Well, I seem to be the only one who found untangling this “mystery” completely baffling. I found Pynchon’s lack of concern for appropriate punctuation or clarification of pronouns to be incredible stumbling blocks. It took me a good fifty pages to finally get into a rhythm where I could actually piece together what Pynchon must have been trying to say in his sentences. That aside…
Several people have commented on the ending or lack thereof. Because of our discussion in class, I was actually expecting an inconclusive ending; in fact, I thought we got more out of the ending than I was expecting, based on our discussion. I would not have been surprised, if we had been left in the midst of Oedipa’s inability to distinguish reality from imagination or the ultimate meaning of all she had experienced – perhaps in the wake of the phonecall with the nameless man at the Greek Way. I will admit, though, that I prefer a clear, clean ending. That being said, with the ending as it was, I felt it gave me as a reader the opportunity to make Oedipa’s experience real or forged, depending on what I wanted the “truth” to be – if Pynchon had revealed, for example, that Cohen had been the secret bidder (or someone else we already knew) as part of the joke or to further the joke, I would not be able to change that “fact.” As the story ends, I can invent my own version of what transpires after the doors close (including the possibility that Oedipa is locked into a room of men cloaked in black – the Tristero themselves there to silence her…or make her one of their own…) On a different note, I found Pynchon’s choice of ending the entire novel with the title/the title’s explanation a bit forced and lame, to be honest. I was moderately okay with the classification of the stamp collection as “lot 49” (145) and of Cohen’s explanation of the use of “cries” (151) just prior to the auction, but the use of the entire line at the end for me felt compeltely contrived and made me feel as though Pynchon was not sure I would have the ability to put two-and-two together, one of the few understandings I DID manage to have while reading. I like for a title to hold meaning, so throughout my reading, I charted all of the uses of “lot” to try to come up with my own understanding of the title. I thought I was going to come to some magnificent and transcendent “truth” (or “lack of truth”) about the metaphorical meaning of the “crying of lot 49.” I was therefore deeply disappointed to have it so obviously spelled out for me in the end. The uses of “lot” include (the actual first reference of stamps being divided into groupings or “lots”) – “[the stamps] cheated as she by death, about to be broken up into lots…” (32); (during the boat/picnic day) “They wandered all in a loose pattern down the beach toward a small marina for what boat owners didn’t have lots directly on the water” (41); (during her participation in the Yoyodyne stockholders’ meeting) “They gave her a round white visitor’s badge at one of the gates, and she parked in an enormous lot next to a quonset building…” (65); (during Mucho’s LSD trip) “The bad dream that I used to have all the time, about the car lot, remember that?” (118); (during the conversation about swastika armbands with the government surplus outlet owner) “We’re working it in with the back-to-school campaign, lot of 37 longs, you know, teenage kid sizes” (123). After Mucho’s last statement, about the car lot of his former employment, I began to think of all of the people in Oedipa’s life as being a grouping or “lot” and was leaning toward some metaphorical weeping of the misfortunate people who had served as representations of society throughout the novel.
My parting thoughts for this round revolve around my expectation for the Tristero to represent some overall significant movement for Pynchon. I felt as if the entire novel was full of potential political/societal statements and that they would lead ultimately to a significance in “tristero.” That was one answer I WAS waiting for from Pynchon, but which I felt remained essentially unanswered. I like the posts that have discussed the idea of the individual vs. the masses, and I found it actually ironic that julie/jules typed “Oedipa Mass” instead of “Oedipa Maas” – I am uncertain about Pynchon’s purpose in name choices throughout the novel; however, it does seem clear that Oedipa is on a constant search for individualism (in herself and in others) among the masses. As to the meaning of Tristero, with the explanation of its “real origin” on p. 131, it has a Spanish origin. And “triste” in Spanish means “sad.” I found this connection/coincidence/choice particularly interesting, as Oedipa’s attempts to unravel her halluciantions and experiences of reality leave her in a state of isolation, lonliness, and really, sadness up until she resolves to attend the auction.
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