The Crying of Lot 49 [Paperback]

Speaking of plot, there are two ways to describe it. One is to say that it is about Oedipa Maas wandering California trying to figure out a conspiracy that seems to involve everyone she knows. The other is to read the book. There really isn't any middle ground. The problem with that is that the former doesn't mention Vatican cover-ups, child movie stars, highly lethal cans of hair spray, horn symbols, a band by the name of the Paranoids who aren't, LSD-addicted radio announcers or archaic postal systems trying to destroy American society, while the latter would take up just over 150 pages, far beyond the scope of this review.

The writing is typical Pynchon. Some sections meander into ruminations on a character's psyche, or page-long sojourns into plays, conspiracies, wanderings, etc. Other paragraphs are so fast paced that if your mind wanders for a second, you'll miss something important and have no idea what is going on. Often these crucial sentences are buried within a morass of extraneous information, so readers should pay attention at all times.

The names are fun and ridiculous. Mike Fallopian, the duchy of Squamuglia, Yoyodyne, Wharfinger, Chiclitz, Dr Hilarious, the list goes on. Settings are predictable only in the way that they will be completely unpredictable, in essence, you never know when or where the story is going to take you next.

Does it end satisfactorily? Can Pynchon recover all the myriad threads into a cohesive whole? No. But then, if he did, the story wouldn't make sense. By being about paranoia and conspiracy, an actual concrete resolution would hurt the book more than it would help. The closing sentence is a perfect example of this, and will probably seem frustrating to a casual reader, but if you sit back and think about it, no other ending would suffice. A masterful work, one that is extremely accessible for those people who are (rightly) intimidated by the monster that is Gravity's Rainbow.

Characters are typically one of two things: either the particulate projections of the author's personality, or the hoppled slaves of a demanding and unifying idea thought up by a wily and self-absorbed member of the literati. Pychon's character clearly fall into the latter category, with plastic personalities and rigid, affectless actions the norm, and mawkish tenderness strictly verboten. The main character, Oedipa, whose likability depends entirely upon whether or not you automatically like or dislike persons you know nothing significant about, is named by a former paracoitus as the executrix of his will. After some initial fumbling she, with assistance from legal-eagle Metzger, embarks on a quest that involves her in the shady shenaningans of secret societies whose dealings with a deceitful and delusive postal service (Tristero) are never fully uncovered by either the protagonist or the reader. The recurrent clues involving the corniculate emblem of Tristero lead Oedipa on an epic journey through an artfully constructed constellation of ideas that leaves her mystified and nonplussed. As you've probably deduced by now, the arc of the plot is non-existent; concepts and abstractions supply the riverbanks to Pynchon's stream of consciousness rather than story and character development.

Recondite tralatitions, regardless of their underlying contents, are exquisitely pleasurable to encounter when they're properly executed, and Pynchon's novella Lot 49 is no exception. I extracted more than a modicum of pleasure ferreting out the solutions to the symbolic puzzles and ciphers he sportively sprinkled throughout his peripatetic text despite their aimless and arbitrary nature. While many readers will be nonplussed and perhaps repulsed by the inky ooze of the text itself, those readers who see not a turbid river but a limpid stream, the bottom of which has been inscribed with the generative principle of all of Pynchon's puzzle books, will find its perusal a thrilling oblectation. A purely cerebral indulgence, bereft, however, of all human tenderness and emotion (the point, of course, but a sorry point it is).

One feels compelled to provide a brief antiphon to those who would lump Vladimir Nabokov into the same literary category as Thomas Pynchon. Primo, Nabokov isn't a post-modernist in any way, shape, or form. He was an avowed believer in indivisible monism, and expressed his recognition in more than one of his texts of the logical necessity of their existing an irreducible medium of existence; secundo, Nabokov wished to indict injustice and cruelty, whereas Pynchon simply wishes to convey "existential angst" and a banal form of claustrophobia. T hey both concoct puzzles, sure, and they both mastered prose, but one's a genius and the other a trifling epigone.

I am indifferent to whether or not you purchase this book. If you enjoy puzzles and have a large working memory, go nuts; if not, your time would be better spend flipping through Grisham or King.