The highly original satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy, meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self knowledge.
A Beautiful Sad and Funny Book One day Mrs. Oedipa Maas discovers that she has been made executor of her ex-lover's will. As she proceeds she discovers that the legacy with which she has been entrusted draws her ever deeper into a complex web of conspiracies. Yet what she has discovered may be no more than her own paranoia, and the novel ends ambiguously with the final revelation still impending like a judgement day forever suspended.
The book walks a careful line between the comic and the tragic. It is a difficult balance and Pynchon maintains it beautifully. Unlike many literary comic novelists Pynchon is genuinely funny. Yet as Oedipa wanders around San Francisco encountering alienation and loss everywhere she turns a genuine pathos creeps into the humor.
I'm sure there are many ways to read the Crying of Lot 49. I think we may approach it as both a social satire of consumerism and as a larger statement about the breakdown of communication in all human communities.
On the whole I consider this to be one of my favorite novels.
Pynchon is God Back in the sixties, I remember carrying a well-worn copy of LOT 49 around with me wherever I went, wherever I hung out in Berkeley. Pynchon was God; He knew. He gave us the California landscape, its craziness, its mindscape as no other author had done before. So what if the book was a put-on? So what if it was really about the "selling" or "crying" in real estate terms of the lot that is California, the state created by the 49ers? So what if the characters were straight out of comic books? It was the way he had woven it all so artfully together, a California of one piece, comprehensible for a change, maybe even understandable. I thank Pynchon for doing that. From time to time, I go back to LOT 49, taste the language and descriptions, do a few mental jumps in time back to that bizarre period in American life. Pynchon saw it all so early, so clearly.
Worst book I have read I am afraid I finally have to use this cliche statement: This is really the worst book I have ever read. I wonder why I have even finished reading it. Probably because I wanted to find out what all the Pynchon-hype is about, or because I just expected that the book would take a turn for the better.
Some say that if something is hyped, then it is probably bad. Reading Pynchon has taught me that there is some truth to that. To compare this book or draw an analogy to Ulysses is not only wrong, but also an insult to one of the greatest writers ever.
The book is about a woman who might have or might not have uncovered a conspiracy. In other words, it is about a woman who tries to find meaning in something which probably does not have any. Well, that is certainly reminiscent of Kafka or Beckett. Only that Kafka or Beckett open new doors leading into a different direction on every page, add layer after layer, and truly disturb the reader. In Pynchon, there are no multiple layers. He only scraches the surface without ever adding any depths to his ideas.
"Crying of Lot 49" is for readers who are very amused about names like Fallopian or Genghis Khan, and think that an idea like the "Maxwell Devil" is incredibly creative. It is for readers who try to seek for qualities in a book which has none. It is fast-food existentialism for the masses and a total waste of paper.
There are so many good books out there. Don't follow the hype, don't waste your time. Go straight to the real classics.
cozy paperback This book just feels nice, really. While the cover's texture is not the most interesting, it makes up for this by being quite flexible, and the binding is perfect.
Like most paperbacks of this sort, the paper it is printed on is anything but mindblowing. Still, it is heavier than most, and the typeface is delightfully clear.
While the graphic design of the cover is relevant, I am not sure that it is effective in a buy-for-its-cover kinda way. The design on the spine is awfully nice, though, so it may very well fit on your bookshelf.
El martillero llama a la realidad La primera vez que leí "La subasta..." me quedé con la sensación de que el estilo categorico de Pynchon me había ahorrado el costo de tener que comprender también la trama. Lo digo porque por momentos los materiales de esta construcción mental que es la novela, nos encandila con sus juegos de luces, relegando a la parte la no menos sugerente grandeza del conjunto. Eso fue lo que me pasó con la primera lectura. Después leí a Harold Bloom que comenta "La subasta..." en "Cómo leer y por qué." En su artículo, Bloom reconocía el cansancio que le produjo la primera lectura en relación al deleite que le proporcionó la segunda. Recomendaba entonces una lectura doble, sin solución de continuidad. Acabarlo y empezar de nuevo. Y eso fue lo que hice. Pude ver el edificio completo, sin tener que perder de vista los hermosos arreglos de sus mosaicos. Thomas Pynchon es un escritor consumado como Roth o McCarthy. Este libro del año 1965 se deja leer como un anticipo del "Código Da Vinci" y, por qué no, de Fahrenheit 9/11. Todo lo que le pasa a Edipa Maas (una obsesa de la Verdad, dice Bloom) tiene que ver con la idea de esa conjura que solemos ver en las sombras que proyecta la realidad sobre nosotros. Algo nos acecha. Siempre. O nada, quizá. La clave de este entramado, al que sirve de motivo una herencia del fallecido Pierce Inverarity, cuya presencia fantasmal circula de ida y vuelta por toda la novela, es un interrogante con que nos encontramos casi al final del libro. Qué es todo eso que ocurre alrededor de la pobre Edipa Maas, ¿realidad o paranoia? Como en toda buena novela, el desenlace dependerá no menos del autor que del curioso y desocupado lector.
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