As a postmodern text, Pynchon’s novel fits the thumbnail sketch parameters Dr. Sample gave us in class: highly self-conscious style; defies tradition; foregrounded literature\/language; artist is alienated. As I conclude this novel (my first foray into the Pynchon literary landscape, I must confess that I need to read it again to make sense of it as a novel. Perhaps I am on to something here. It is not supposed to make sense in the normal sense of literary analysis. The ending is totally ambiguous. One does not know what will happen to Oedipa (a female version of the Oedipus of the classic Greek tragedy by Sophocles whose protagonist is searching for the truth of his identity, a legitimate connection, his true name) at the end. I get the quest theme, though. I get the significance of names and naming and how Pynchon uses irony as a device in his naming schema. But as an experience of reading, I felt like Pynchon was making it up as he went along, which was disconcerting to say the least. As a reader, I was in a constant spiraling pattern trying to find meaning as I went along. The notion of “a descending angel” suggested by Passerine’s arm-spreading gesture could mean death for Oedipa at the end, but I am not certain. Oedipa as character seems both alienated and connected at the points in the novel, but she never makes an authentic and lasting connection, despite her best efforts. I don’t get the title. What is the crying of lot 49? At the close of chapter 1, I hear Oedipa raise the central question of her life quest that relates to crying and to her buffered insulated existence that is “absent of intensity” ( 10-12). I can trace the references to crying throughout the novel. All in all, this was not a successful experience for me. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a postmodern text, Pynchon’s novel fits the thumbnail sketch parameters Dr. Sample gave us in class: highly self-conscious style; defies tradition; foregrounded literature\/language; artist is alienated. As I conclude this novel (my first foray into the Pynchon literary landscape, I must confess that I need to read it again to make sense of it … Continue reading But What Does It Mean?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}