Let's Discuss The Crying of Lot 49, If You'd Like.

[Anonymous No.5650760]

The postmodern work is the one which, by the last page, has torn every preceding one from its spine and left you alone with a flapping empty paperback cover. The Crying of Lot 49 is this exactly. Drenching itself in what passes in literary academia for comedy, Lot 49 tries its very best to hide itself among its fellow satires, with characters like Fallopian and Hilarius camouflaging a novel with something to say as one that says nothing at all, or vice-versa? Ironically, Pynchon manages both. Like her namesake, Oedipa is presented with a riddle. Unlike him, Oedipa ostensibly has no sphinx, save for the titular subject, and reaches no conclusion. She has only, by the end of the novel, the riddle itself, which may or may not even exist, which may or may not be a hallucination, which may or may not be a cold-hearted prank.

The novel is /exactly the same/. Pynchon tells you exactly what he plans to do to both Oedipa and you, the reader, at various points throughout; in the first place, Oedipa notices the visual similarity between the circuits of radio and the circuitry of San Narciso, ready to reveal something to her if only she takes the time to study it. Pynchon here turns his gaze to his reader: 'Here is /your/ circuitry,' mockingly, 'now make sense of it.' So much of the circuitry is bundled into his second gambit, being The Courier's Tragedy. The plot of the play, mirroring that of the 'actual' conflict between Turn & Taxis and The Tristero, is what first drags Oedipa out her "tower" and plunges her head first into the "tapestry" of the conspiracy, if there is one.

And that is the question indeed: Is there anything more to it than a series of coincidences? As Oedipa asks this question of the evidence she finds, so to does Pynchon ask it of the novel as a form: Is any novel, really, anything more than plot? Is there ever a hidden message in the circuitry, or is it circuitry for circuitry's sake? Is there a Demon sorting this disparate information, and if so, can only the "sensitives" of academia reach him? Or does it all amount to so much "crying?" Pynchon was in fact criticized by the New York Times for coming up short to suffuse the novel with meaning by way of Oedipa's musings on the railroad tracks in the final chapter; I should think this was all part of the act.

Personally I'm unsure of Pynchon's stance; on the one hand he seems critical of those who meander through life devoid of meaning, love, and actual living, yet on the other, he suggests that any actual meaning is impossible, if not unreachable by the mind that is un-sensitive, unaltered by drugs, or, at perhaps his most desperate, alive.

What do you think, /lit/? I'll be the first to admit I am a novice to his work but I'm utterly captivated. Moving on to either Gravity's Rainbow or Bleeding Edge next, having wrapped up Inherent Vice before Lot 49 (entertaining, but a void by comparison to the implosively dense Lot 49, the latter being less than half the length of the former).

[Anonymous No.5650780]

nah

[Anonymous No.5650785]

>>5650760
SWTG

[Anonymous No.5650806]

>>5650785
hate to be a shite, but what does SWTG stand for?

[Anonymous No.5650813]

>>5650806
Start with the Greeks.

[Anonymous No.5650814]

YOu should read V next, OP
>>5650806
start with the memes

[Anonymous No.5650816]

>>5650760

OEDipa Maas

Oxford English Dictionary

[Anonymous No.5650841]

>>5650816
>Oedipa
>Oedipus

[Anonymous No.5650842]

>>5650780
>>5650785
>>5650806
>>5650813


why do you do this? please stop doing this. take it to /mu/, that is what this board will look like soon if you keep it up. "5x5 chart, last 3 months" but with wordsworth classics covers. "take one chapter from each of favorite author's books to make THE ULTIMATE NOVEL!"

>>5650816

hm, i hadn't notice this but i'm skeptical as to the significance. care to elaborate?

[Anonymous No.5650854]

>>5650842
The oxford english dictionary is a recurring theme throughout the novel.

Metzger has a copy with him when he first meets up with Oedipa, and near the ending the initials "OED" are noted to be on one of the stamps in Inverarity's collection

[Anonymous No.5650866]

>>5650854
o h .

hm, still skeptical as to if this means anything,

[Anonymous No.5651008]

>>5650760
Yep OP, I think you pretty much nailed it. It's probably my 2nd or 3rd favorite Pynchon work just because the artistry of the structure and details mesh so well, but Pynchon has claimed to dislike it, probably because the "what does it all mean?" "nothing/everything" gimmick is over-simple compared to some of his other work. Almost any of the individual scenes works as a microcosm of the book as a whole--the Courier's Tragedy chapter seems to get mentioned the most but I think the Maxwell's Demon chapter is the best, because it invites us to question whether we would even notice the difference if the world was ordered, or whether we look for and find evidence of the Demon's handiwork either way.

Something else I've never seen mentioned here: there are a ridiculous amount of "lots" in the book, which is hilarious on the first or second read-through when you realize how much Pynchon is fucking with you by constantly making you expect the title of the book to show up. Something that has been mentioned on here: the idea that "Torquato Tasso" provides a clue to answering the question of Oedipa's insanity. Search that term in the archives for a really great reading.

I love both Gravity's Rainbow and Bleeding Edge for different reasons, have fun with whichever you choose.

[Anonymous No.5651060]

>>5651008
yes, I thought the Demon was fantastic as well! My favorite part about it was, even when Pynchon explicitly said that it was (paraphrasing here) a metaphor that combined two separate concepts into once beautiful package, I was so wrapped up in the Tristero conspiracy that I passed over this completely until I sort of put the breaks on in the last chapter. that's part of the majesty of the novel, I think, how he sweeps you up in the crying and you lose sight of the lot.

i had a little bit of help from a yale lecture that is on youtube, so i certainly didn't "nail it" on my own.

i suppose i lack the context for his self-critique, though considering the time period i don't think it was a gimmick. if this novel had been written yesterday, gimmick would certainly come to mind.

have you ever read A Visit from the Good Squad, by Jennifer Egan? we had to read it for a literature class and I hated it. it was praised as a "deliverance" from the ennui of postmodernism, and in fact some critics (including my professor's wife, who wrote and presented as guest lecture her dissertation on the novel) feel Egan directly attacked both Pynchon and Wallace; that novel, i felt, was chock full of gimmicks which i couldn't believe anyone had ever taken seriously, let alone doctoral students in english literature.

[Anonymous No.5651078]

>>5651060
ex. one chapter is a blatant parody of infinite jest, footnotes and all, and another is literally a powerpoint presentation.

[Anonymous No.5651089]

I didn't really like it. Reminded me a of William burroughs and The Digging Leviathan but ultimately I thought the story was lacking by the end.

[Anonymous No.5651116]

>>5651060
>>5651078
Oh yeah, I really liked Goon Squad though. I cared enough about the characters that when the chapters got weird I was already invested and just started enjoying it more. It's definitely gimmicky, but I think it helps that it works more as a short story cycle than as a novel; if you don't like the gimmick (and some people won't come along for the Powerpoint ride, I get that) then you just have to wait for the next chapter. I usually hate second person but I thought the second-person chapter was incredible.

The journalist chapter is definitely a pisstake on DFW, but it's a pretty funny, good pisstake. I didn't really see anything that looked like an attack on Pynchon, but I'd be interested in how your prof's wife read it.

[Anonymous No.5651148]

>>5651116
to be perfectly honest her presentation was a condensed version in the first place so i can't recall exactly where she said the Pynchon critique was. she did quote DFW directly, where in an interview he discussed the writer as a "creepy" person lurking in shadows looking for human interactions as their "food." went on the say that jones' animalization of kitty was Egan's answer to this, saying that posmo literature has been a continuation of male dominance of the novel, and that Pynchon et. al. should be subject to closer examination, etc etc. she spent a lot more time dissecting the jules jones chapter vs infinite jest as whole. the short-style cycle felt gimmicky to me as well, such that the gimmick overrode the literature and kind of furthered the distance between be and the text; i suppose egan had intended the opposite, and to a lot of people's minds pulled it off. not for me though, oh well!

[Anonymous No.5651155]

>>5651148
short-story** cycle

between me*** and the text

[Anonymous No.5651198]

>>5650760

>The postmodern work is the one which, by the last page, has torn every preceding one from its spine and left you alone with a flapping empty paperback cover.

Oooh, I like that. I'm gonna use that.

[Anonymous No.5651216]

>>5651198
come up with your own, not because i feel a sense of ownership but because undergrad paper topic sentences are easy to come up with if you read as much as you should and apply yourself

[Anonymous No.5651276]

>>5651216

Motherfucker I graduated two years ago. I just found that sentence particularly eloquent.

[Anonymous No.5651281]

Pynchon is a fuccboi

>tfw Pynchon was an answer on jeopardy tonight

[Anonymous No.5651295]

>>5651276
my mistake, and congratulations. i appreciate the compliment.

>>5651281
i know, i watched it to. i hadn't watched jeopardy in over a week so it was really eerie that i had just finished Lot 49 not an hour before.

[Anonymous No.5651303]

>>5651148
>>5651155
Hmm, I didn't read the Jules Jones thing as so negative or particularly gendered, just kind of a playful jab at the DFW-ization of journalism and literature. I mean, I would think that DFW and Pynchon too are pretty clear influences on Egan, but I'm sure she's spent more time than me thinking about it if it's her dissertation.

I liked Goon Squad but, for what it's worth, nowhere on the level that I love Mr. Pinecone.

[Anonymous No.5651346]

An interesting theme that also runs through L49 is that of the self-awareness of pop culture and its authenticity. The Paranoids are a style over substance band planted firmly in Californian artifice - the former child star investigator who hooks up with Oedipa. The cultural revolution of the 60s manifests itself in a sort of apathy to the line between art, entertainment, life and fiction, as well as a paranoia as to what in life actually IS authentic - this is what the housewives on LSD and the whole Hilarius breakdown alludes to. People react to mass media through ironic detachment and existential angst.

[Anonymous No.5651380]

I like it better than V

[Anonymous No.5651391]

>>5651060

OP your comments are certainly interesting and gave me more insight into the whole Demon aspect in the novel but I've got to say that those Yale Amy Hungerford lectures are generally such shite and so disorganized and unfocused. It's a shame because she often has interesting things to say, it just seems she has no ability to reign in her own ideas in a lecture format

[Anonymous No.5651394]

>>5651346
Wow, hadn't even picked up on this. I had been looking for a thread to the Paranoids other than just a vehicle for the conspiracy to unfold further, thanks for this! Surprisingly relevant to certain spheres of 21st century literature, concerned as they are with pursuing the authentic amidst a sea of self-conscious irony.

Always amazes me how much some authors touch on in so few pages, whereas others don't manage to touch on anything at all across several books, or at least on anything worth hashing out.

[Anonymous No.5651403]

>>5651391
I'll say this about the one I watched: in my defense it was helpful only in pointing ideas which had already been brewing towards examples in the text that were relevant. Had this been a paper for a class I'd have spent more time finding the examples myself, hopefully coming up with more and better ones.

[Anonymous No.5651404]

>>5650760

hey guys can you recommend any non-fiction books that address the ideas that guys like Pynchon and DeLillo often address? I mean stuff about paranoia in the USA related to issues of surveillance but also in terms of the Cold War and its significance in creating an atmosphere that DeLillo believed was one in which people felt as though their was the potential for a daily threat to their existence.

I'm a Canadian fascinated by American culture and I'd like to learn more about this

[Anonymous No.5651411]

>>5651391
>those Yale Amy Hungerford lectures are generally such shite and so disorganized and unfocused
Exactly what I thought of it. The only thing I remember is her prattling on and on about Oedipa's femininity as if it matters as if literally anything else about the book isn't more interesting by a mile.

[Anonymous No.5651427]

>>5651411

Exactly. I tried to begin that class this summer after finishing my undergrad and I had to give up after her second lecture on Wise Blood which focused almost entirely on "dismembered" body parts in the book, an aspect that I barely even remembered from the novel and it didn't really seem as though she had a firm grasp on what O'Connor is all about. Why does so much modern literary analysis by academics suck so hard?

[Anonymous No.5651433]

>>5651411
I actually thought her bit about Oedipa manipulating the masculine view of women to get information from the men she encounters interesting, albeit not necessarily supported by the text. It didn't ever seem to me that any of these men required much effort to get them to divulge what information they had. Specifically the bit where Hungerford cites Oedipa dressing up as a college student to go see the professor; Pynchon isn't known for his brevity, and that he spent only a sentence on her preparation for the visit leads me to believe that it was just Oedipa getting dressed out of bed, as anyone would do.

[Anonymous No.5651458]

>>5651433
I don't doubt it's interesting enough material to write a forgettable paper on but as a lecture it's a complete waste of time.

[Anonymous No.5651485]

>>5651281
What was the category and question?

[Anonymous No.5651513]

>>5651485
the category related to audio books, and started like "There was a great deal of Crying in the Lot of 49 when so-and-so read this author's 2013 novel Bleeding Edge." all three were stumped, which was shocking considering the returning champ was an english professor!

[Anonymous No.5651549]

>>5651513
lel
I was shocked to find one of my professors knows of Pinecone, considering she mentions Breaking Bad a lot and teaches a class on the Coen Brothers

[Anonymous No.5651684]

>>5651549

to be fair the Coens have a couple of movies that are actually interesting

[Anonymous No.5651768]

>>5650760
>drags Oedipa out her "tower" and plunges her head first into the "tapestry" of the conspiracy
> Is there a Demon sorting this disparate information, and if so, can only the "sensitives" of academia reach him? Or does it all amount to so much "crying?"

[Anonymous No.5651959]

>>5651768
>he posted this