The Crying of Lot 49: Thomas Pynchon

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Mrs. Oedipa Maas received a letter naming her executrix of Pierce Inverarity's estate. Pierce was a California real estate mogul with a great number of assets whom she had an affair with years ago. Pierce died a year before the will was found. Oedipa did errands, trying to uncover what happened a year ago. Finally, she remembered a three A.M. phone call from Pierce. He had spoken to her in different voices. Oedipa's husband, Wendell "Mucho" Maas, arrived home. He complained, as usual, that his boss, Funch, at KCUF was trying to censor him. Mucho had formerly worked as a used car salesman. Mucho had tried not to be a stereotypical used car salesman, but the job overwhelmed him. Oedipa tried, unsuccessfully, to calm his memories. At three A.M., Dr. Hilarius, Oedipa's shrink, called and asked Oedipa if she was taking the tranquilizer pills. She refused to take pills or join his experiment testing hallucinogenic drugs on housewives. The next morning, Oedipa met with her lawyer, Roseman. Roseman played footsie with her. After lunch, he explained what Oedipa would do as executrix. Oedipa thought of herself as Rapunzel, Pierce having reached the top of her tower using a credit card to jimmy the doors. She thought of the painting by Remedios Varos she had once seen with Pierce in Mexico City which had made her cry. Out of the tower in the painting, wove a tapestry that contained the world and forced Oedipa to fear that she could not escape. A scientist, Nefastis is obsessed with the idea of perpetual motion. He claims to have a machine that defies the laws of thermodynamics and has psychic abilities. The machine doesn't work for Oedipa. 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. 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] Bortz showed her slides of the Vatican version, likely a Scurvhamite project, an extreme Puritan gesture to damn the theater. Bortz showed Oedipa a book by Blobb which Wharfinger had used to learn about the marauders in Italy. From her research, Oedipa created a history of the Tristero. The next day, Oedipa attended Driblette's burial. After hearing the eulogy, Oedipa tried to communicate with Driblette. She dreaded that the Tristero had removed Driblette as it had removed Mucho, Metzger, and Hilarius. However, Driblette did not respond. The libraries were of no further help to Oedipa. Bortz fabricated scenarios of Tristero meetings and disagreements and how their actions related inversely with those of Thurn and Taxis.

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

It is the desire for silence that unites the underground in opposition to the Government and the mainstream political culture: She is a stranger in a strange land, having grown up and been educated during the conservative, Cold War 50’s: Pynchon, Thomas (June 12, 1966). "A Journey into the Mind of Watts". The New York Times Magazine. Pynchon's article about the 1965 Watts riots. Far from dated, Pynchon’s novel is worth revisiting half a century after its publication. The book’s main character, Oedipa Maas, is a woman seeking meaning in a confusing world. She begins the novel in a mystically domestic moment, standing “in the living room, stared at by the greenish dead eye of the TV tube, spoke the name of God, tried to feel as drunk as possible.” She has just been named executrix of the estate of her millionaire ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity, who had a penchant for prank phone calls and financing the military-industrial complex. Although Oedipa never discovers the truth of Tristero's existence, her obsessive investigation leads her to contemplate the difference between reality and conspiracy. Along the way, Oedipa also peers into the circumstances surrounding mainstream society and counterculture. Reality vs. Conspiracy

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. As ever with Pynchon's writing, the labyrinthine plots offer a myriad of cultural references. Knowing these references allows for a much richer reading of the work. J. Kerry Grant wrote A Companion to the Crying of Lot 49 to catalogue these references but it is neither definitive nor complete. [7] The Beatles [ edit ] A stamp expert, Genghis Cohen helps Oedipa work through the mystery while examining Pierce's stamp collection.Mike Fallopian is involved in an anti-government organization. He claims to be part of a secret underground mail operation that rivals the postal service. Fallopian suggests that Pierce might have sent Oedipa on a wild goose chase as his final prank. She showed him the letter from Metzger. Mucho knew all about her and Pierce: it had ended a year before Mucho married her. He read the letter and withdrew along a shy string of eye blinks. "What am I going to do?" she said.