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Crying of Lot 49
The philosophy behind all Pynchon novels lies in the synthesis of
philosophers and modern physicists. Ludwig Wittgenstein viewed the world
as a "totality of facts, not of things."1 This idea can be combined with
a physicist's view of the world as a closed system that tends towards
chaos. Pynchon asserts that the measure of the world is its entropy.2 He
extends this metaphor to his fictional world. He envelops the reader,
through various means, within the system of The Crying of Lot 49.
Pynchon designed The Crying of Lot 49 so that there would be two levels of
observation: that of the characters such as our own Oedipa Maas, whose
world is limited to the text, and that of the reader, who looks at the
world from outside it but who is also affected by his relationship to that
world.3 Both the reader and the characters have the same problems
observing the chaos around them. The protagonist in The Crying of Lot 49,
Oedipa Mass, like Pynchon's audience, is forced to either involve herself
in the deciphering of clues or not participate at all.4
Oedipa's purpose, besides executing a will, is finding meaning in a life
dominated by assaults on people's perceptions through drugs, sex and
television. She is forced out of her complacent housewife lifestyle of
tupperware parties and Muzak into a chaotic system beyond her capabilities
to understand. Images and facts are constantly spit forth. Oedipa's role
is that of Maxwell's Demon: to sort useful facts from useless ones. The
reader's role is also one of interpreting countless symbols and metaphors
to arrive at a meaning. Each reader unravels a different meaning.
Unfortunately, Maxwell's Demon can only apply to a closed system.
Pynchon's fictional system is constantly expanding to include more and
more aspects of contemporary America.5 Therefore, the reader and Oedipa
are inefficient sorters. Both are left at a panicky state of confusion,
or paranoia.
Paranoia unites the reader and Oedipa. If we define "paranoia" not as a
mental aberration but as a tendency to find meaning in symbols whether the
meanings exist or not, we can clearly see the similarity between Oedipa
and us. Paranoids do not see plots here and there in history; they see a
conspiracy as the driving force behind all historical events.
At the climax of the novel, Oedipa sees the muted post horn everywhere she
goes. Could she simply be delusional, as most witnesses to her think, or
is there actually a conspiracy involving the Trystero? As Oedipa delves
into the Trystero's history and Pierce's estate, one of four possibilities
arises: "...either she has indeed stumbled onto a secret organization
having objective, historical existence ...; or she is hallucinating it by
projecting a pattern onto various signs only randomly associated; or she
is the victim of a hoax...; or she is hallucinating such a hoax..."6 The
tension among all four ossibilities leads to Oedipa becoming increasing
more paranoid as the novel progresses.
One of the most effective literary techniques Pynchon uses to involve the
reader in his fictional world is his use of details.7 The explicit
history of Thurn and Taxis serves to overburden the reader with names and
places that on the surface have no relation to the story at hand. The
purpose of these details is to overlap the reader's world with the
fictional one. Pynchon flirts with the reader. He allows the reader to
see more of his world than any of his other characters can. Pynchon wants
to lure the reader into the character's search for meaning.
Furthermore, the alternations of fact with fiction, such as the
description of the historical basis of the Peter Pinguid Society8, confuse
the reader to such an extent that he is forced to rely upon Oedipa to
decipher reality from illusion. Pynchon even denies the reader and Oedipa
time to sort out the information by moving rapidly to the next event.
The blending of authenticity with fiction introduces an epistemological
aspect to Pynchon's work. Much of The Crying of Lot 49 tackles the
historical evidence for the Trystero. Scholars have found that the actual
history of the Trystero, a Renaissance postal system, was shrouded in
mystery. It is also entirely possible that GIs were buried underneath a
lake after W.W.II. Why is it not possible that their bones were used for
cigarette filter? Pynchon wants the reader to recognize and plunge into
the shaded area between fiction and reality. Pierce and Pynchon tell
Oedipa and the reader, respectively, that we don't know much for certain.
In Pynchon's comical world, our senses deceive us, ruling out an Empirical
solution to the epistemological question. What seems rational really is
not, making a Rationalist solution unacceptable. By ruling out a basis
for an epistemological interpretation outside the text, Pynchon commands
the audience to accept Oedipa as its interpreter.9
The mystery-story plot used in Lot 49 is the most obvious reader-
involvement technique. What is the Trystero? Who was Pierce Inverarity?
These basic questions are placed close to the novel's surface to drive the
reader to explore further, at the very least. In fact, a mystery novel is
a very basic meta-novel. The reader construes a suspect before the author
reveals it to him. In our case, we think that events, places and names
connect, but we are never sure until Pynchon confirms it for us, if at all.
There are many metaphors that describe the relationship between the author
and reader in Lot 49. The name Oedipa Maas evokes the famous Greek riddle-
solver Oedipus, whose quest to interpret the Delphic prophecies leads to
his downfall. Maas elicits the reader to think of Newton's laws, where
Oedipa is acted upon by the gravity of her surroundings. An object, once
put in motion, as Oedipa is when she is named executrix of a will, tends
to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. Pynchon gives us
two options when presenting metaphors like the Oedipus or Newtonian
allusion: either they are patterns for interpreting the meaning of Lot 49,
or they are unclear, deceptive invitations for interpretations, purposely
made up by the author.10
The character that unites the respective quests of the reader and Oedipa
is Pierce verarity, Oedipa's dead ex-boyfriend. The objects that
Inverarity leaves behind at his death are clues to his identity. It is
the job of Oedipa to "bestow life on what had persisted, to try to be what
Driblette was, the dark machine in the center of the planetarium, to bring
the estate into pulsing stelliferous Meaning, all in a soaring dome around
here."11
To Oedipa, Pierce is a thought that could impose an order on the chaos of
clues around her. Pierce could make complicated networks out of nothing.
He alone created the chaos around Oedipa. Pynchon succeeds in embodying
Pierce Inverarity as a force within the novel. Pierce was a "knight of
deliverance"12 who had "failed to free Oedipa Maas from the tower of her
own consciousness of the world."13 To put it in terms of paranoia,
Inverarity is the conspirator behind all events in the novel.
The author, Pynchon, parallels Pierce. Pynchon creates a web of events
that the reader must interpret. The reader is blanketed beneath a
"semiotic regime," a place where signs and symbols can be decoded in an
infinite number of ways.14
The most ingenious method of involving the reader in the novel in Lot 49
is the mock-Jacobean drama 'The Courier's Tragedy'. Pynchon compares
Oedipa witnessing the play to the reader apprehending the novel. For
example, Pynchon switches from Jacobean vocabulary to modern phrases
("While a battle rages in the streets outside the palace, Pasquale is
locked up in his patrician hothouse, holding an orgy."15). This distances
the reader from the play, similar to Oedipa's role as a confused onlooker,
thereby giving Oedipa and us a false sense of security. We soon find
elements of 'The Courier's Tragedy' almost in all subsequent events of the
novel.
Pynchon, via Driblette, speaks to the reader: "You guys, you're like the
Puritans about the Bible. So hung up with words, words."16 This is not a
warning to the reader and Oedipa against interpretation. Instead, it is a
warning to the reader and Oedipa of the addictive nature of their
respective searches. Oedipa's search for the original version of 'The
Courier's Tragedy', which is obstructed by her inability to separate her
play from its author, editor or producer, is an exaggerated metaphor of
the reader's troubles in making sense of the novel.17
The above-mentioned metaphors and literary techniques are vehicles for
many other of Pynchon's themes. For our purposes, they serve to wed the
reader's quest for a literary meaning with Oedipa's quest for self-
discovery. As mentioned before, a major element within the reader and
Oedipa's quest is paranoia. Paranoia pushes the reader through the text.
We are constantly led towards a conclusion, but then deceived. Our
inability to decipher symbols relates to our inability to increase the
communicative entropy of our world. Nevertheless, The Crying of Lot 49
succeeds in actively involving the reader within the text, a hallmark of
postmodern literature.
Duyfhuizen, Bernard. "Disrupting Story in The Crying of Lot 49,"
Mindful Pleasures: Essays on Thomas Pynchon. Boston: Little,Brown, 1976.
Hipkiss, Robert M. The American Absurd. New York: University of Chicago
Press, 1985.
Johnston, John. "Paranoia as a Semiotic Regime in The Crying of Lot 49,"
New Essays on the Crying of Lot 49. New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1991. Plater, William
M. The Grim Phoenix. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.
Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. St. Louis: Harper & Row, 1966.
Seed, David. The Fictional Labyrinths of Thomas Pynchon. Iowa City:
University of Iowa Press, 1988.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Tractus Logico-Philosophicus. New York: Harper &
Row, 1965. 1 Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractus Logico-Philosophicus, p. 7.
2 William M. Plater, The Grim Phoenix (Indiana University Press, 1978), p.
2. 3 The Grim Phoenix, p. 12.
4 Bernard Duyfhuizen, "Disrupting Story in The Crying of Lot 49,"
Mindful Pleasures (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), p. 3.
5 John Johnston. "Paranoia as a Semiotic Regime in The Crying of Lot
49,"New Essays on the Crying of Lot 49 (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1991), p.
6 "Paranoia", p. 4.
7 The Grim Phoenix, p. 15.
8 Crying of Lot 49, p. 49.
9 Robert Hipkiss, The American Absurd, (University of Chicago: New York),
p. 90 10 Paranoia as a Semiotic Regime, p. 6.
11 Crying of Lot 49, p. 58.
12 Crying of Lot 49, p. 22 .
13 The Grim Phoenix, p. 26 .
14 Paranoia as a Semiotic Regime, p. 1 .
15 Crying of Lot 49, p. 69.
16 Crying of Lot 49, p. 79 .
17 David Seed, Fictional Labyrinths of Thomas Pynchon (University of
Iowa Press: Iowa City), p. 124.
Word Count: 1872
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