Book Review 06-15-03
The Crying of Lot 49

by Thomas Pynchon, published 1966

I didn't have any particular expectations for this book. I knew Pynchon is a famously reclusive author. I knew some reviewers found his later works (like Mason & Dixon) tedious and self-important. And in Crying, there are hints of that.There's a few of the experimental-literature basics of the 60s, like ridiculously-named characters and a focus on landscapes that seem to dissolve and blur through a drugged-out haze.

But the plot itself is strong, and grows on you slowly. Oedipa Maas, a Southern California housewife and the protagonist, has been made the executrix of an old lover's estate. However, it seems there is something very strange about his stamp collection, and she becomes drawn into a conspiracy worthy of the X-Files, involving the postal service, Restoration-era theater, and California's underground culture.

I read Crying at about the same time The Matrix was rebroadcast on TV, and what impressed me is how much Pynchon anticipated the movie's themes. Oedipa, like Neo, awakes to the fact that the world is not what she thought. Both discover that dark, mysterious forces have been the real shapers of the world's history, reaching up to the highest levels of power, and that the technology of the 20th century was what would allow that power to solidify its grip on humanity.

It would not be hard to draw a line of succession from Pynchon (and contemporaries like Phillip K. Dick) to William Gibson's cyber-worlds and the Wachowski brothers. Crying is a short but intriguing book that surprised me with its readability. I enjoyed its cryptic, paranoid take on reality. I will definitely give Pynchon another go, probably with Gravity's Rainbow.

I know that for Pynchon scholars, this isn't a satisfactory description:I know that a great deal more is going on than I completely grasped on a first read. But even taken in a non-symbolic, straight-plot sense, I would recommend it. Whatever else you find in it will be yours to decide.

Pynchon links:

San Narisco College comprehensive webpage

The Pynchon Portal...which has a link to the Crying references in Buckaroo Banzai!