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A review by shoba
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
4.0
“What did she so desire escape from? Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?”
Oedipa Maas was named an executor of the estate of Pierce Inverarity, her ex-lover. She travels to San Narciso, California, meets the other executor and Inverarity’s lawyer, Metzger, and they begin an affair. In the process of reviewing Inverarity’s assets, Oedipa uncovers an alternative mailing system, working tangentially to or in opposition to the official US postal network, known as Tristero. With each additional clue verifying the existence of Tristero, Oedipa’s paranoia grows and she begins to question the motives of the people around her and her own sanity. She starts to feel that there was not only misinformation concerning this other postal system but comes to understand the existence of a deceit at the core of American society. By the end of the novel Oedipa loses her husband, Wendell Maas, to LSD; her psychiatrist, Dr. Hillarius, to psychosis; her lover, Metzger, to a teenage girl; and the playwright who informed her of Tristero, Randy Driblette, to suicide. The novel ends with Oedipa attending an auction of Inverarity’s stamps, designated lot 49, hoping to discover the Tristero agent that was there to bid on them. She waits for the auction to begin, for the auctioneer to cry out the bids.
"’Look, you have to help me. Because I really think I am going out of my head.’
‘You have the wrong outfit, Arnold. Talk to your clergyman.’
‘I use the U. S. Mail because I was never taught any different,’ she pleaded. ‘But I'm not your enemy. I don't want to be.’”
The revelation Oedipa Maas has was not about the Tristero postal system but about the existence of a class of forgotten people that she met along the way. They were the poor and disabled, the unwanted and unloved or simply the outsiders. And she was able to feel affection and sympathy for their plight. This was the deceit at the core of the system. For at times of her greatest distress, one of these lost individuals intervened. They may not have always been helpful or courteous but they saw her and finally Oedipa Maas saw them back.
“But it was a calculated withdrawal, from the life of the Republic, from its machinery. Whatever else was being denied them out of hate, indifference to the power of their vote, loopholes, simple ignorance, this withdrawal was their own, unpublicized, private. Since they could not have withdrawn into a vacuum (could they?), there had to exist the separate, silent, unsuspected world.”
Oedipa Maas was named an executor of the estate of Pierce Inverarity, her ex-lover. She travels to San Narciso, California, meets the other executor and Inverarity’s lawyer, Metzger, and they begin an affair. In the process of reviewing Inverarity’s assets, Oedipa uncovers an alternative mailing system, working tangentially to or in opposition to the official US postal network, known as Tristero. With each additional clue verifying the existence of Tristero, Oedipa’s paranoia grows and she begins to question the motives of the people around her and her own sanity. She starts to feel that there was not only misinformation concerning this other postal system but comes to understand the existence of a deceit at the core of American society. By the end of the novel Oedipa loses her husband, Wendell Maas, to LSD; her psychiatrist, Dr. Hillarius, to psychosis; her lover, Metzger, to a teenage girl; and the playwright who informed her of Tristero, Randy Driblette, to suicide. The novel ends with Oedipa attending an auction of Inverarity’s stamps, designated lot 49, hoping to discover the Tristero agent that was there to bid on them. She waits for the auction to begin, for the auctioneer to cry out the bids.
"’Look, you have to help me. Because I really think I am going out of my head.’
‘You have the wrong outfit, Arnold. Talk to your clergyman.’
‘I use the U. S. Mail because I was never taught any different,’ she pleaded. ‘But I'm not your enemy. I don't want to be.’”
The revelation Oedipa Maas has was not about the Tristero postal system but about the existence of a class of forgotten people that she met along the way. They were the poor and disabled, the unwanted and unloved or simply the outsiders. And she was able to feel affection and sympathy for their plight. This was the deceit at the core of the system. For at times of her greatest distress, one of these lost individuals intervened. They may not have always been helpful or courteous but they saw her and finally Oedipa Maas saw them back.
“But it was a calculated withdrawal, from the life of the Republic, from its machinery. Whatever else was being denied them out of hate, indifference to the power of their vote, loopholes, simple ignorance, this withdrawal was their own, unpublicized, private. Since they could not have withdrawn into a vacuum (could they?), there had to exist the separate, silent, unsuspected world.”