A small preface: I wrote this response prior to my first class, last evening, in the American Postmodern. I would still like to post my immediate thoughts to the text, although, now my understanding of the postmodern is changing, and I’m pretty sure that my reaction to the shiftiness within Oedipa’s story (and maybe not her story at all) was Pynchon’s intention for his readers. So, here it is:
While reading The Crying of Lot 49, I wondered whether I, like Oedipa Maas, was searching, as human beings tend to do, for meaning, which may be non-existent in this novella. Throughout the novella, I found myself attempting to make connections between various “clues” that Oedipa stumbled upon in her own attempt to find out what happened when her lover Pierce named her executrix of his estate. Of these many dead-end searches for connections between things, the first I came across was Oedipa’s observation that her face matched that of a pornographic nymph, which lit up a sign at a motel she was staying at. Perhaps, I thought, we are supposed to recognize Oedipa’s perception of herself as a bit of a sex nymph, and considering that shortly after she sleeps with Metzger/ Baby Igor this analysis seemed probable. This however, is Oedipa’s only impulsive sexual deed in the novella, and later seems to hold little meaning for her in the story. The first of many, this scene served as a way to communicate the story’s resistance to a traditional fiction story’s manner of relaying meaning (which I’d define as a writer positioning scenes, characters, themes, narrative, plot, and more in such a way that a reader can walk away knowing that his/her connections between these different elements constructs the story’s overall meaning).
When Oedipa realizes she won her bet with Metzger, she cries as Metzger reveals that Pierce said she wouldn’t be easy. I felt I should stop myself from trying to understand this statement as a straightforward or even metaphorical statement that would appear in a traditional short story, such as one written by someone like Joyce Carol Oates or someone like that. But the questions that crossed my mind included: Does Pierce mean that Oedipa is not easy to seduce? Does he mean she is not easy to understand, reach, communicate with, manipulate? If these meanings are possible, then they may help explain the paranoia that Oedipa confronts in herself throughout the novella and throughout her search for some form of meaning in this whole “executor of real estate/ American mogul; i.e. Pierce Inverarity” ordeal.