The Crying of Lot 49

In the second chapter of The Crying of Lot 49, we meet Metzger, the coexecutor of Pierce's will. He also catches the whole whacked-out LA moviestar aura, where you can't always follow their train of thought, and you know they have a dark side entangled with sex and drugs. Metzger is first described as "so good-looking that Oedipa thought at first They, somebody up there, were putting her on. It had to be an actor." It turns out that he was a childstar, born and raised in the world of film as "Baby Igor." As Baby Igor, he learned how to become a lawyer, and told through a satirical way he says, "A lawyer in a courtroom, in front of any jury, becomes an actor, right? ...Me, I'm a former actor who became a lawyer. They've done a pilot film of a TV series, in fact, based loosely on my career, starring my friend Manny Di Presso, a one-time lawyer who quit his firm to become an actor." I just think that passage is funny because that is exactly the kind of thing you would see in Hollywood, which is one of the great ways that Pynchon characterizes America's weird obsession with fame.

He is probably my favorite character so far because he is a complete cliché, but at the same time, he isn't. He is all about having a good time, but you can tell that he seeks things that are bigger than himself, as if he needs to know that he will live past being Baby Igor and the girls who are too easy. Not only that but he brings out something in Oedipa that makes her less mental and more human. The kind of usual confused where emotions get in the way of things, versus her normal nuttiness where she confuses her physical environment. He seems like the kind of person who has become crazy because they have been through things that could be deemed crazy, and I feel like that his confusion is not really his fault.

The other thing that becomes even more important in this chapter is the sounds that Pynchon likes to use. In the first chapter I realized that he makes his characters have accents where they use things like "finks" and "shirks," and gives every character a strangely spelled name (Oedipa, Mucho, Metzger, Funch, San Narciso, Inverarity, etc.). I think that this is to show the confusion of everyone, and how things are not always precise and to the point, but cloudy and tangled.

In the second chapter there is also symbolism used in Oedipa and the game she plays with Metzger, called Strip Boticelli. In order for Oedipa to get answers to all her questions, Metzger makes a game where she must take off an item of clothing for every answer she wants. Before playing, Oedipa rushes into the bathroom to put on as many items of clothing as she can in order to ask as many questions without revealing herself. I think this symbolizes how once again, Oedipa is unwilling to get too close to a situation, and wants answers to her questions, but when she gets to the truth, she’s scared. I think this could be applied to how she wants to know more about Pierce because some part of her still wants him, and to be able to let someone in, but she makes sure there are too many layers to get through so she can stop them when she wants.

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