the names of the characters make me laugh: Oedipa and "Mucho" Maas, Dr. Hilarius, "Bloody" Chiclitz, Arnold Snarb. And as usual with Pynchon, you can count on a generous helping of hilarous, sometimes awful, songs. Try the corporate ditties from the Yoyodyne Aerospace company. This book had me practically rolling on the floor again and again. The story centers on Oedipa Maas, the very likeable young woman saddled with the unfortunate task of executing the estate of Pierce Inverarity, her former lover. As she attempts to get his affairs in order, she becomes increasingly entangled in what may or may not be a worldwide conspiracy called the Tristero (also spelled Trystero). This conspiracy evidently began as a sort of terrorist group opposed to the mail-carrying family Thurn und Taxis, who really did have a monopoly of postal services in Europe for many decades. Thurn und Taxis are represented by the symbol of a post-horn, so Tristero chose a muted post-horn as its sign. All this is meticulously researched by Pynchon, who's interests and reading experience seems to be endless. We get accurate information here about entropy and the perpetual-motion concept of Maxwell's Demon, the Thurn und Taxis family, Elizabethan Drama--too much to list here. Speaking of Elizabethan drama, Pynchon also includes the best parody of a revenge play ever written. There is much more than knockabout humor here. The dreamlike night scene in San Francisco, when Oedipa keeps seeing the muted post horn again and again, is richly evocative, the scene in which Oedipa comforts the old man in his apartment is surprisingly touching, and near the end Pynchon gives us some eloquent philosophizing, but without interrupting the novel's flow. These scenes stick in the mind as much as the hilarous comedy parts with Metzger, the rock band The Paranoids, and the ex-Nazi psychiatrist Dr. Hilarius. I wouldn't ever give away the ending, but be forewarned that it is enigmatic. If you want Dickensian wrap-up, don't touch this with a 30-foot pole. But it's not just the ending that's open: critics tend to agree that one of the major characteristics of Lot 49 is interpretive openness throughout--almost any event can be read in more than one way. Most salient is the question (raised by Pynchon himself) of whether the Tristero is real, a practical joke, or just in Oedipa's mind. This uncertainty is what fuels the claustrophobic paranoia in the book--a Pynchon trademark. Other things are left unclear as well. For instance, what does Pierce Inverarity have to do with the plot? The Tristero seems inextricably tied in with him, and his last name, as at least one critic has pointed out, seems to suggest untruth. Pynchon leaves open the possiblity that the Tristero is simply the posthumous masterpiece of the jokester Inverarity. Another possiblity, mentioned by Harold Bloom, (though he doesn't agree with it) is that "lot 49" is related to 49 days after Passover--in other words, Pentecost is just around the corner. Pentecostalism is mentioned by one of the characters in the parodistic play, so we have yet another interpretation on our hands. I'm pretty certain Pynchon intends for us to be mystified by all this, and that he doesn't know himself whether the Tristero is real or "what happens" after the end of the book. Extrapolating this mystification to the whole universe is an easy step to take, and clearly embodies Postmodern thought-- a system which has essentially given up the search for truth and assumes that, though many hypotheses can be proposed, the universe is ultimately inscrutable. Though I disagree with Pynchon's conclusions, they are very well-written conclusions. I couldn't accept the philosophical secion near the end, but I enjoyed reading it. I also enjoyed the ending very much after I got over its bizarreness, and it's strangely effective, even infuriatingly delightful. I'm annoyed by the fact that books are never reviewed for content the way movies are, so I'll briefly mention that here. This book is pretty much fine for high schoolers, with hardly any language and just a bit of sex--about one page. It's refreshing to see a living writer give us an effective book without the gratuitous vulgarity which characterizes so much modern literature. In short, if you're looking for a piece of fiction a cut above the fluff which comprises 99% of current publications, read The Crying of Lot 49, and don't let the gothic prose daunt you. It'll have you in stitches, and make you think hard about some philosophical questions too.
Rating:
Summary: At the Center of the Whirlwind
Review: Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49 It says something about Thomas Pynchon that "The Crying of Lot 49", by all reports a straightforward book, is, by Pynchonian standards, an oddity. For a writer who has built a reputation on constructing labyrinthine tomes that endlessly branch off for pages and pages until the reader wearily abandons any attempt at deciphering a plot, "Lot 49" is, well, linear. By far the most accessible of Pynchon's works "The Crying of Lot 49" is also probably his most concentrated. So short that it is often referred to as novella, "Lot 49" manages to get at Pynchon's BIG IDEAS and even contain some of his delightfully controlled chaos. It is the story of Oedipa Maas, summoned to California's San Narcisco to fulfill a duty to left her by some shady inheritance, namely to oversee the execution of a rather large estate left by the newly deceased Pierce Inverarity. Immediately Oedipa finds herself overwhelmed by the size and complexity of Inverarity's estate, and hopelessly imagines that she will never get Inverarity's affairs straightneed out. No sooner does she lose hope than Oedipa meets an odd man who seems to have some ideas to help her. As the two look into the estate, coincidence after coincidence piles up until Oedipa finds herself enmeshed in what may or may not be a global conspiracy where almost every person, place and thing she meets up with can, given enough time, be plausibly fit. The central question to this story, does the conspiracy exist or is Oedipa making it all up, is a metaphor which Pynchon pursues over many divergent paths, each leading to a different idea. On one level, Oedipa's quest is a microcosm of each of our own lives: using the available information she (an we) creates a story about the way things really are and continually tests and refines it. That Oedipa finds substantial clues in the oddest and most coincidental places is part of the mystery: is it really that life is so capricious that random encounters can have profound impacts, or is life much more banal, leaving Oedipa to simply imagine connections amidst a sea of information? On another level, Pynchon uses Opedipa's quest to get at the concept of entropy. Pynchon likes to apply terms and ideas from the realm of physics to psychological and sociological phenomena, and his invocation of entropy may be the most famous instance of this. Just as in a closed system individual particles will tend toward greater disorder so in Pynchon's universe do the people and information in our society tend toward entropy. Fighting against this decay is Oedipa, who tries to create some order out of the randomness that she encounters. Again we are met with a similar question, do Oedipa's actions counter entropy and point toward some transcendent truth or is she simply fighting an impossible battle and unable to create order in the world? Once you've accepted that these questions are valid there's nothing to do but follow Pynchon's ideas to their inevitable conclusion: in "Lot 49" there is no truth other than that which we create. In a sense, all of the characters are like Oedipa; although they aren't questing to ferret out a conspiracy, they are attempting to fit everything they come across into some kind of rational framework. And so do we. Cause and effect only exists insofar as we pick out one certain moment to be the cause and once certain moment to be the effect (even though we could have picked out any two points on the chain of causation), things only become important once we say they are. Each of us is at the center of our own self-ordered universe. But how do we know that the universe is really ours? Every day we are bombarded by thousands of stimuli outside of our control, each of which seeks to order our life for us. Does Oedipa see the conspiracy as she wants to or as the system wants her to? It is here, where Pynchon examines the limits of freedom in modern life that he makes his most substantial points. Clearly, despite "Lot 49"s brevity, there is a lot at stake, and in its own way this fact makes the book appealing. Lacking the heft of Pynchon's tomes (notably V. and Gravity's Rainbow) "Lot 49" is pure, distilled Pynchon. This means that if you read "Lot 49" you don't exactly get the Pynchon experience, but you also don't have to wade through miles and miles of intricate, yet beautiful, prose to see what Pynchon is trying to say. As such, think of "Lot 49" as an introduction. If you like what you see, then acquire another Pynchon book and read on. If you don't like it, then perhaps Pynchon isn't your flavor.
Rating:
Summary: my favorite book
Review: i read this book my first year of college and absolutly fell in love with it. it's funny and strange and has a conspiaracy in it. it's great.
Rating:
Summary: Pynchon's most accessible work
Review: For everyone out there who quakes at the thought of starting Gravity's Rainbow, this book is the best jumping off point to enter the Pynchon universe. But more than that, this book is a marvelous tale, compactly told. In it you can see the germs of much of what would become dominant themes in Pynchon's later works (such as an interest in the channels through which information pass and the people who run them). Yes, this isn't his first novel, and it's by far not his most well known -- but in my opinion, it provides the most satisfying read, without the feeling of being overwhelmed by the immensity of Gravity's Rainbow or some of the missteps that seemed to plague V. and Vineland. Find yourself a rainy Sunday, curl up in your favorite chair, and read this. It's an overlooked treasure.
Rating: 
Summary: Ummm, No thank you.
Review: Okay, first off I'm not a conservative, I like modern life, I don't believe that things were better in the good old days etc. But how can modernist drivel like this ever be considered brilliant? Has there ever been a novel more pointless, more vague, with less interesting characters and with less redeeming value? I don't think so. Oh, I guess I'm supposed to applaud Pynchon for being so inventive and different from everybody else. Yeah, well that's all well and good, but not enough in itself to make a good novel. Maybe it's because I was born in the late 70's and I'm not a hippie that I don't understand the cosmic significance of the Tristero whatever that is. San Narcisco? That is supposed to be brilliant? It's just a clever little wordplay that any High School student could write in one of their papers. And the writing of the title as the last words of the novel? Please. Why is that such a literary feat?
I guess the point of the novel was not to have a point. I'm sorry, but that is just taking the easy way out. At least put some effort into making me feel something and ask questions about myself. Oh, the book was trying to do that? It's making me wonder what it all means and what is the meaning of life? Hello! Who needs to read this book to ask those questions? Everyone asks themselves those questions naturally. There's nothing particularly briliant in that concept. Anyway, I'll stop now because I'm not by nature a cynical guy and all this negativity is killing me. I'm just a little upset at having to torture myself reading this for a class.
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