Name: The Crying of Lot 49
Rating: 3.875 (84 reviews)

Thomas Pynchon

When Oedipa Maas is named as the executor of her late lover's will, she discovers that his estate is mysteriously connected with an underground organization

The Crying of Lot 49

Edward Steel

martian1138

Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried. No one had noticed; she wore dark green bubble shades. For a moment she’d wondered if the seal around her sockets were tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the entire lens space and never dry. She could carry the sadness of the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet unfound varied in important ways from cry to cry. She had looked down at her feet and known, then, because of a painting, that what she stood on had only been woven together a couple thousand miles away in her own tower, was only by accident known as Mexico, and so Pierce had take her away from nothing, there’d been no escape. What did she so desire escape from? Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all. Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey. If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?

The highly original satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy, meets some extremely interesting characters and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self-knowledge.

RIP my brain. Happy to be done. I don't think I enjoy detective novels, or satires of same. And all men are asses here to a point that's too depressive even for me. Undeniably some exqusitely gorgeous passages that do put the rushing bubble into a slow motion soap.

I think I need to let it sit. What I gained mostly is a glimmer of understanding for everytime I've heard "I can't read complicated books, that book is hard". Whether illness induced brainfog or low(er) IQ, now I get it. It feels unreachable. Like something you lost and forgot and have a sadness about, a melancholy. Hauntology? Grief in whatever stage? Pain chooses another spot every day. But sometimes it stays.

RIP my brain. Happy to be done. I don't think I enjoy detective novels, or satires of same. And all men are asses here to a point that's too depressive even for me. Undeniably some exqusitely gorgeous passages that do put the rushing bubble into a slow motion soap.

I think I need to let it sit. What I gained mostly is a glimmer of understanding for everytime I've heard "I can't read complicated books, that book is hard". Whether illness induced brainfog or low(er) IQ, now I get it. It feels unreachable. Like something you lost and forgot and have a sadness about, a melancholy. Hauntology? Grief in whatever stage? Pain chooses another spot every day. But sometimes it stays.

It was weird and I loved it… I really felt that I too was going crazy

Jessica Gagliardi

Evan

My first Pynchon. I enjoyed it, I'd probably go for 3.5 stars if I could. I'd say its length is perfect for his style, assuming this is representative of it.
Honestly, I think any sort of "deeper" meaning got lost on me if there even was one, here. Maybe that's just postmodernism, for ya. I mostly found the book humorous, a fireworks show of eclectic characters with comical names living ridiculous lives in an emerging, not-yet-souled city. Characters going on unprompted political tangents, histories that pose little or maybe no relevance to anything. Ultimately, a lot of noise, yet I found it enjoyable.
I thought Pynchon did a good job of balancing absurdity and tensity. Ramblings that begin to feel like fever dreams are soon scary as Oedipa may indeed be stumbling into something grand.
A fun book, maybe something like "razor sharp pulp" would describe it. I look forward to reading more Pynchon in the future.

Don't you hate it when you can't tell whether or not your dead ex is just fucking with your head from beyond the grave?

Nick Whalen

Some of the best sentences and paragraphs, but for me less than the sum of its parts. Maybe GR is more my tastes. 

Luke Pearce

Donald

This is the book I've waited my whole life to read. I read it in one day and will probably read it again tomorrow (and then probably once a year for the rest of my life).

How did Pynchon get so much into such a short book? Dense, hilarious, exciting, crowded, surreal. This is the work of a master.

After learning that she is the executor of her ex-lover's will, Oedipa Maas starts a strange journey through Southern California in the 1960s.

I decided to reread Lot 49 on a whim. Pynchon is certainly right that it is no good compared to V. and Gravity's Rainbow, but who cares? It's just as much fun as I remembered.

Phil James

Wonderful. I was wary of Pynchon for a long time. A reputation for denseness or difficulty, obscurity, but this was like a burst of light. OK, I couldn't say what the story was about in every detail, but it enjoyable in it's self and also for the gap it filled in my literary education.
Drugged up, psychotic conspiracy theories have never been written so well.

cygnoir

I have tried to get through this book three times now, and doubt I will ever succeed.

The Crying of Lot 49

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