{"id":109,"date":"2009-02-03T22:14:01","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T03:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=109"},"modified":"2009-02-03T22:14:01","modified_gmt":"2009-02-04T03:14:01","slug":"continuing-themes-with-pynchon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=109","title":{"rendered":"Continuing Themes with Pynchon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reading The Crying of Lot 49<\/em>, I’m struck by many of the similarities between this work and Pynchon’s first novel V<\/em>.. \u00a0Oedipa Maas’s quest mirrors that of Herbert Stencil’s search for the illusive figure of V. in the earlier novel. \u00a0Both characters become obsessed with goals of discovery (and to a certain extent self-discovery) that seem perpetually out of reach. \u00a0The clues that they follow are random and not firmly grounded or linked together. \u00a0In V.<\/em>, 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Crying of Lot 49<\/em>\u00a0also contains traces of another pivotal character from V.<\/em>\u00a0named Benny Profane. \u00a0Benny seems to have no purpose in life, no internal drive, no meaning or anchor. \u00a0I think that at the beginning of the novel Oedipa seems stuck in a similar kind of apathetic malaise. \u00a0Many 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.<\/p>\n

Pynchon continues his interest in entropy from V. <\/em>on into The Crying of Lot 49. \u00a0<\/em>In The Crying of lot 49<\/em>, Pynchon actually touches more directly on the subject of entropy in terms of its scientific definition. \u00a0At the same time though, there appears to be a kind of social entropy taking place as well. \u00a0The order of things is breaking down in Oedipa’s world. \u00a0It 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. \u00a0There is something amiss in this setting. \u00a0Social entropy similarly appears in Pynchon’s earlierst novel, most notably manifesting itself in the chaotic activities of the Whole Sick Crew. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Pynchon also carries weird names over from V. \u00a0V. <\/em>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). \u00a0I think that Oedipa Maas’s name has a similar imbedded meaning to that of Herbert Stencil. \u00a0Like a Stencil, Herbert Stencil is empty and must fill himself with something outside himself to give him meaning. \u00a0For Herbert, his meaning derives from his search for V. \u00a0Similarly Oedipa Maas or “more” seems to be searching for something “more.” \u00a0To me, the word “more” connotes reaching higher or aspiring; in a capitalistic society we try to achieve “more” money, toys, happiness, et cetera. \u00a0Her 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading The Crying of Lot 49, I’m struck by many of the similarities between this work and Pynchon’s first novel V.. \u00a0Oedipa Maas’s quest mirrors that of Herbert Stencil’s search for the illusive figure of V. in the earlier novel. \u00a0Both characters become obsessed with goals of discovery (and to a certain extent self-discovery) that … Continue reading Continuing Themes with Pynchon<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[120,26],"class_list":["post-109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pynchon","tag-pynchon","tag-race"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=109"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":113,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109\/revisions\/113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}