The Crying of Lot 49: Thomas Pynchon

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A global postal conspiracy. Post horns graffitied across southern California. LSD prescribed as treatment for anxiety. Obscene radio station hosts. Beatles cover bands. Widespread paranoia. The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon’s second novel, is quirky and eccentric even by Pynchon’s standards. Now 50 years old, the slim novel is truly a snapshot of mid-1960s culture. 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. For John Nefastis (to take a recent example) two kinds of entropy, thermodynamic and informational, happened, say by coincidence, to look alike, when you wrote them down as equations. Yet he had made his mere coincidence respectable, with the help of Maxwell’s Demon.

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. When you add the prefix “in-“ (as a negative) to it, the word could be concerned with the absence of truth. Oedipa Mass's ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity built a business empire in San Narciso. A real estate tycoon, Pierce left his estate to Oedipa after his death. It is unclear if he is playing an elaborate prank on Oedipa with the Tristero conspiracy or if he was involved in the secret organization.

Originally Oedipa saw herself as a pensive Rapunzel-like figure, waiting for someone to ask her, in the sixties, to “let down her hair”. 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.

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. There are also suggestions that “Inver” might be a pun on the word ”infer” or the process of inference. She is a stranger in a strange land, having grown up and been educated during the conservative, Cold War 50’s:Radiohead alludes to the novel in the name of their online merchandise shop and mailing list, W.A.S.T.E. [12] In The O.C. episode "The L.A.", Paris Hilton reveals she's working on a thesis on Pynchon. Another character responds saying he's only read "The Crying of Lot 49." [24] Arguably, Pynchon serves up a work that reveals more about method than it does about the subject matter of the quest, the world around us.

When a clerk pops up behind the reception desk of the American Deaf-Mute Assembly (Californian chapter) and starts signing at her, Oedipa considers giving him the V. Mike Fallopian – Oedipa and Metzger meet Fallopian in The Scope, a bar frequented by Yoyodyne employees. He tells them about The Peter Pinguid Society, a right-wing, anti-government organization that he belongs to. Also called acid, LSD (Lysergic acid diethylamide) is a hallucinogenic drug that can affect the user's perception of time, color, movement, and sound. This psychedelic can cause the early onset of schizophrenia in some individuals. Looking down at San Francisco a few minutes later from the high point of the bridge’s arc, she saw smog. Haze, she corrected herself, is what it is, haze. How can they have smog in San Francisco? Smog, according to the folklore, did not begin till farther south. It had to be the angle of the sun. It is the desire for silence that unites the underground in opposition to the Government and the mainstream political culture:Oedipa ultimately discovers the horn is a symbol of the Tristero organization. In the novel, Tristero is an organization that began in the 16th century and functioned as an alternative to the mainstream, government-sponsored Thurn and Taxis Postal System. Unfortunately, Thurn and Taxis monopolized the mail industry and quelled any opposition, essentially forcing Tristero out of business. Soon, Oedipa met a man who wore a muted post horn. Oedipa mentioned Thurn and Taxis but got no response. Oedipa told him everything. He explained that he was a member of Inamorati Anonymous. The symbol originated with a fired member of Yoyodyne who recognized that love was his weakness. Oedipa wandered the streets, locating the Tristero symbol everywhere. She wandered into a Mexican diner and found Jesús Arrabal, an anarchist she and Pierce had met in Mazatlán. Lying near him was an old anarchist paper with an image of the horn but Jesús knew nothing. On a bus, Oedipa found the image and at the airport she overheard it. She would later wonder when she had dreamt it. Near morning, Oedipa spied a crumpled old man, with the horn tattooed. He wanted Oedipa to drop a letter for his disenchanted wife in a WASTE box under the freeway. Oedipa felt helpless when a rooming house collected the old man. An hour later, she found the WASTE can. She followed the WASTE carrier until he ironically led her to the home of Nefastis. Through Driblette, Pynchon is also able to poke fun at literary scholars (which, hey, we're your friends, Pynchon!). His work is purposely designed to mess with their minds. Though it vaguely hints at deeper meaning, it is full of red herrings, rabbit holes, false significance, and enormously complex plots that turn out not to resolve themselves.

Oedipa is stirred by this development, but not quite shaken. The key to reading Pynchon is recognizing that a comedian never wishes to be found-out as a satirist; to be found-out is to admit earnestness and intention. Even Eugène Ionesco, Pynchon’s literary uncle, had a purpose to his parody in the bawdy The Bald Soprano—although it took him years to admit the game. Pynchon might throw Oedipa into a world she did not create, but he does so by arming her and disarming the men who surround her. Pynchon, Thomas (December 1965). "The World (This One), The Flesh (Mrs. Oedipa Maas), And The Testament Of Pierce Inverarity". Esquire. pp.170–173, 296–303. (excerpt) Whether or not Pierce might be symbolic of God, Oedipa’s actions in the novel are dictated and driven by his Will. Hey," said Oedipa, "can't I get somebody to do it for me?""Me," said Roseman, "some of it, sure. But aren't you even interested?""In what?""In what you might find out." As things developed, she was to have all manner of revelations. Hardly about Pierce Inveracity, or herself; but about what remained yet had somehow, before this, stayed away. There had hung the sense of buffering, insulation, she had noticed the absence of intensity, as if watching a movie, just perceptibly out of focus, that the projectionist refused to fix. And had also gently conned herself into the curious, Rapunzel-like role of a pensive girl somehow, magically, prisoner among the pines and salt fogs of Kinneret, looking for somebody to say hey, let down your hair.

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Joffe, Justin (June 19, 2017). "How Radiohead's 'O.K. Computer' Predicted Our Age of Acceleration". Observer.