The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon – Voting by Post
Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, published in 1966, is about conspiracy. While the internet has become a Petri dish for conspiracy, people have long been attracted to the apparent presence of hidden controlling influences in life, whether they actually exist or not.
The setting for The Crying of Lot 49 conspiracy is, of all things, the postal service. A woman named Oedipa Maas, while acting as executor for Pierce Inverarity, her hugely rich former boyfriend, seems to stumble on the existence of the Tristero, an unofficial postal service with roots going back to the Holy Roman Empire. At first the idea of a postal system conspiracy seems merely quirky, as we explore the niche arcana of stamp collecting and postmarks. But then you begin to realise that because the postal service was for centuries the means by which society communicated on a wide scale, control of the mail becomes a way of controlling society. If that sounds far-fetched, remember that even in the age of electronic communication, there have been controversies about politicisation of the U.S. Postal Service, and the effect this might have on postal voting.
So, we follow Oedipa on her tortuous, confusing and sometimes very funny path towards revealing the existence or otherwise of the Tristero. What the outcome of this investigation might be is a tricky thing to reveal, even if I wanted to provide a spoiler.
Personally, I think you can find a clue to the enigmatic truth of this book in the twists of its language. Characteristically, a sentence will seem to be going in one direction, before going off somewhere else. As a general illustration, look at the word ‘God’ which consistently appears as an exclamation doing double duty as a proper noun. Some examples:
‘Now here was Oedipa, faced with a metaphor of God knew how many parts.’
In this sentence, if there were a full stop after ‘God’ it would be a name for a deity. But we then skitter on into the ‘knew how many parts’ bit, causing the word to slide into an exclamation of confusion.
‘That night she sat for hours, too numb even to drink, teaching herself to breathe in a vacuum. For this, oh God, was the void.’
Once again God can be a noun, as in Oedipa appealing to God, while also serving as an exclamation of frustration at the absence of any such thing.
‘Suppose, God, there really was a Tristero then and that she had come on it by accident.’
Same again. The presence suggested by God as a noun disappears into a throw-away exclamation.
Finally have a look at this passage, where we get the God as noun/exclamation trick twice in quick succession.
She looked around, spooked at the sunlight pouring in all the windows, as if she had been trapped at the centre of some intricate crystal, and said “My God.”
“And I feel him, certain days, days of a certain temperature,” said Mr Thoth, “and barometric pressure. Did you know that? I feel him close to me.”
“Your grandfather?”
“No, my God.”
For me, this characteristic use of the word ‘God’, reveals much about the enigmatic nature of hidden controlling influences in The Crying of Lot 49. As soon as shadowy forces become real enough to be named, they disappear again, provoking an exclamation of shock and surprise.
As I was reading my way through all of Pynchon’s twisty sentences, there were times when I did wonder if I was actually enjoying the experience. But by the end I could only feel impressed. The Crying of Lot 49 is very interesting, in a rarified, philosophical way, and also in a more down to earth sense, surprisingly relevant to twenty first century political and social concerns
