Pynchon – American Postmodernism

The Meaning of Reality in Crying of Lot 49: “violence to our flabby habits of perception”

Crying of Lot 49 was not a fun read for me. Even though it’s supposed to be one of Pynchon’s most accessible novels, I was still frustrated by the evasiveness of its plot. After finishing the novel and reading Michael Holquist’s “Whodunit and Other Questions,” I started to find some logic and reassurance in the entropy of Lot 49’s plot. Holquist’s prodding question especially piqued my interest: “What, then, is the particular pattern of reassurance provided by detective fiction?” (138). Holquist defines the clichés of modernist detective fiction, and arrives at the conclusion that postmodern detective stories respond to modernist ones, especially in their attempt to escape from “rational” literature that fills illogical voids with psychological and mythical reasoning. Instead of filling the unexplainable “void” in stories with religion or myths, postmodernism “dramatizes that void” (155). In a way, the dramatization of this void presents a more realistic image of the world we inhabit. So, instead of making up stuff, we just admit that we don’t know…

It is only natural to feel jilted by Pynchon’s destruction of our rosy perception of reality. I believe that this is, in fact, his message. As Holquist eloquently states towards the end of his essay, it is this ambiguity and meaninglessness of the metaphysical detective story which causes “violence to our flabby habits of perception” (156). Instead of spoon-feeding nuggets of coherent, linear, and relevant information to readers, Pynchon gives the reader both useful information and superfluous, disorienting details in the order in which Oedipa encounters them, to emulate the realistic and often random transmission of information in real life. The unsuspecting reader will undoubtedly find the text initially infuriating, but there is some enjoyment that can be found in its “open” ending. Though unsettling, Crying of Lot 49 succeeds in provoking readers to ponder interesting philosophical questions regarding the relevance of information, the mutability of our perception of reality, and the (im)possibility of manipulating our circumstances to create (dis)order in our lives.

Perhaps the most pressing question that I have regarding the novel is this: Is Pynchon implying that life is so capricious so that arbitrary events and associations lead to profound discoveries, or is he suggesting the opposite—that life’s events are more banal than we imagine, leaving us (like Oedipa) falsely presuming that meaningful connections exist in the midst of random information? Is Oedipa fighting a losing battle by attempting to create order in her chaotic world?

I have accepted that these questions have no distinct, correct answers. In this sense, Lot 49 and other postmodern detective stories are violent. As Holquist points out, these stories are “not an escape, but an attack” (155). They are an attack on our stale and unimaginative perception of reality, one where all clues are relevant and lead to a solution, and where all detective novels end in the salvation of the good characters and the punishment of the bad ones. Pnychon wants to shows his readers that there exists a possibility of another (not so pleasant) reality, or maybe that there is no fixed reality at all.

pynchon-simpsons

Relating some features of Postmodernism to “The Crying of Lot 49”

While primarily focusing on Detective stories as a genre and briefly tracing its origins and characteristics, Michael Holquist’s essay “Whodunit and other questions: Metaphysical detective stories in post-war fiction” tackles the issue of the fusion between high and low art as a prominent characteristic of Postmodernism. I think his argument about the “pattern of reassurance” as a sophisticated form of a happy ending is interesting. From the way he describes it, it appears to be a common denominator in the different forms of literary kitsch. Another tendency is the shortcut they take to the “catharsis,” by skipping the “pain” and “tragedy,” which denies the reader a full experience and possible meaning. These features render such works as merely quick and easy crowed pleasers, as opposed to high art that may not be accessible to the majority. Taking this into consideration, the “red herrings” that have been used in the “The Crying of 49” begin to make a little more sense to me. Similar to Oedipa’s confusion in her search for clues and their meaning, the novel suggests allusions that can be misleading to the reader who is expectant of an easy answer. Also the toying of the author in his dealing with the relationship between signifier and signified is an effort to mislead the presumptuous reader; while the names can be telling of character as talked about in a few of this week’s posts, there are some names like “Dr. Hilarius” that seem to me sort of pointless, or maybe I’m being too cynical.

In “Postmodernism, or the cultural logic of late capitalism,” Jameson describes the canonization and academic institutionalization of the modern movement as a plausible explanation of the emergence of postmodernism. Postmodernism subsequently rejects the complete focus on what is thought to be high art by creating a bridge between high art and popular art, as Holquist mentions. The inclusion of the polar opposites is evident in “The Crying of Lot 49” as we are introduced to “Paranoid,” a pot smoking band who write songs like, “Lonely girl in your lonely flat, well, that’s where it’s at, so hush your lonely cry,” and later an opposite representation is seen in the play Oedipa attends that causes her to visit a university professor for clarification on the play, which reinforces Jameson’s statement about the control of institutions on art.

Just a little on Pynchon’s parody (and an afterthought on Varo)

A large portion of my interest in Thomas Pynchon is with his sense of humor and the resulting parodic nature of his writing. Having already read The Crying of Lot 49, this re-reading allowed me to really focus on the “world” of Southern California that Pynchon has created, or more accurately, parodied.

Throughout The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon seems to be humorously commenting on American, and specifically Californian, culture. As stated by the narrator, “Like many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts–census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway” (13). Per Pynchon’s construction, it’s a culture lacking substance; California and its inhabitants are all image, which is often merely imitation. For example, the Paranoids, who “watch English movies a lot, for the accent,” are Pynchon’s American ripoff version of The Beatles (17). (Considering Oedipa’s increasing paranoia throughout the story, the Paranoids seem appropriately named. In fact, they periodically serve as the “Greek chorus” for the tragic (yet comical) unraveling of Oedipa’s life as she uncovers a potential conspiracy) Dr. Hilarius, Oedipa’s “shrink or psychotherapist,” is perhaps only best described as a psycho.

In his first novel V., Pynchon presents a woman who becomes increasingly machine-like as the novel progresses, and threads of this same metaphorical device can be identified in The Crying of Lot 49 (although not as ubiquitous). “[Oedipa] looked down a slope […] onto a vast sprawl of house which had grown up all together, like a well-tended crop, from the dull brown earth; and she though of the time she’d opened a transistor radio to replace a battery and seen her first printed circuit” (14). Here, Pynchon is reacting against the increase of tract housing suburbs noting their machine-like resemblance (if I’m not mistaken, the “cookie-cutter” suburbs first got their start in the 1950s, just a few years before the publishing of The Crying of Lot 49).

Continuing with Pynchon’s role as social commentator, I come to perhaps my favorite passage in The Crying of Lot 49: the initial description of Wendell “Mucho” Maas. “[H]e could still never accept the way each owner, each shadow, filed in only to exchange a dented, malfunctioning version of himself for another, just as futureless, automotive projection of somebody else’s life. As if it were the most natural thing. To Mucho it was horrible. Endless, convoluted incest” (5). To me, this passage evokes a couple of Pynchon’s concerns. First, the machine once again stands in for the human being, and in fact, the passage preceeding this quotation describes these used cars as “metal extensions” of their owners. Second, Mucho’s association of used cars/humans with “Endless, convoluted incest” reminds me of Pynchon’s recurring theme of entropy and/or entropic decline; if a system is closed, then that system will inevitably decline.

______________

On a somewhat random, separate note, I searched for and found the Remedios Varo painting referenced in The Crying of Lot 49: “In Mexico City they somehow wandered into an exhibition of paintings by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo: in the central painting of a triptych, titled “Bordando el Manto Terrestre,” were a number of frail girls with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind Remedios Varo Bordando el Manto Terrestre of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in this tapestry, and the tapestry was the world. Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried” (11). In the context of the chapter, the painting refers to her personal relationship with Pierce Inverarity, but I can’t help but look at the painting and think of Oedipa’s journey as a “detective” through the Trystero conspiracy. In many ways, she is weaving her own tapestry with the threads of conspiracy, filling a void, creating a world with the jigsaw pieces she has discovered (or perhaps have discovered her).

Calisthenics of Perception

In The Crying of Lot 49, toward the end Oedipa lays out four choices to try to make sense what is going on around her. She has stumbled upon real Tristero, a vast underground network; she has hallucinated “it”; she is the victim of a plot to deceive her; or she is insane. When she considers the first option, she equates with the reality of Tristero “a real alternative to the exitlessness, to the absence of surprise to life, that harrows the head of everybody American you know, and you too, sweetie”. It’s interesting that she does not equate hallucinations with insanity here, and jkathrynfulton’s point about Oedipa’s perception divided into perhaps real or perhaps dreamed events highlights the inability or unwillingness on the parts of both Oedipa and the narrator to clearly differentiate between the two for the reader.

But of course, just at the climax of a traditional detective story when the “crime” and “criminal” are about to be revealed and explained, the novel ends. We never do get an answer from the story about which of the four options it was. In Holquist’s exploration of The Voyeur, he points out that the detective story cliché of the power of the rational mind to conquer all is reversed, and that the reader becomes a detective only to discover the cipher zero of the poster title, which parallels the crying of lot 49 – something unheard, unfinished, which the reader must perform. The solution lies not in the book, but “in the experience of the reader himself” (151). “It is not a story – it is a process,” Holquist asserts (153), and this process of “strangeness” (155) is a “kind of calisthenics of perception” (153). This wording recalls Jameson’s exhortation for the experience of art to alter our outdated “perceptual habits” so that we are able to comprehend the global capitalist reality (80).

However I am still unclear on exactly the crime or mystery that is to be solved here. Holquist references “cosmic detectives, who wish to solve the crime of their own existence” (154) and says that in metaphysical detective stories it is life rather than death that is to be solved. Jameson cites a “breakdown of temporality” and breakdown in relationships between signifiers creating an overwhelming sensation of the signifier in isolation (73). This description of the signifier in isolation echoes the Word that Oedipa can never quite get a grasp on, as well as her hallucinatory states. Failure of communication is a recurring theme in The Crying of Lot 49, but I was never sure what exactly is trying to be communicated.

When I was talking to my friend about Jameson, my friend retorted that he personally had no void to be dramatized, no gap in perception. I reflected that I didn’t either – that I knew of. And how could people living in the postmodern age ever know anything else to compare our lived experience to? Even the seemingly idyllic past can supposedly never be accessed in the postmodern age as anything but simalcra, so is this comparison just a straw man? Or is Jameson outdated and my friend now fully evolved into a perceiving being, plugged into his internet feed? To what extent does the “violence to our flabby habits of perception” (156) exacted by the experience of postmodern art depend on the subject having perceptions formed in the modernist age?

If the problem is the overwhelming sensation of the isolated signifier, the description of that experience is reminiscent of medieval religious experiences, so does that sensation qualify as the new violence without that the violence within of the new art is supposed to protect us from? Jameson implies that this evolution of perception is part of a long historical process of humanity evolving to comprehend the changing world. So why is this a problem now? Why do we have to do something about it?

Jumbled thoughts on pynchon and being jumbled

A lot of really interesting points have been raised so far and I wish I’d posted earlier so that I might at least have the illusion of an original thought. Something I found most intriguing in Pynchon’s work was what drew me to Lethem’s short story in last week’s reading – the compatibility of form and function.

Just as Lethem highlighted the banality of Super Goat Man’s world with an ultra-straight matter-of-fact narrative, Pynchon continuously builds an atmosphere of fracture, confusion, and ambiguity. It actually becomes a bit disorienting for the reader – something I always find quite impressive (like checking under your bed after a decent scare-flick, when a book can physically daze you a bit, it’s an accomplishment). In fact it reminded me of a bit of a cross between a few of Vonnegut’s novels and some short stories by Shirley Jackson – I think I have “The Tooth” in mind, if that’s the actual name.

I want to quote Alyssa’s assertion, that “the more [Oedipa] uncovers the more she realizes how incoherent all of the narratives are” – I agree not just with the statement regarding Pynchon’s narrative, but also the comment it could potentially make about narrative in general (both literary and real…that is, real life you-and-me narrative). I think there is a sense of authenticity in the fact, if we consider the proposed arbitrary nature of words and things, the signifier and signified, if you wish, or just the exponential implications of admitting a letter symbol (then the word symbol then the thing symbol then the idea symbol) is arbitrarily assigned, … that not each “thread” encountered, whether it be by a protagonist or by one’s self, always “ties-in” to the main schema of narrative. Its been said that this text is full of contrasting, even contradictory ideas/names/actions/objects – this seems to be another. In some sense the absurd (I know that’s not the right word) and arbitrary lends itself to authenticity, realism.

I suppose I’m trying to say, that perhaps, in a more “traditional” novel (again I doubt that’s the correct word I should use) the threads might be sewn up at the end, for catharsis’ sake, without any dangling “clues” or hints along the way; the symbols would become clear, and the meaning (or un-meaning) of character names, in a more Dickensian way, would make themselves known (or at least the deciphering pattern would be a consistent formula). For Pynchon, there is room for untidiness. Of course this is not the first, nor last, novel to end without total closure, and that doesn’t make it a good or bad, an innovative or derivative text in itself, but I just think that the fracturing Pynchon shows us (that it isn’t healed but in a way, expands like a glass-crack in the winter) says more about difficulties in narrative, authenticity, language (symbolic and practical), POV, or whatever etcetera …what Prof. Sample called their “unknowability.”

Finally, there are pages and pages one could write about the names of people, places, bands, and so on. As someone pointed out, the differing “formulas” for cracking certain names, ie some are pre-fixed with negations or amplifiers, some are opposites some are contradictions, etc….anyway, so I won’t bother going into it now, but look forward to this conversation in class. ….sorry if this was all over the place. Pynchon’s in my head.

Continuing Themes with Pynchon

Reading The Crying of Lot 49, I’m struck by many of the similarities between this work and Pynchon’s first novel V.. Oedipa Maas’s quest mirrors that of Herbert Stencil’s search for the illusive figure of V. in the earlier novel. Both characters become obsessed with goals of discovery (and to a certain extent self-discovery) that seem perpetually out of reach. The clues that they follow are random and not firmly grounded or linked together. In V., Pynchon emphasizes the wild-goose-chase nature of the search writing that the journey becomes such an obsession that without the search Stencil has no meaning so he deliberately perpetuates the fruitless search.

The Crying of Lot 49 also contains traces of another pivotal character from V. named Benny Profane. Benny seems to have no purpose in life, no internal drive, no meaning or anchor. I think that at the beginning of the novel Oedipa seems stuck in a similar kind of apathetic malaise. Many other characters in the novel, particularly the Paranoids, display the same detachedness as Benny Profane and inclination toward debauchery as the Whole Sick Crew, Benny’s group of drinking, partying, whoring, irresponsible companions.

Pynchon continues his interest in entropy from V. on into The Crying of Lot 49. In The Crying of lot 49, Pynchon actually touches more directly on the subject of entropy in terms of its scientific definition. At the same time though, there appears to be a kind of social entropy taking place as well. The order of things is breaking down in Oedipa’s world. It is a world where a psychiatrist can get away with calling his client at three in the morning, a husband and wife nonchalantly and knowingly cast fidelity out the window, and people feel little reverence for dead American soldiers. There is something amiss in this setting. Social entropy similarly appears in Pynchon’s earlierst novel, most notably manifesting itself in the chaotic activities of the Whole Sick Crew.

Pynchon also carries weird names over from V. V. is populated with characters with strange yet meaningful names like Dewey Gland, Pig Bodine (one of the more profane characters), Slab (ironically an artist by profession),Rachel Owlglass (easily one of the most compassionate and insightful characters in the novel), and Benny Profane (a combination of Benny as in Benzadrine, an amphedamine drug, and Profane, which stands for his degenerative path). I think that Oedipa Maas’s name has a similar imbedded meaning to that of Herbert Stencil. Like a Stencil, Herbert Stencil is empty and must fill himself with something outside himself to give him meaning. For Herbert, his meaning derives from his search for V. Similarly Oedipa Maas or “more” seems to be searching for something “more.” To me, the word “more” connotes reaching higher or aspiring; in a capitalistic society we try to achieve “more” money, toys, happiness, et cetera. Her first name calls to mind Oedipus, the hero of Sophocles’s Greek tragedy about a man who makes an unsettling self-discovery and, perhaps on some level, mirrors Oedipa’s personal quest to discover the meaning of the Tristero System.

Style and Reason

Pynchon’s novel was quite the journey. While reading, I felt like Oedipa, trying to put reason into a world of chaos. I was immediately struck by how bizarre the plot of the novel is! Chapter 1 is considerably realistic and believable as we’re introduced to Oedipa, Mucho, and Oedipa’s new position as co executor of her ex-lover’s will. But realism really goes out the window when Oedipa begins a relationship with Metzger. I felt that the tipping point over into the completely bizarre and unbelievable was the scene in which the hairspray can flew destructively around the room. After this scene, Pynchon creates a rather surreal atmosphere that would only be believable as a dream or hallucination. Among other things, the Paranoids performances and tag-along nature, the constructed history, and the intricate web Oedipa attempts to weave through to solve the mystery of the Trystero really make the piece seem like a dream or hallucination.

I found it very interesting that this style is very much in contrast to that of Lethem’s in “Super Goat Man”. As we discussed last class, Lethem sets up a rather believable, yet surrealist, plot. The characters do not question Super Goat Man’s presence in their society. As the characters are not phased by his existence and presence, the reader buys into Super Goat Man’s existence as well. However, Pynchon clearly sets up a storyline that is not believable and, although he includes touches of reality, it does not seem that he intends it to be so. Interestingly, though, like Lethem’s characters, Pynchon’s main character, Oedipa Maas, buys into the world Pynchon has created.

In fact, Oedipa seems determined to put reason into her world and make sense of the mysteries. While she does partake in the madness of her society (as seen through her affair with Metzger), she does “[dedicate] herself […] to making sense of what Inverarity had left behind” (147). Metzger accuses her of being a “lib, overeducated [broad]” (59), but Oedipa essentially states that she is conservative when she confesses that she is a Young Republican. Although she becomes immersed in society, Oedipa seems to have a higher standard. She does not succumb to a reliance on pills (LSD), and, although she has an affair with Metzger, she declines other sexual advances. She also does seem to have a desire to “right wrongs” (59), as Metzger accuses, as seen in her daydream about taking the old gentleman’s landlord to court and her anger at the shopkeeper selling armbands.

Oedipa’s desire for a reason and order is clearly seen in the scene in which she is pulled into a dance at a hotel. Everyone was dancing however they wanted and Oedipa wondered “how long […] it could go on before collisions became a serious hindrance” (107). Pynchon seems to be using this dancing scene as a metaphor for Oedipa’s world and, on a larger scale, America. Oedipa doesn’t understand how the dancers can continue in an atmosphere of randomness and chaos. With everyone doing their own thing there are bound to be problems. When Oedipa leaves the dance, she “feels demoralized”. Ultimately, Oedipa concludes that the mystery, “what Inverarity had left behind”, was “the legacy [of] America” (147). With this view it seems that Pynchon is commenting on the chaos of society by presenting the reader with a character who, unsuccessfully, attempts to make sense of the disorder. Oedipa reminds herself that she lives in America where “you let it happen. Let it unfurl” (123).

In the end, we’re still left to wonder whether the whole mystery was a scheme. Pynchon seems to hint that the whole story could, in fact, even be a dream. We know Oedipa has trouble with hallucinations, and the narrator tells us that “[l]ater, possibly, [Oedipa] would have trouble sorting the night into real and dreamed” (95). Is it then possible that the entire mystery, or at least parts of it, is imagined? Is the chaos of society a nightmare?

Oedipa “More”- A Postmodern Protagonist

I would like to address Pynchon’s choice of Oedipa Maas. Interestingly, Pynchon chose to center his story on the experiences and investigations of a housewife before the Feminist movement. Indicative of the time in which the story was written, Oedipa is a housewife; however, Oedipa does much more than the average housewife usually would. Yes, the story begins with her return home from a Tupperware party, but her role as protagonist serves as that of a detective, even an amateur scholar. Then again, she is the product of her experiences, in some ways, and so are others in the story, particularly women.

For example, Oedipa does not ask nor does she expect to be the executor of Pierce’s estate, nor does she choose many of her experiences in the book. Even the Remedios Varo painting in Mexico which makes Oedipa cry under “her dark green bubble shades” depicts “a number of girls with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void” (21). The women in the painting are stuck, prisoners, trying to “fill the void” that, one could argue, is their lives. This calls to mind the Jameson article and his assessment of Postmodern art, particularly Munch’s The Scream which Jameson says “deconstructs its own aesthetic of expression, all the while remaining imprisoned within it “(62). The same mediation occurs with the art within art in the Varo painting and in Oedipa’s interpretation of their hopeless attempt to “fill the void.” Both Oedipa and the women in the painting are, in part if not completely, helpless and powerless, but at the same time, they are working to fill some void or in Oedipa’s case, to deduce a potentially arbitrary and nonexistent mystery.

Todd Kelly and Professor Sample both commented on Oedipa’s name, and Professor Sample suggested we consider the implications of the last name “Maas” in terms of the Spanish term for “more” (“mas”). As Oedipa tries to make sense of the postal service, the stamps, and the horns, among other things, she is demonstrating her almost insatiable curiosity about life. As opposed to the passivity I discussed above, in most of the book, Oedipa exercises control and power over herself (and sometimes her surroundings) as she resourcefully attempts to make sense of the seeming senseless “mystery.” She is going out into the world, away from her husband in particular (and after her own mystery, her own role as the executor of the estate) and discovering a complicated set of connections that to others have often overlooked.

On the other hand, Oedipa’s encounters are often mediated by other associations, often seemingly random associations, a fact which indicates some passivity in her experiences. Furthermore, both we, the readers, and Oedipa are left waiting for the anonymous bidder of Lot 49. The story ends with Oedipa waiting, which can be interpreted as both passive and active, but also leaves a void, a mystery unsolved, for the reader which makes the experience itself almost seem fruitless.

I do not, despite what I have written, find the novel or Oedipa’s role in the novel to be depressing or desperate. On the contrary, I see Oedipa as revolutionary as a character; her curiosity and deftness in uncovering the traces of a mystery (though not the entire mystery) reveal a new kind of Postmodern female. I would argue that Postmodernism, as Jameson explains, has more to do with fragmentation than the alienation so important to Modernism, and thus, it is not Oedipa’s alienation as a character (though she is depicted as very lonely at times) or her inability to solve this mystery which holds her back, but rather, the fragmented story she is trying to piece together. It is almost necessary to Postmodernism that the story remain fragmented rather than whole or complete or even solved; thus, Oedipa is left perpetually waiting for “more” or “Maas”, and her story is never quite finished.

I have much more I want to discuss concerning Oedipa, in particular, but I will save some of that for class.

Constructed Reality in The cRying of Lot 49

An entire genre of fiction has been inspired by theories from postmodern philosophers such as Derrida, Lacan, and Sassure. One of the theories proposed by postmodern philosophy is that human reality is linguistically constructed, a construction that is based on cultural narratives that are human products with human histories. For example, Sassure went against the dominant language theory (correspondence theory) and stated that the signifier is not equivalent to the thing being signified. Lacan also advocated the notion of the transcendental signified. In Thomas Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49 the main character attempts to make sense out of the vast amount of cultural narratives, but she is left with less clarity then when she began. Pynchon is specifically calling attention to narratives created by the global capital system. In Oedipa’s case, the more information the she uncovers, the closer she moves to a fragmented consciousness.

Pynchon’s text reacts to aspects of the global capital system, such as economic policy. Adam Smith’s text “Natural Laws of Economics,” along with the “Wealth of Nations,” theorized that economic policy was guided by an “invisible hand.” Pynchon deconstructs this narrative along with several others by parodying the system as Oedipa attempts to make sense of the connections within the Inveriarity Empire. Inveriarity becomes a symbol for the global capital system, which is exemplified by the systems all encompassing power. One of Oedipa’s first encounter’s with Metzger emphasizes this power: “What the hell didn’t he own?” (Pynchon 27). Oedipa tries to find an underlying truth behind the system, but the more she uncovers the more she realizes how incoherent all of the narratives are. When Oedipa describes her experience viewing the painting “Bordando el Manto Terrestre” the failure of her quest is foreshadowed. Oedipa tries, like the painting, to embroider the tapestry of the world:

“…embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in this tapestry, and the tapestry was the world.” (Pynchon 11)

The painting calls attention to the fact that reality is a human construction. Oedipa attempts to construct reality by tying together all of the narratives surrounding Inveriarity. However, the more narratives she consumes, the more fragmented the story becomes, finally offering no closure.

The end of Pynchon’s text parodies the global capital system by comparing economic theory to religion: “Passerine spread his arms in a gesture that seemed to belong to the priesthood of some remote culture; perhaps a descending angel” (Pynchon 152). Pynchon wants to compare these two narratives because they are both human constructions of reality. Adam Smith’s metaphor for an “invisible hand” compares to a metaphor for god. They both describe an unknown being in control of events. Oedipa continues to give into the hope that the narratives are cohesive, but she and the reader are left with no closure: “He stared at her, smiling, as if saying, I’m surprised you actually came” (152). Pynchon establishes the end of Oedipa’s quest as a failure. Instead of rejecting the narratives, she continues to believe that they will somehow tie together.

Significance of Names in The Crying of Lot 49

Someone in one of the earlier posts noted Pynchon’s use of names in The Crying of Lot 49 and I feel that the names are significant to the text. Although I did not necessarily find meaning in all of the names (there is nothing funny about Dr. Hilarius in my opinion) I feel that some of the names are either a big clue, or at least more ways that Pynchon is trying to deliberately confuse.

The earlier post mentioned that one first thinks of Oedipus when they encounter the name Oedipa in the story. I would agree, though I think there is a different reason that Pynchon chose this particular name. As the story progresses and it the question of just what is going on here becomes more prevalent, there are some instances where Oedipa could follow up on certain leads, but decides not to. On page 144 Oedipa is discussing an article that Gengis Cohen (no idea of the significance) shows her with Bortz. Oedipa says it is interesting “if the article is legitimate.” Bortz tells her it would be easy to check up on, but Oedipa never does. I think it is because Oedipa does not want to know the truth, because the truth will be so terrible that it will cause some sort of Oedipus-like reaction (though that was pretty extreme).

There also is Oedipa’s last name, Maas, which would sound the same as “mass.” I think that the idea of Oedipa as a “mass” would work because a mass would be needed to center an orbit. Oedipa is the center of this orbit of either the Trystero, Inverarity’s practical joke, or her own paranoia. Whichever one is true (if it even matters) is definitely revolving around Oedipa, the “mass” that centers the whole thing.

On the other side of all this is Pierce Inverarity, another interesting name. First, one notices that the last name is a play on some form of “veritas” or “verite” which means truth. However, his name isn IN-verarity, or un-truth. Therefore we can see this as a clue by Pynchon that Inverarity represents untruth, or that this is all a sham he put together. However, when we take his first name “Pierce,” we now have a name that relatively means “puncturing the untruth,” or getting the real truth. What is the real truth? That he wants Oedipa to play this little game that he set up, that he wants her to see through all of the lies and deceptions that he himself set up before he died? Or maybe he wants Oedipa to uncover the truth about the Trystero? His death was never explained by the way, if this was a detective story it is totally plausible that Trystero “muted his horn” and he left clues to his executor in hopes of being avenged. Or, maybe he wants Oedipa to “pierce the untruth” in the world. To see beyond what she has always taken for granted. To see the alternate reality that a large portion of the population were living in.

There is also a good chance that the names mean nothing, or are more red herrings thrown in by Pynchon to make us lose sleep over this book. I enjoy it a lot, but if I think about it too much I start to go a little crazy.

The problem with certainty

I must admit to being a little dazed after completing The Crying Lot of 49. What is a reader to make of symbols of postal horns appearing in windows of herbalists in Chinatown, or children who have sketched them on sidewalks, or on the bathroom stalls, or in the corners of stamps? I think I am just as confused as Oedipa as to whether or not there is a secret conspiracy to suppress Tristero/Trystero or if it is all a hoax? Clearly, this is one of Pynchon’s points.

It seems that everywhere Oedipa turns, she encounters uncertainty regarding The Tristero. After she meets with Mr. Thoth and sees the WASTE symbol on his ring, she is compelled to tell Fallopian. “‘You think it’s really a correlation?’ She thought of how tenuous it was, like a long white hair, over a century long. Two very old men. All these fatigued brain cells between herself and the truth” (74). Chasing after leads, Oedipa tracks down the missing line in the “Whitchapel” fragment, only to find out later that that version is corrupt according to professor of English at Cal, Emory Bortz. Then there is the concidential (?) meeting of Arnold Snarb who dons the WASTE symbol on his lapel pin, but he uses it as a symbol of his membership in I.A. or Inamorati Anonymous. It is Arnold who Oedipa contacts at the end of the novel, who now seems to be involved in The Tristero after all. Even Dr. Hilarious’s experiments with LSD and other drugs on suburban housewives like Oepida seem to give rise to the question of whether or not she is involved in a larger plot against her. Ironically, Hilarious preformed experiments of induced insanity–certainly calling into question Hilarious’s own sanity. In the end, he too is silenced by the “cops.”

As the novel progresses Oedipa appears to question this idea of truth and certainty more frequently. “Oedipa wondered whether, at the end of this (if it were supposed to end), she too might not be left with only compiled memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but never the central truth itself[…]” (76). The notion that she is in a dream continues to appear, as Oedipa encounters more clues. Leaving her to “have trouble sorting the night into real and dreamed” (95). When her perception of reality fails her, she is left to test reality through touch. When the sailor throws a letter at her in the hallway, “she was overcome all at once by a need to touch him, as if she could not believe in him, or would not remember him, without it” (102). Poor Oedipa. What is she to make of all of this? Her notion of certainty has been turned upside down.

The notion of certainty seems to be the pivotal idea when discussing the difference between modern literature and postmodern literature. The modernists– Eliot and the like– established New Criticism in hopes of identifying one meaning in a text. Hemingway wrote in excruciating detail about certainty with stories about the practical– how to fish for trout or watch a bullfight. Whereas in postmodernism, nothing is certain. Fact and fiction are one in the same.

Just for kicks, I looked up up the Thurn und Taxis family and it turns out they have their own website. Click the link below.

http://www.thurnundtaxis.com/

Don’t skip the intro that contains pictures of their palace. You can even rent out the dining room to throw a private party. In addition, the current Prince turns out to be a 25-year-old who loves to race Lamborghinis. Here is a picture of him.

fuerst-albert_01

An Unimaginative Use of Tapioca.

I quite like Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. The breathless narrative and endless lists of little fiddly things-stamps, letters, bits of graffiti-are quite appealing. Moving through the book gives me a sense of gradually sliding out of control, the slow development of a paranoia in which one starts to distrust one’s own perceptions when it begins to seem that the scheme (or swindle) that one is caught in is ultimately too big to see as a coherent whole. In that sense it reminds me of Ellis’ Glamorama at the point where even mundane objects-confetti, a black hat, a stick-on tattoo-become objects of dread and signals of a large system. The protagonist’s perception becomes more and more faulty as objects-photographs, pornographic videos-are manipulated to create a “reality” that is false but can’t be argued with.

Michael Holquist makes some interesting points in his “Whodunit and Other Question.” I find his inclusion of Poe in the canon of detective stories very fascinatingl; I wonder if he would also admit H.P. Lovecraft into the same group? But the question is, what does this have to do with postmodernism and Pynchon? Earlier we spoke about whether postmodernism was a break from modernism or a continuation (evolution?) of modernism. Holquist writes that “post-modernism…can best be understood as springing from a different view of man, and therefore a different view of art from that which obtained in Modernism” (Holquist 147). I suppose this can be taken as Holquist’s assertion that postmodernism is more of a break with moderning (or a perspective shift) than a continuation. Holquist goes on to say that postmodernism is “about things, not people” and mentions the 1930s “murder classics” by Wheatley and Links and The Voyeur as examples. I suppose an argument could be made for Pynchon’s novella that links it with Holquist’s argument, using the obsessive minutiae of objects in the book.

One thing that stood out for me particularly is the gradual revelation of how enmeshed Oedipa is in the unfathomable plan of Inverarity’s, the feeling that she cannot figure it out because she cannot get outside of it enough to do so, of being caught in a possibly malevolent system. The “clues” which we might expect to help us start unraveling the mystery only serve to further complicate matters. There is a sort of “meta” feeling I get when reading this novella and making connections to things mentioned in the novel with things outside of the novel, then eventually feeling as though I’m becoming paranoid along with Oedipa (for example-Maxwell’s Demon and “The Ballad of Maxwell Demon” from the fictionalized biopic of a character based on David Bowie in Velvet Goldmine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1y_PRuq7x0). The novella greatly puts me in mind of China Mieville’s short story “The Go-Between” from Looking For Jake, and Holquist’s article also brings Neil Gaiman’s “A Study in Emerald”-really a stylistic mash-up-from Fragile Things to mind.

Holquist and Fredric Jameson both seem to put the burgeoning of postmodernism at roughly the end of the 1950s/beginning of the 1960s. Jameson also raises the question of whether postmodernism should be viewed as a break or a continuation of modernism, although from what I understand he presents both positions as plausible but mentions that the latter view does not “take into account the social position of the older modernism” (Jameson 56). Jameson also makes an interesting assertion that postmodern global culture in the “superstructural expression of a whole new wave of American military and economic domination throughout the world” (Jameson 57). Given that we have recently seen a rather dramatic re-structuring of the existing economic system and are poised at the brink of an unprecendented level of reorganization of the American economic system in particular, does this alter Jameson’s argument at all? Or are these changes rather superficial? Or is this possibly the sign that we are actually moving into the post-postmodern era? I do wonder about Jameson’s claim on page 57 that the “offensive features” of postmodernism have become institutionalized-I suppose he’s right-but I don’t consider a strong reaction to something an indication that the point has been missed; I don’t think the two positions have to be occupied simultaneously.

Signifiers, Oedipa/Oedipus, and Postmodernism…

When reading The Crying of Lot 49, I thought about what someone said in class in reference to signifiers in Foer’s story. The thing with signifiers, according to Ferdinand de Saussure, is that they’re arbitrary, at least, as far as its connection to the signified. So, Oedipa Maas is seemingly lost in this world of detached signifiers, struggling with clues and trying to seek meaning in symbols like the muted horn, or meaning in words like W.A.S.T.E. and the Trystero. She even says at one point, “Each clue that comes is supposed to have its own clarity,” as if she recognizes that the signifiers should have a signified. I’m not sure if this is a postmodern thing, insofar as having these detached signifiers; it was just a connection I made to the readings from last week.

I also thought about the names Pynchon picked for people and places in this novel, but considering the thing with the detached signifiers, I’m now wondering if he arbitrarily chose these names. Of course, when one see Oedipa written on the page, one thinks Oedipus. The only connection I can think of now, between Oedipa and Oedipus, is the blindness. This comes later in the book, when Oedipa is drinking bourbon and then “went out and drove on the freeway for a while with her lights out.” For those not familiar with Oedipus Rex, he blinds himself and says something like, “From now on, go in darkness!” So, maybe this is what Pynchon was thinking when naming her Oedipa (and maybe there’s more to it than the blindness), or maybe he was just “arbitrarily” naming her. If he did arbitrarily name everyone, you still have to wonder about the names. I mean: Mucho Maas (I think that means “a lot more” in Spanish), Dr. Hilarious, etc. These seem so telling. But maybe that’s just postmodernism: messing with what seems to be there, on the surface, or what should be there, according to what one expects. Or maybe I’m just making an unrelated mess out of all of this.

If put on the spot about why The Crying of Lot 49 is postmodern, I’d probably say that it’s because you can’t figure it out, at least, not right away and not in one way. This explanation would hardly win me an A in this class, but it seems like a right explanation for this text. If written in a modern manner, it would leave nothing unexplained at the end and would have an apt conclusion—maybe not a satisfying conclusion, but a plausible one. All the little threads would form some sort of picture, and the reader wouldn’t be left hanging. But postmodernism seems to always have the reader questioning if what he/she read indeed happened or if what was presented as reality wasn’t actually reality at all.

muted-horn

Pynchon’s Crying of Lot 49 and Entropy

The Crying of Lot 49 has a plethora of information that was just as confusing to me as it was to Oedpia. But I think this was intentional on Pynchon’s part. Oedpia pursues clues and information that appear to be connected, but when looked at from an objective viewpoint, these connections are arbitrary and only bring up more questions with indefinite answers.

Entropy is symbolic and used in a broader sense than just the explanation of Maxwell’s Demon. Oedpia is constantly getting clues to the mystery of the Trystero. There are loosely connected clues that Oedpia encounters throughout the story, but one that really grabbed me was what leads her to Nefastis’s perpetual motion machine and its relevance to Trystero. This is completely arbitrary. Koteks is merely sketching the muted post horn on a piece of paper when she walks by and he tells her the story of Maxwell’s Demon and Nefastis’s machine. Oedpia takes this to be some sort of clue and seeks Nefastis out. When she meets him, Nefastis says, “Entropy is a metaphor, It connects the world of thermodynamics to the world of information flow” (85). I vaguely know what entropy is from merely the text and Wikipedia, so I spoke with my roommate, who is majoring in physics, and he tried to explain it to me a little better. He said that entropy is an actual measurable quantity in physics. The idea is that in a closed system, things tend to degrade into chaos. Without any force or loss in a system, that system cannot function (He gave an example of a boiling pot of water with the lid on and how the tendency is for the energy in the pot to push the lid off and escape). I think this idea is a prevailing one in the text, and entropy is used in terms of information and culture. All the information that Oedpia encounters during her journey in California does not fit together like she hopes. One thing leads to another and so on, and Oedpia becomes obsessive in solving this apparent mystery. While Oedpia is experiencing culture in 1960s California, she is trying to make sense of the world around her, or should I say, the world that seems to be hidden from her, but draws no logical conclusion. When Oedpia tries to formulate a conclusion and, seeing that the further she goes the more confusing things become, she loses the aspects of her life that were orderly and she becomes detached and paranoid: “They are stripping from me – she said subvocally – feeling like a fluttering curtain in a very high window, moving up to then out over the abyss – they are stripping away, one by one, my men” (126). In chapter 6 we really see her lose it as she wonders back to The Scope and her hotel started and meets with Mike Fallopian and Genghis Cohen again. The world that Pynchon created has caused Oedpia to descend into chaos.

Crying of Lot 49 is obviously more than a commentary on the monopoly of the postal service. It’s clear that Pynchon is making a greater point. Crying of Lot 49 is considered one of the definitive postmodern novels, and I think I’ll take a stab at the reason why. COL49 is reflective of the 60s culture of the time – music, drugs, promiscuity, and rebellion of authority – all these things are inherent in the plot (and rather cleverly mocked at). Elements of mystery, pop culture, history, counterculture, and science are combined in COL49 to form a pastiche, which is a symptom of postmodernism. Culture is mirrored and satirized in the text while realism is ignored in order to exaggerate culture. That’s the most I can make out of it for now.

Overall I enjoyed the novel and thought it had some fantastic sentences, like this one: “I am the projector at the planetarium, all the closed little universe visible in the circle of that stage is coming from my mouth, eyes, sometimes other orifices also” (62). With such a dense novel in so few pages it is obvious that Pynchon is smart, but with outbursts like this he also has a sense of humor.