The Crying of Lot 49: Thomas Pynchon

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By the novel’s end, Oedipa is constantly asking herself whether in fact any of what is going on means anything. Is it a clue to be solved? Is it all an elaborate game left by Pierce to haunt a former lover? Does it possibly mean nothing at all? Randolph "Randy" Driblette – Director of The Courier's Tragedy by Jacobean playwright Richard Wharfinger and a leading Wharfinger scholar; he deflects Oedipa's questions and dismisses her theories when she approaches him taking a shower after the show; later, he commits suicide by walking into the Pacific before Oedipa can follow up with him but the initial meeting with him spurs her to go on a quest to find the meaning behind Trystero.

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. Dr. Hilarius – Oedipa's psychiatrist, who tries to prescribe LSD to Oedipa as well as to other housewives. Toward the end of the book, he goes crazy and admits to being a former Nazi medical intern at Buchenwald concentration camp, where he worked in a program on experimentally-induced insanity, which he supposed was a more "humane" way of dealing with Jewish prisoners than killing. Given that this level of disorientation and confusion is something of Pynchon’s signature; that, as Richard Poirier has pointed out, it is unlikely that any of Pynchon’s characters could read – let alone write – a Pynchon novel, perhaps the most immediate mystery surrounding The Crying of Lot 49 is why anyone would ever wish to read the book at all. Or, to put it more crudely: if the mould on the oregano is there simply to demonstrate how everything in the novel is a possible dead end what, then, is there for the reader to pursue? The Simpsons does Pynchon

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Metzger – A lawyer who works for Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus. He has been assigned to help Oedipa execute Pierce's estate. He and Oedipa have an affair. 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. One of this novel's central interests is language itself and the topic of naming (for the relationship between names and language in the novel, please see the special Naming section). The interest in language accounts for the many puns in the novel, one of which is the idea of a "lot." Oedipa's long reflection on her husband's former job in a used-car lot reminds us of the title and may even lead the reader to think that the title will in some way relate to this car lot. However, the car lot, while it symbolizes one of the central problems in Mucho's life (the problem of dealing with the past while believing in the present), has little to do with the broader themes of the book or the title. Thus, Pynchon shows us a way in which language itself, in the form of puns, can be used as a means of providing false clues related to the novel's central concerns. Whether or not Pierce might be symbolic of God, Oedipa’s actions in the novel are dictated and driven by his Will.

Oedipa’s pain is her constant worry that Pierce has manufactured a game for her, that her will has been, quite literally, bent toward his will. This might suggest another clichéd female character manipulated by a man, but the novel is more complicated than that. Readers looking for a dynamic female protagonist will be pleasantly surprised by Pynchon’s treatment of Oedipa: she is neither romanticized nor sexualized; in fact, her sexuality is a source of power. Thrust into the shadow of Tristero, a multinational postal conspiracy, she doesn’t waver. She fights. his substitute often for her - thousands of little colored windows into deep vistas of space and time… She had never seen the fascination." In the sixth book 'The Ersatz Elevator' of The Series of Unfortunate Events, Lot 49 of the auction featured a collection of rare stamps, referencing Pynchon's novel. [25] [ circular reference] 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. However, it is a good idea to let somebody know during your lifetime that you wish to appoint them as your Executor, because they might not wish to accept the burden after your death.

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He was unpredictable." They went to lunch. Roseman tried to play footie with her under the table. She was wearing boots, and couldn't feel much of anything. So, insulated, she decided not to make any fuss.

Alternatively, the prefix “in-” might mean “into” which might imply the piercing or penetration of the truth. I haven’t seen any references to the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce (different spelling) who made an enormous contribution to the field of semiotics (the study of signs and sign processes). Pynchon is likely also satirizing counterculture by making the conflict of the novel center around something as mundane as the postal service. The novel features an entire underground movement that exists, not to revolutionize money, technology, or anything impactful, but to challenge the established postal service. Everyone in the novel takes this nonissue so seriously that the resulting chaos is almost laughable.In a very loose metaphorical way, the novel sets up Pierce’s Will as the Will of God, something which Oedipa is and feels compelled to obey. An English professor, Emory Bortz shines some light on Oedipa's investigation through his knowledge on Jacobean revenge plays.

There are also suggestions that “Inver” might be a pun on the word ”infer” or the process of inference. Pierce's handsome lawyer, Metzger, meets Oedipa in her hotel room. They watch a movie Metzger starred in when he was a child actor. During the movie, Oedipa sees commercials for some of Pierce's absurd business ventures, including a neighborhood specifically designed for scuba divers and cigarettes with filters made of bone.Violence ultimately shatters the walls of her gated community, and Lauren must enter the world on her own. When the world takes away her centers of meaning, she is forced to place her own meaning upon the world—which includes the creation of Earthseed, a humanistic religion that Pynchon would appreciate: “Some of the faces of her god are biological evolution, chaos theory, relativity theory, the uncertainty principle, and, of course, the second law of thermodynamics.” Pynchonesque entropy through Lauren’s mouth: “God is Change, and in the end, God prevails.” It is often called a Testament, the etymology of which is related to the Ten Commandments or Testimony issued by God. If the story seems all over the place and hard to follow, that's okay! It's important to remember that The Crying of Lot 49 is a postmodernist novel, so bizarre plot lines are to be expected. Postmodern literature became very popular in the 1960s and 1970s and is characterized by metafiction, historical and political references, intertextuality, unrealistic plots, and unreliable narration. Pynchon uses the apparently aimless plot to satirize both dominant culture and counterculture. 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.