This was a fascinating mystery, which is odd suggesting that because when you describe it as "a mystery about stamps and a secret courier service" it does sound tedious.
However, one thing that's bugged me about the whole novel is this: What motivates Oedipa Maas to even bother finding out what the muted post trumpet meant? Sheinitially sees it as a piece of bathroom graffiti during a visit to a toilet cubicleand towards the end she even speculates thatit all could be an elaborate hoax or a posthumous prank by Piercewhich just left me wondering why the hell she even bothered in the first place? What's the point? Doesn't that make the whole narrative itself somewhat redundant if there isn't much motivating Oedipa as to why she must find out about Thurn and Taxis? I mean, she clearly is motivated to find out all about it, but why? If your initial viewing of an esoteric symbol was on a bathroom wall, wouldn't you just easily dismiss it?
Crying Of Lot 49 thread, I guess. Maybe some general Pynchon discussion too.
>>7742161
Literary madness a la Torquato Tasso.
> The disease Tasso began to suffer from is now believed to be bipolarity. Legends describe him wandering the streets of Rome half mad, convinced that he was being persecuted. After his lengthy imprisonment in Ferrara's Santa Anna lunatic asylum, he was able to resume his writing, although he never fully recovered.
Interestingly, there's a tango club called "Torquato Tasso" in, you guessed it, Buenos Aires, Argentina
I don't know why lot 49 gets shit here on /lit/ it's a pretty gud book
>>7742220
Yeah but it's mediocre by High P standards
>>7742220
Yeah it's pretty good. It's also surprisingly accessible and a good entry-point into Pynchon for those unaware of where to start.
>>7742212
So Oedipa is simply a paranoiac and a madwoman? I guess that makes sense due to how she over thinks the importance of it all. A bit like a quest in futility, kinda like Don Quixote?
>>7742161
The uncertainty we feel is felt also by Oedipa, we're unsure of her motivesand later her sanitybecause she is too
>>7742220
I guess because it's Pynchon first novel and, as he developed his style, The Crying of Lot 49 seems like one of the least Pynchon things Pynchon has written. It's still got his cheeky, sly humour and wit to it, though.
>>7742161
Intrigue!
And the fact that all of Pierce's properties and investments are, somehow, tied to this illusive imagery. People being shifty about WASTE doesnt help shut down someone's inquisitive nature either.Plus she was drinking a lot throughout the book, how do we know what she saw is what she thought she saw?
>>7742268
How do we also know if the people from WASTE were genuinely shifty? I mean, you could argue about her being drunk, but I mean more along the lines of was she just paranoid because she found their behaviours unconventional? I mean, what else could they be doing other than delivering exclusive mail through an exclusive courier system? Oedipa must've been mad, right?
Bone charcoal
>>7742253
V. is pynchon first novel
>>7742161
For me the uncertainty and paranoia, not just about the conclusions reached but about the whole foundation upon which the initial mystery is built upon (as you said, an unstable amalgam of that ubiquitous muted horn and anecdotal evidence brought to Oedipa's attention by character's she doesn't know very well), is an essential part of what makes the book so effective.
It's a scathing critique of intuitional semiotics (to the point where the teasingly named "Oedipa" has no relation to the Greek myth that his her nomenclature) and communication in a solipsistic world. Slowly but surely Oedipa finds that everyone she knows is either completely disconnected from reality or enslaved by some ideological system and by the end of the novel the reader, quite purposefully, has no idea what to think.could also be the raging of a hermetic stoner who feels like he doesn't belong in the world anymore. Please be okay papa Pynchon ;_;
>>7742161
Sorry family. I'm just replying because your prose is terrible. You need to do yourself a favor and cut that shit way down. It almost sounds like English isn't your first language.
>>7742305
My bad
>>7742281
The exclusivity of something, and therefore denying the layman entry, is bound to arouse suspicions, isnt it? Its like if you mention something to your friends and they start acting weird and direct the conversation somewhere else, you then want to find out what theyre hiding (if they are).
Of course they could have just considered her a massive nark and just not wanted to disclose the information to nothing more than a secretive postal service.
The Courier's Tragedy was spooky af
>>7742253
>first novel
second novel.
>>7742405
That Dies Irae pun was the best thing in the book for me. I was stunned at the subtlety of it.
>>7742405
I gotta admit, I struggled to follow the play. Something about trying to marry somebody to their own mother and awaiting the rightful heir to a courier's service or something was all I really got out of it.
>>7742336
Not sure if you're messing with me or if I've actually made some dumb mistake in my post that I just haven't noticed yet.
crying a lot for 49 minutes
Why is it called Crying Of Lot 49 if the Crying of lot 49 is such a small segment of the final chapter and nothing more?
>>7742161
What motivates Oedipa is some notion of escaping the tower, or discovering what magic is holding her there.
She lives an unfulfilling life (as does most everyone in the book) and wants/needs a narrative and answers.
>>7742557
Lame.
>>7742565
that makes sense. any slight slither of intrigue, no matter how small, is enough to enrich her mundane life.
Her motive is the same as ours when we picked up the book.
>>7742563
I think this plays into the desire for a resolution, it mirrors Oedipa's obsession with the word Trystero because Pynchon uses the word Lot conspicuously again and again and each time you're thinking "is that what the title means"?
And in the end it makes itself so obvious "the stamps are in Lot 49" .. "he'll be the crier today" it becomes a farce, almost a mockery of trying to put any greater meaning onto it.
>>7742582
So it's almost like Pynchon is teasing and mocking us for trying to solve/interpret things ourself when there's little more to the solution than we actually think
>>7742563
Pynchon aludes to lots throughout the book, he wants you to be hungering for some deeper meaning throughout, until he simply drops at an unsatisfying end. He's a troll.
Oedipa's motivations are basically the same as Stencil's, f.am
>>7742585
Exactly. The book is meant to signify nothing and make readers feel like it's pointless to derive meaning where we think it might lie. It's a central tenet of postmodernism.
>>7742585
Sort of ... I don't subscribe to the camp who says Pynchon's works are a bunch of meaningless nothings.
I think only that it is meant to parallel us with Oedipa by putting us in the same mad search obsessed with useless details.
>>7742606
Neither was Pynchon. He hates lot 49. His other books are rich with meaning.
>>7742617
Well, you're kind of twisting his words, but I don't give a damn what the author thinks of it. Lot 49 is absolutely among his best works that serves an interesting exploration of fragmented 60's America.
>It was not an act of treason, nor possibly even of defiance. 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, un-publicized, private. Since they could not have withdrawn into a vacuum (could they?), there had to exist the separate, silent, unsuspected world.
>>7742617
Would you say... he hates it a lot?
>>7742563
Its the resolution that never comes.
>>7742617
>rich with meaning
lol
bumpito
>>7743979
why
>>7743984
It was dying, mate.
>>7742161
She was so obsessed because she wanted communication.
Mucho wouldn't talk to her.
Metzger wasn't serious.
Rich ex boy was a mess to talk to and that was before he died.
She kept chasing after contact with someone, something
>>7744681
everyone wanted communication!
look how their insanities involve multiplication
pierce adopts voices
hilarius adopts faces and hallucinates jews
mucho merges with the collective conscious
oedipa projects an anarchist anti-communication conspriacy
>>7744681
>Hermionem versus est. 'quid nos vis facere?'
>facere vos. mmmmm.
>MMMMM
>MMMMMMMMMHMMMMMM
>conveniunt.
reminder
