What I Am Reading - The Crying of Lot 49

The Crying of Lot 49

Thomas Pynchon

Read it in wide paperback, 152 pages.

Well for such a short book I sure dragged my feet to write this.

This is my first Pynchon and when completed a friend that I was reading it with said 'achievement unlocked.'  The small book itself wasn’t much of a challenge, but this was a sort of introduction I suppose.  A place to start before digging into Pynchon's more notable work such as Gravity's Rainbow, V, and Against The Day, although I have no idea when I will be reading any of these.

So sally forth and what not.

The Crying of Lot 49 tells the brief story of Oedipa Maas, a Californian house wife, who is shocked to hear that her wealthy ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity, has died and left her as the executor to his will and estate.  Pretty simple entry to this small book.  We meet some of the characters that will lead Oedipa Maas through her adventure, and all have equally ludicrous names.  Her husband, Wendell "Mucho" Maas, is a radio jockey.  We also meet Metzger, the lawyer assigned to help Oedipa execute on the will.  So many brief character entries with so many weird names.  But we have gotten carried away.  As Oedipa begins digging through Pierce's things, she learns that he was a collector of many things, but most importantly weird stamps.  Through this discovery she goes on a journey to figure out and uncover the maybe conspiracy of a secret underground postal service.

For my first Pynchon I certainly wasn't disappointed.  The writing is fantastic, although I don't think I am clever enough to see or understand a lot of the humor.  Nonetheless there were some great moments and I loved most of the dialogue in this book.  Some of my favorite sequences involved the Paranoids, a band of pot smoking hippies and a play in which the actors portray the history of the underground postal service.  Those both were top notch.

Where the book fell flat for me was the lack of any defining ending.  I won't give away anything about the ending but it is in the last chapter that we learn the reason for the name of the book, but not much else.  I personally think Oedipa was in fact on LSD, but who knows except Pynchon I suppose.