The Crying of Lot 49
Ratings194
Average rating3.8
Wonderful. I was wary of Pynchon for a long time. A reputation for denseness or difficulty, obscurity, but this was like a burst of light. OK, I couldn't say what the story was about in every detail, but it enjoyable in it's self and also for the gap it filled in my literary education.
Drugged up, psychotic conspiracy theories have never been written so well.
One of my all time favorites and yet I still can't finish Gravity's Rainbow. I feel like a fraud.
I won't lie, I was pretty meh about most of this book until I got near the end and then it finally clicked. How does one even describe this book to someone? Part mystery, drama, sexual revolution, comedy satire? Like a hipper version of Vonnegut, Pynchon really lets wit and absurdity fly. There were times I laughed out loud. There were times I was confused. There were times I wanted the story to wrap up. There were times I wanted the story to never end. At a time where I'm wondering to myself, “How the heck do people get so wrapped up in conspiracy theories and why do they constantly change their own narrative to push further down the rabbit hole?” all I can say is, hey, wouldn't we all love a 60s garage rock band to follow us around?
A book that has me asking myself the question, am I cool and edgy enough for this?
I struck out trying to read Gravity's Rainbow when I was in college, simply did not have the patience for a book that doesn't give you a character/story thread to follow.
This book kept turning up on lists of other books similar to ones I like so I thought I'd give Pynchon another shot. Plus, let's face it, it's short and sweet.
The writing style is quite dense and the story has elements of satire, mystery, conspiracy, not to mention sex, drugs, and rock n roll. We follow one character, Oedipa Maas. Named executor of her ex's will, she finds herself following a trail he left for her. Out of her depth in a new town (San Narciso, CA) she hunts down a conspiracy involving an underground postal service and forged stamps.
It's a bit like Alice in Wonderland as she meets weird character after weird character, many of whom seem helpful at first but aren't. Also it has that kind of nonsensical/funny dialogue.
Questions don't quite get answered in the conventional sense. With this kind of book, it wouldn't fit to wrap things up neatly. It's more about Oedipa's experiences and mental state as she doubts herself, but continues on, hits a roadblock, and finds a new path and so on. A lot of it is social commentary on ‘60s America.
I was thoroughly entertained and engaged by it, but I'm still not sure I'm cool enough for Pynchon.
This book was utterly confusing. I guessed it might be a good introduction to Pynchon because his other works are much much longer, but I was only half-right. On the good side, it prepares you, sort of, to accept that you will not be able to completely comprehend everything that is written here. The book itself suggests, in a manner of meta-narrative, that clues are as clear and self-referential as they are emptied of meaning beyond what you yourself might ascribe to them. It's only your choice whether you'll follow threads or not, whether you'll construct some kind of story or “meaning” out of them (I feel this particular word lingers more than any other during reading). Sure, I had my bit of fun with it. I had fun exploring what academics wrote about it – although the journal articles themselves are a bit too much (kind of academically douchy, if that makes sense). I also had fun diving into all that conspiracy-type stuff around it and listened to almost a 4-hour podcast about the Dutch and U.S. postal service systems, JFK, 2nd World War concentration camps, Nazi human experiments, etc. However, what I think is missing in this book, if you compare it to the rest of Pyncho's body of work, is his great style and literary talent. In comparison, The Crying of Lot 49 feels like the worst and most confusing parts of V. and Gravity Rainbow devoided of beautiful and intricate passages.
Durante mucho tiempo Pynchon anduvo rondando mi lista de pendientes. Quería que me gustara, estaba listo para ser encantado por este enigmático escritor que para muchos es el autor posmoderno por excelencia, pero me encontré simplemente con un Vonnegut diluido, sin tanta chispa ni genialidad.
Si bien creo haber comprendido la propuesta y el estilo del autor, quizás haya un nivel de análisis al que no logré tener acceso. Sin embargo, evaluando mi experiencia como lector, lo que puedo decir es que es una obra que no me deslumbró ni desde su ejecución ni desde su planteo. El ritmo frenético del relato y de los hechos que se narran requiere, para no ser más que una maraña azarosa de desventuras inconexas, de una pluma afilada que deslumbre con humor, con lucidez, con originalidad bien entendida. Y de eso, en mi opinión, hay muy poco.
A menudo los autores siembran las claves de lectura en la propia obra que escriben. Quizás Pynchon nos quiera decir que no lo tomemos tan en serio, al hacer decir a uno de sus personajes “You guys, you're like Puritans are about the Bible. So hung up with words, words”.
Second read:
Up to a 5/5
Utterly fantastic
———–
First read:
4.5/5
Might do another read soon, but my initial impression is a highly positive one.
look I'm sure people who are patient enough to try and understand this book think it's the most genius thing ever but it's just not my kinda thing
Would have detonated my gourd had I read it in high school. I imagine my evaluation of it will improve on second reading.
my first Pynchon. mysterious, enthralling, confusing; have to admit i don't think i got this one entirely (although i think that is precisely the point). A fun read nonetheless: the way Pychon's prose reads is fascinating - looking forward to, and also sort of dreading getting to Gravity's Rainbow (hopefully later this year?)
Recommended album pairing: Tarzana - Alien Wildlife Estate
One of the funniest books I have ever read. Smart, sarcastic, silly and other things as well. Just good well written stuff. Thoroughly enjoyed reading and the audiobook.
I liked it very much and yet I found it oddly unsatisfying. I haven't the time to create the review I would like (and the elderly cat who is sleeping in my arms makes typing difficult), so I will confine myself to a few notes.
1. I am amazed at how contemporary the 1965 world sounds to me. I was very young the year the book was published, and that was a long time ago, but the descriptions do not have the “long ago, far away” feel I would have expected. Yes, there were a few jarring notes (Oedipa today would never say “fag,” for example), but for the most part it felt quite modern to me.
2. I become impatient with what seems like verbal cuteness for its own sake. Weirdness that makes sense to the author but doesn't make sense to me, is just affected. I write that way all the time, and I need to stop. Thanks, Mr. Pynchon, for that reminder.
3. When he is not being excessively fey and preciously clever, his use of words is remarkable and sometimes beautiful. This book was, on most pages, a pleasure to read.
Okay, so. Updating review. This is not an easy book, and it is in some sense a puzzle or code. I had to read it twice, and think about it a lot, before it kind of made sense.
It's sort of a parable about entropy in communication, and is thus, itself, an imperfect narrative: corrupted, distorted, subverted, unreliable. The reader's frustrations in attempting to decode the story echo the quest of Oedipa herself.
Other themes: lost and alternate histories (reminiscent of Tigana or Borges), humans as patterns of information which are irrevocably lost after death, secret/alternate methods of communication adopted by those who cannot (or choose not to) communicate in the ordinary way.
The book encodes itself. We are told we will not, cannot remember the revelation.
Just as in Hamlet, the play within the story echoes the structure of the whole.
“You came to talk about the play,” he said. “Let me discourage you. It was written to entertain people. Like horror movies. It isn't literature, it doesn't mean anything.”
“Certain things, it is made clear, will not be spoken aloud; certain events will not be shown onstage; though it is difficult to imagine, given the excesses of the preceding acts, what these things could possibly be. The Duke does not, perhaps may not, enlighten us.”
Thank god this is over. The first forty-five percent is impenetrable and the remainder is not worth penetrating. I could barely make myself slog through it, and at under 200 pages that's quite a feat. I have no idea why this is considered a classic.
The prose is as tortured as they come. Reading it is like listening to Robin Williams – every time you latch on to one thought, Pynchon careens off in another direction – but less entertaining. It bears some resemblance to the also-bizarre but less-terrible Orion, You Came And You Took All My Marbles by Kira Henehan, which was a strange read but one I enjoyed well enough. That was her debut, and if you enjoyed this one I think you may also enjoy the Henehan. I would not be surprised to see Henehan cite Pynchon as an influence.
I hesitate to even describe the plot, thin as it is. It concerns Oedipa Maas, named co-executor of the estate of one Pierce Inverarity, and in the process of executing that duty she begins to discover and investigate a possible long-running conspiracy. Kind of. It hardly merits the name. Along the way Oedipa and the other characters will say and do a great many things that don't make any goddamned sense.
Recommended if you hate yourself. It's even worse than all the people writing unbelievably pretentious reviews about it trying to be cutesy.
holy crap this book is awesome....not done....brb.
i am not going to write a real review, there are a lot of good ones out there, go read one of those.
whatever i or you or your reviewer of choice think about the story, the writing is incredible. even sentences that don't describe anything are constructed in such a way that i could read them over and over aloud and dance to it. it's not what i would call pretty, or beautiful. it's smart, sardonic, punchy, funky....if i were writing a real review i would say something about the alluring cynicism of the language adds another layer subversion, and another serving of disillusionment for Oedipa as she becomes aware of the world disingenuineness.
it's a great book.
Typically, I have little trepidation expressing my feelings about a book–I like it, I didn't like it, and here's why. With The Crying Lot of 49, however, I'm not sure what to say. Not because I don't know how I felt about–not entirely, anyway. More so, because I know a great many people whose opinions I generally agree with–or at least understand–who love this book.
So rather than rant on and on about why this book didn't work for me, I'd like to open it up to others and have an actual conversation about this novel. I know that's not what I'm supposed to do here, but I'm going to anyway. What's the worst that will happen? Goodreads will revoke my librarian status? Wait, that would suck.
Sure, I agree that Pynchon is an intelligent writer, and that there is quite a bit of wit in this pages. Overall, however, I found it to be a tedious and pretentious read. Now, rather than ramble on about that, I want to hear from you. What did I miss? Why do you love Pynchon? And were The Paranoids really necessary?
There are some wonderful, hilarious scenes in this book and some satisfyingly alienated descriptions of the Californian landscape. Overall, though, I didn't get into it enough for the fourth star. (I can't just give everything 4 stars.)
‰ЫПIf San Narciso and the estate were really no different from any other town, any other estate, then by that continuity she might have found The Tristero anywhere in her Republic, through any of a hundred lightly-concealed entranceways, a hundred alienations, if only she‰ЫЄd looked. She stopped a minute between the steel rails, raising her head as if to sniff the air. Becoming conscious of the hard, strung presence she stood on ‰ЫУ knowing as if maps had been flashed for her on the sky how these tracks ran on into others, others, knowing they laced, deepened, authenticated the great night around her. If only she‰ЫЄd looked.‰Ыќ