The Crying of Lot 49

Oedipa returns to San Narciso to finish learning what she can about the Trystero and hopefully figure out whatever Pierce had wanted he to know so she can put the whole experience to an end. She finds out that Metzger has run off to get married and has left a lawyer Oedipa does not know to help her execute the will. She moves on quickly and decides her best start is to find Driblette, the playwright who knew more about the Trystero than he let on, who committed suicide. Oedipa then goes to look for Emory Bortz, who wrote the original play that Driblette put on, in hopes that he can explain where the line "No hallowed skein of stars can ward, I trow, Who's once been set his tryst with Trystero" came from and more importantly, what it means. Bortz does not know the exact origin of the phrase, but thinks Trystero is linked to the Puritans as well as the Italians, and several other places. He gives her a book about the Trystero that describes a postal battle between them and Thurn and Taxis, as well as how the muted horn came, why men in all black are important, and other various secret symbols they use. She does not know what to make of the information, and goes to find Fallopian, who suggests that the whole Trystero is a clever trick that Pierce has played on her. Oedipa thinks the same, whether she wants to or not, and after talking to Genghis Cohen, decides to take a second look at everything. She realizes everywhere she has been and that has to do with the Trystero, is somehow related to Pierce. She then goes crazy. Oedipa finds out from Genghis that someone is interested in buying Pierce's stamp collection, whch will be auctioned off as lot 49. Still hungry for the truth, Oedipa assumes that this person knows about the Trystero, and goes in pursuit of him. The book closes as Oedipa regains her drive to solve the mystery as well as the beginning of the auction.
It is easy to say that this ending made me mad. I was so angry at Oedipa for giving up for the brief amount of time that she did because she wasted time. She never looked for the other people to see if the theory about Pierce and the Trystero being fake was true, so she should have kept pursuing, especially since her instincts told her it was not true. Then the entire ending is just so frustrating because the cycle never ends. The reader feels so close to the truth that they can taste it, but they never get to read about this new character who is crucial to the plot. Not only that, but I felt like Oedipa never finished changing. Her character was mid-recovery and it ended just as she was finding herself again. However, if the mystery were solved, and Oedipa made whole again, I do think that it would have been a little too happily ever after for me. But I really do wish that there was some kind of conclusion to the conspiracy.
From this book, I know that I like what I could understand. I basically had to reread this whole thing because so many things did not make sense. The final two chapters felt like a blur since it was kind of hard to understand what was going on. As far as the actual conspiracy goes, I had no idea what the Trystero was or why Oedipa needed to know if they existed or not. It is not like she knows what they do or how they affect society, or probably even her life. The Trystero could be anything, so it was kind of dumb for her to be in such avid pursuit of it when she didn't know what she was fighting for.
That is another big theme in the book that I liked and related to. The question of knowing and not knowing and believing in it or not. Fiction vs. non-fiction was ever present, and the way that the characters live in the world, with both fake and real, just shows how sometimes fiction is right. The whole character of Mucho is one way of showing this, since he wound up hooked on LSD and living a complete fallacy. He needed something to make him feel like he was happy, which is not that bad since in pretending to be happy, he actually becomes it.
Overall, I thought this book was good when it was good, but very dry and confusing. Maybe it is because I am a girl, but I like reading books that have more emotion in it than conspiracy plots. I also like to read about characters who are actually interacting with their world instead of the world interacting with them. Oedipa seems like such a dull main character because she does not have a strong female role that could match her intricate and wacky life.

• 
• 
• 
• 
•