The Crying of Lot 49

The book starts out with the main character, Oedipa Maas returning home from a tupperware party to find that an ex-boyfriend of hers, Pierce Inverarity, has left her as the executor of his will. Having never carried out a dead man's wish before, she sets to listening to her distant husband's complaints, arguing with her psychotherapist, and playing footsies with her family lawyer/ group therapy ally. When she finally allows herself to analyze her relationship with Pierce, she realizes that she might have been truly happy with him.

The first few pages were particularly difficult to get through, mainly because Pynchon's writing style is hard to adjust to. He has sentences with too many thoughts that carry on for much too long. When he is making a joke, it is awfully subtle but very satirical. For example, when he describes Wendell "Mucho" Maas (Oedipa's husband) he says, "The sight of sawdust, even pencil shavings, made him wince, his own kind being known to use it for hushing sick transmissions, and though he dieted he could still not as Oedipa did use honey to sweeten his coffee for like all things viscous it distressed him, recalling too poignantly what is often mixed with motor oil to ooze dishonest into gaps between piston and cylinder wall." The oil references how he hates cars and the way people make cars like themselves, and how he generally hates everything. It was only when Pynchon described Mucho that I finally started to get into the book. But not long afterwards, he lost me again as he went into a series of bizarre conversations between Oedipa and her psychotherapist, Dr. Hilarius, who is not funny at all, and Roseman, her lawyer. It wasn't so much that I was adjusting to his style, it was more like the story was starting mid-conversation, and ended before I knew what anyone was talking about.

That actually seems to be how the whole first chapter goes. The reader knows that there is some kind of mystery behind Pierce and Oedipa, that there is a secret letter from Pierce that has already been read and contents not revealed, and that Oedipa is on some sort of medication that could kill her; however, none of these things are explained, despite the feel that they are important.

For the final page or so of the chapter, there is a large tone shift. Pynchon goes into Oedipa's minds and feelings for the first time as he describes the way Pierce made her feel. It becomes something serious and almost tragic. Pynchon compares their relationship to Rapunzel. How Oedipa waited for someone to call for her to "let down your hair," and Pierce climbed up, but got too close and, "Her lovely hair turned, through some sinister sorcery, into a great unanchored wig, and down he fell, on his ass." This really characterizes the two because Pierce was willing to get close to her, while she could not. Then Pycnhon goes on to say how Oedipa further questions her own actions, blaming her chosen isolation on magic.

I think that the craziest thing of this whole book is that all of this took place in just the first twelve pages.

• 
• 
• 
• 
•