Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #274792 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Review
"A puzzle, an intrigue, a literary and historical tour de force with a strongly European flavor." -- -- San Francisco Examiner

"The comedy crackles, the puns pop the satire explodes." -- -- New York Times

"The work of a virtuoso with prose.intricate symbolic order [is] akin to that of Joyce's Ulysses." -- -- Chicago Tribune

"A puzzle, an intrigue, a literary and historical tour de force with a strongly European flavor." -- San Francisco Examiner

"The comedy crackles, the puns pop the satire explodes." -- New York Times

"The work of a virtuoso with prose.intricate symbolic order [is] akin to that of Joyce's Ulysses." -- Chicago Tribune

About the Author
Thomas Pynchon was born in 1937. His books include The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Vineland, and Mason & Dixon.

Customer Reviews

Is It Over Yet?
I have this problem that once I commit to reading a book I can't put it down because I think that if I keep reading, maybe, eventually something worth reading will come up in the later pages.

This is why I dislike The Crying of Lot 49. The author goes on and on like a crazy hobo in an unending stream of conscious.

This book could easily be a short story. It's not subtle at all where the author spends pages and pages over using metaphors and similes, going on tangents and generally trying desperately to fill out what never should have been an entire book in the first place.

It took me weeks to finish this short read that should have taken only a few hours because I kept putting it down and eying it like a disenchanted child staring down a plate of vegetables.

None dare call it conspiracy
You know those really-need-to-give-medication-a-try types who constantly scribble in notebooks using tiny, densely packed letters and nodding knowingly at things that barely penetrate your attention? This is the kind of novel they'd write if they had somehow acquired an English degree with a specialization in Elizabethan England.

I found it not that difficult, at times amusing and a useful tool for understanding the last three decades of post-ironic, post-modern, post-clarity "serious" literature. But I was quite glad it was no longer than it was.

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.