The Crying of Lot 49
The Crying of Lot 49 is a novel by the American author Thomas Pynchon. It was published by J. B. Lippincott & Co. on April27, 1966. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, the plot follows Oedipa Maas, a young Californian woman who begins to embrace a conspiracy theory as she possibly unearths a centuries-old feud between two mail distribution companies. One of these companies, Thurn and Taxis, actually existed; operating from 1806 to 1867, Thurn and Taxis was the first private firm to distribute postal mail. Like most of Pynchon's writing, The Crying of Lot 49 is often described as postmodernist literature. Time magazine included the book in its list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.
Plot
In the mid-1960s, Oedipa Maas lives a fairly comfortable life in a northern Californian village, despite her lackluster marriage with Mucho Maas, a rudderless radio jockey and ephebophile, and her sessions with Dr. Hilarius, an unhinged German psychotherapist who tries to medicate his patients with LSD. One day, Oedipa learns of the death of an ex-lover, Pierce Inverarity, a wealthy and powerful real-estate mogul from the Los Angeles area, who has nominated her as the executor of his estate. Oedipa goes to meet Inverarity's lawyer, a former child actor named Metzger, and they begin an affair, which fascinates a local teenage rock band, the Paranoids, who begin following the pair voyeuristically. At a bar, Oedipa notices the graffiti symbol of a muted post horn with the label "W.A.S.T.E." and she chats with Mike Fallopian, a right-wing historian and critic of the postal system, who claims to use a secret postal service.Image:MutedPosthorn.png|right|thumb|The novel's ubiquitous muted post horn symbol
It emerges that Inverarity had Mafia connections, illicitly attempting to sell the bones of forgotten U.S. World War II soldiers for use as charcoal to a cigarette company. One of the Paranoids' friends mentions that this strongly reminds her of a Jacobean revenge play she recently saw called The Courier's Tragedy. Intrigued by the coincidence, Oedipa and Metzger attend a performance of the play, which briefly mentions the name "Tristero". After the show, Oedipa approaches the play's director and star, Randolph Driblette, who deflects her questions about the mention of the unusual name. After seeing a man scribbling the post horn symbol, Oedipa reconnects with Mike Fallopian, who tells her he suspects a conspiracy. This is supported when watermarks of the muted horn symbol are discovered hidden on Inverarity's private stamp collection. The symbol appears to be a muted variant of the coat of arms of Thurn and Taxis, a 19th-century European postal monopoly that suppressed all opposition, including Trystero, a competing postal service that was defeated but possibly driven underground. Based on the symbolism of the mute, Oedipa thinks that Trystero exists as a countercultural secret society with unknown goals.
She researches an older censored edition of The Courier's Tragedy, which confirms that Driblette indeed made a conscious choice to insert the "Tristero" line. She seeks answers through a machine claimed to have psychic abilities but the experience is awkward and unsuccessful. As she feverishly wanders the Bay Area, the muted post horn symbol appears in many random places. Finally, a nameless man at a gay bar tells her that the symbol simply represents an anonymous support group for people with broken hearts. Oedipa witnesses people referring to and using mailboxes disguised as regular waste bins marked with "W.A.S.T.E.". Even so, Oedipa sinks into paranoia, wondering if Trystero exists or if she is merely overthinking a series of false connections.
Fearing for her sanity, Oedipa makes an impromptu visit to Dr. Hilarius, only to find him having lost his own mind, firing a gun randomly and raving madly about his days as a Nazi medical intern at Buchenwald. She helps the police subdue him, only to return home to find that her husband Mucho has lost his mind in his own way, having become addicted to LSD. Oedipa consults an English professor about The Courier's Tragedy, learns that Randolph Driblette has mysteriously committed suicide, and is left pondering whether Trystero is simply a prolonged hallucination, a historical plot, or an elaborate practical joke that Inverarity arranged for her before his death. Oedipa goes to an auction of Inverarity's possessions and waits on the bidding of lot 49, which contains the stamp collection with the muted horn symbol. Having learned that a particular bidder is interested in the stamps, she hopes to discover if this person will be a representative of the Trystero secret society.
Characters
- Oedipa Maas – The protagonist. After the death of her ex-boyfriend, the real estate mogul Pierce Inverarity, she is appointed co-executor of his estate and discovers and begins to unravel what may or may not be a world conspiracy.
- Wendell "Mucho" Maas – Oedipa's husband, Mucho once worked in a used-car lot but recently became a disc jockey for KCUF radio in Kinneret, California.
- Metzger – A lawyer who works for Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus. He has been assigned to help Oedipa execute Pierce's estate. He and Oedipa have an affair.
- Miles, Dean, Serge and Leonard – The four members of the Paranoids, a small-time rock band consisting of marijuana-smoking American teenagers who sing with British accents and have haircuts inspired by the Beatles.
- 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.
- Stanley Koteks – An employee of Yoyodyne Corporation who knows something about the Trystero. Oedipa meets him when she wanders into his office while touring the plant.
- John Nefastis – A scientist obsessed with perpetual motion. He has tried to invent a type of Maxwell's demon to create a perpetual motion machine. Oedipa visits him to see the machine after learning about him from Stanley Koteks; the visit is unproductive and she runs out the door after he propositions her.
- 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.
- 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.
- Genghis Cohen – The most eminent philatelist in the Los Angeles area, Cohen was hired to inventory and appraise Inverarity's stamp collection. Oedipa and he discuss stamps and forgeries and he discovers the horn symbol watermark on Inverarity's stamps.
- Professor Emory Bortz – Formerly of UC Berkeley, now teaching at San Narciso, Bortz wrote the editor's preface in a version of Wharfinger's works. Oedipa tracks him down to learn more about Trystero.
Critical reception
Self-reception
Pynchon described, in the prologue to his 1984 collection Slow Learner, an "up-and-down shape of my learning curve" as a writer and specifically does not believe he maintained a "positive or professional direction" in the writing of The Crying of Lot 49, "which was marketed as a 'novel', and in which I seem to have forgotten most of what I thought I'd learned up until then".Allusions in the book
As ever with Pynchon's writing, the labyrinthine plots offer myriad 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.Maxwell's demon
After being prompted to by Stanley Koteks, Oedipa seeks out John Nefastis and his invention coined the 'Nefastis Machine'. This machine attempts to serve as a perpetual motion machine, utilizing the theory of Maxwell's demon to sort molecules within a closed chamber. Nefastis explains that a telepathic operator or 'sensitive' is necessary to work the invention by looking into a photo of James Clerk Maxwell.Despite Nefastis' attempt at invention, the second law of thermodynamics and its statement regarding entropy cannot be disproven, as the system gains entropy by way of measurement by the demon. This alludes to a famous retort of Maxwell's demon by Szilard and Brillouin which sought to establish congruence between entropy in information theory and thermodynamics. Scholars have pointed to the entropic nature and indeterminacy of the novel as a symbol which invalidates the demon's existence.
Oedipa's role within The Crying of Lot 49 can be likened to Maxwell's demon—a force which seeks to reverse the flow of entropy on the town of San Narciso. Just as the demon is hypothesized to sort unpredictable, random molecules to create order from disorder, Oedipa seeks to make sense of the mystery of Trystero. San Narciso as a city is often described as 'still' or 'silent'; a place where life has stagnated, one cultural microcosm of many within the United States. The concept of Trystero acts as a promise to reverse the entropic regress that America has fallen into, as an 'anarchist miracle'.