Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The Crying of Lot 49” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

The Crying of Lot 49

Thomas Pynchon

3.69 · Rating details · 73,668 ratings · 4,587 reviews

Suffused with rich satire, chaotic brilliance, verbal turbulence and wild humor, The Crying of Lot 49 opens as Oedipa Maas discovers that she has been made executrix of a former lover's estate. The performance of her duties sets her on a strange trail of detection, in which bizarre characters crowd in to help or confuse her. But gradually, death, drugs, madness, and marria ...more

Get A Copy

Paperback, 152 pages

Published October 17th 2006 by Harper Perennial (first published 1966)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Crying of Lot 49, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

Best Books of the 20th Century

7,522 books — 49,538 voters

Ranking the works of Thomas Pynchon

9 books — 252 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 3.69 ·

Rating details

· 73,668 ratings · 4,587 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of The Crying of Lot 49

Mar 21, 2007 mary rated it really liked it

so imagine you're browsing through a bookstore on a lazy saturday afternoon.

you stop in the pynchon section, and there, out of the corner of your eye, you see this *guy* and he's checking you out. you think, wow! this is one for the movies! does this actually happen? (this is a sexually oriented biased review, sorry)

you proceed to chat, laughing at the length of gravity's rainbow. and you go next door with your new books to grab a cup of coffee, which turns into dinner, whuch turns in to crepes ...more

flag 682 likes · Like · see review

Feb 23, 2011 Ian "Marvin" Graye rated it it was amazing

Shelves: read-2012, reviews-5-stars, reviews, pynchon

Appetite for Deconstruction

Most readers approach a complex novel, like a scientist approaches the world or a detective approaches a crime - with an appetite for knowledge and understanding, and a methodology designed to satiate their appetite.

“The Crying of Lot 49” (“TCL49”) presents a challenge to this type of quest for two reasons.

One, it suggests that not everything is knowable and we should get used to it.

Second, the novel itself fictionalizes a quest which potentially fails to allow the fem ...more

flag 307 likes · Like · see review

Jan 13, 2014 J.L. Sutton rated it it was amazing

“This is America, you live in it, you let it happen. Let it unfurl.”

Image result for crying of lot 49

Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 is not for everyone (mostly I know this because I’ve recommended this book before and been dismayed when it was not loved). I do, however, get a lot of comments on my W.A.S.T.E. t-shirt. I’ve been reading a lot of books lately which are not easily classifiable, and The Crying of Lot 49 definitely fits that mold. For me, it is a wild ride through layers of conspiracy, alternative history (m ...more

flag 216 likes · Like · see review

Apr 28, 2008 SJ Loria rated it did not like it

The kind of book that makes people hate books. Literally one of, if not, the worst story I've ever read. A classic English majors only book, aka people like talking about this book and that they "get it" make you feel like their intellectual inferior. This book is the literary equivalent of some hipster noise band that everyone knows sucks but people will say they are good just to be in the "know."

I must say this before I get a bunch of messages from people looking down their nose at me. I do " ...more

flag 184 likes · Like · see review

Jun 13, 2011 Stephen rated it liked it

Shelves: literature, classics, humor-and-satire, audiobook, 1954-1969, x-filing-and-secret-histories

My first excursion into the Pynchonesque…and it left me disorientated, introspective and utterly confused about how exactly I feel about it. I’m taking the cowards way out and giving it three stars even though that makes me feel like I’m punting the responsibility football and doing my best imitation of an ostrich when trouble walks by.

I am going to have to re-read this. My assumption is that I began this book taking Pynchon a little too lightly. I decided to start my exploration of Pynchon ...more

flag 173 likes · Like · see review

Mar 19, 2015 Vit Babenco rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

The world is full of signs and symbols and emblems and omens… One just should learn to read them…

Beneath the notice, faintly in pencil, was a symbol she'd never seen before, a loop, triangle and trapezoid.

“The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven…” Revelation 11:15
Thomas Pynchon is a cognoscente of all sorts of conspiracies and The Crying of Lot 49, a somewhat sad post-noir burlesque, set amidst trashy cultural and behavioural patterns, concerns itself with a w ...more

flag 111 likes · Like · see review

May 08, 2015 Seemita rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: those who wish their sanity to go for a ride

Shelves: other-awards-w, america, fiction, alpha-meta-dig-a

Muted – I am in an alien way,
Post – reading this weird novel about a
Horn – that despite many mouths, remains

Muted – across the
Post – offices of circuitous US lands although the blare of this
Horn – is audible to a secretive group that moves in

Muted – shadows and sews in its hem, high
Post – bearers and zany professors who insist to
Horn – out any intruders who, in public or

Muted – way, attempt to
Post – any letters sent with this
Horn – bearing stamp ...more

flag 104 likes · Like · see review

Jun 07, 2012 Jenn(ifer) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: conspiracy theorists

Recommended to Jenn(ifer) by: Tristero!

Shelves: gr-group-coreads, you-should-read-this, read-in-2012, cross-continental-book-club

Once upon a time I won this book from Stephen M. Apparently, Mr. M. had purchased this book used. The previous owner being a young scholar filled the inside cover pages with erudite observations gleaned from the text. I present them for you here in their entirety (along with my parenthetical comments):

1. Immoral in beginning; mostly about how we think (deep)
2. Mucho takes drugs to escape problems (ya don't say)
3. She's searching for answers because she thinks there's a conspiracy in the male (si Once upon a time I won this book from Stephen M. Apparently, Mr. M. had purchased this book used. The previous owner being a young scholar filled the inside cover pages with erudite observations gleaned from the text. I present them for you here in their entirety (along with my parenthetical comments):

1. Immoral in beginning; mostly about how we think (deep)
2. Mucho takes drugs to escape problems (ya don't say)
3. She's searching for answers because she thinks there's a conspiracy in the male (sic).
4. Dr. Halarius (sic) a doctor (sic) running away from Israelites but there's no Israelites; running after him because he was a jew nazi (umm... scratches head...)
5. Looking for truth but always falls apart. All the people she knows have non-realistic things going on. (I told you this chick was deep)
6. She's searching for truth alone.
7. All characters are in there to show "loss of truth." (hmmmm)
8. She see's (sic) WASTE, loss & horny fiancé throughout the group. (what the hell?)(this is underlined btw, apparently very important)
9. People always try to silence of truth. (perhaps English is a second language?)
10. Mute horn: the muting of everything & no one is supposed to know.
11. Unlike the character Oedpa, we are pushed into quietism. (oh are we?)
12 People that complain never gets anywhere (sic). (what that has to do with this book is anyone's guess)
13. Tries to prove gov't wrong but she finds out that the gov't was right & she finds herself lonely & she doesn't know if she really knows the truth. (uh huh)
14. The band is called Paranoids because they smoke pot. (no, she really wrote that, I'm not kidding).

*****
Makes total sense, right? My goodness, I can't imagine reading whatever brainchild was spawned from this nonsense, but I'm going to bet it got a C+ at best.

So, wanna know what I think about this book? I think it could be the love child of David Lynch & Carol Burnett -- it needs a whole new genre: slapstick surrealism. I think it's Gravity's Rainbow minus the sexy time. I think it's the embodiment of what it might be like to be a mouse forever trapped in a maze. I think it's a conspiracy, man, and I think you're all in on it!

...more

flag 94 likes · Like · see review

Mar 31, 2018 Barry Pierce rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2018, 20th-century

Y'know I feel sorry for Pynchon. He's gained a reputation as a 'difficult writer'. This problem plagues Faulkner as well. People go into Pynchon's and Faulkner's novels and quickly realise that things happen very differently in here and thus, unnerved by the shock of the new, hastily retreat. It's a pity. My best advice for reading Pynchon? Stop trying to understand everything. If a passage, or a page, or hell, even a whole chapter doesn't make any sense, don't bother yourself over it. Just move Y'know I feel sorry for Pynchon. He's gained a reputation as a 'difficult writer'. This problem plagues Faulkner as well. People go into Pynchon's and Faulkner's novels and quickly realise that things happen very differently in here and thus, unnerved by the shock of the new, hastily retreat. It's a pity. My best advice for reading Pynchon? Stop trying to understand everything. If a passage, or a page, or hell, even a whole chapter doesn't make any sense, don't bother yourself over it. Just move on. The only person who's ever fully understood a Pynchon novel is Pynchon.

There's a couple of ways to read The Crying of Lot 49. You can read it as a mystery novel, you can read it as a meditation on 1960s post-war America (à la Breakfast of Champions) and you can also read it as a great satire on the postmodernist novel. I read it as the latter. If you stand back from this novel and try to see it as Pynchon essentially taking the piss out of all the tropes and plots and characters often found in postmodernist literature, then I think it starts making the most sense.

The novel follows Oedipa Maas who, after discovering a strange trumpet-like symbol on the wall of a bathroom, goes on an incredibly convoluted and complex journey to unmask the symbol's true meaning. Despite the novel's brevity (only 142 pages), Pynchon's trademark dense but intricate prose turns what is essentially a long short story into a fully-fledged novel, packed with a vast cast of characters and an equal amount of plots.

Pynchon has a lot of fun with The Crying of Lot 49. You can almost hear him sniggering as he types out names such as Genghis Cohen and Dr. Hilarius and Mike Fallopian. He isn't exactly being subtle about the inherent ridiculousness of this novel. His comical names are mirrored in the novel's many comic moments.

A stand-out scene from early on in the novel describes Oedipa's attempt to glean answers from the lawyer, Metzger. He suggests that for every question she asks she must take off an item of clothing. Oedipa excuses herself to use the bathroom, where she proceeds in donning every item of clothing she can find. She then traipses back into Metzger's office looking like, as Pynchon brilliantly puts it, 'a beach ball with feet'.

There are innumerable scenes like that in Lot 49. However, whilst this is a fantastic comical satire, I found myself somewhat longing for more. The narrative is incredibly episodic. Oedipa trundles along from scene to scene, meeting a new character at every stop and unlocking a small part of the novel's greater mystery, like a sort of postmodernist Canterbury Tales. Pynchon also just adores digression, which I know is something of his trademark, but when the novel is 142 pages long, you'd think that he would have reigned it in slightly.

Overall I found The Crying of Lot 49 to be a fun satirical romp. This novel is often suggested as a good starting place for Pynchon virgins, mainly due to its brevity. And I think that's fairly solid advice. Read it whichever way you want to, or even try to find a new angle to approach it from. But most importantly, have fun, that's what Pynchon would want. ...more

flag 77 likes · Like · see review

Sep 09, 2012 Arthur Graham rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Quite fittingly, I'm sitting down to write this review after having just checked the mail. Nothing today but junk and bills. Save for my paltry royalty checks and the occasional bit of fan mail here and there (fans, you know who you are), that's about all I get most days, but this still doesn't stop me from checking the box two, three, or even four times until something shows up. On the odd day there's no mail before suppertime, I'm usually left somewhat disconcerted. What, no catalogs? No super Quite fittingly, I'm sitting down to write this review after having just checked the mail. Nothing today but junk and bills. Save for my paltry royalty checks and the occasional bit of fan mail here and there (fans, you know who you are), that's about all I get most days, but this still doesn't stop me from checking the box two, three, or even four times until something shows up. On the odd day there's no mail before suppertime, I'm usually left somewhat disconcerted. What, no catalogs? No supermarket flyers? Not even anything for that chick who lived here three tenants ago? I start to worry that the postman fell ill, or had an accident somewhere along the way.

That's how reliable the mail is.

Sure, we've all had mail arrive late, if ever at all. Things get lost from time to time, but whatever our complaints against the various couriers, what we forget in those moments of frustration is that 99.99% of the mail addressed to us in our lifetime does eventually make its way into our hands, and usually right on time!

It's simply astounding. Sometimes I wonder whether UPS, FedEx, and the United States Postal Service have all colluded to pioneer some new teleportation technology, warping pallets of packages and correspondence from coast to coast, leisurely loading their bags and trucks for their local rounds while the rest of us dupes check their phony tracking numbers.

That's probably even further fetched than the conspiracy postulated by this book, but not by much. Either way, the mail remains quite astonishing nonetheless.

Think about it. If people couldn't send things by mail, they'd have to make every delivery in person. Only the very well connected could ever succeed in harnessing a vast network of others in such a grand endeavor, and I guess that explains why our national/international delivery systems can trace their roots back to the messengers employed by empires of old. Royal European delivery services eventually came to be rivaled by private outfits, subsequently squashed by postal reform in this country, only to return sub rosa in a campaign of guerilla mailings in 1966. Here in 2013, the government service is presently taking its turn on the ropes, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms.

This isn't a morality play between big business and big government couriers, people. This is the very heart and soul of communication -- ugly, futile, and absolutely necessary.
...more

flag 75 likes · Like · see review

Mar 06, 2020 Tom Quinn rated it it was amazing

Pynchon, here in his exuberant "put-me-on-the-mapper," is an antic clown who cartwheeled into my life juggling with words in a way that astounds as it entertains. No one can talk this way but somehow I feel I think this way, a whirly-burly hurdy-gurdy of words and ideas fragmenting and recombining and popping and fizzing inside my skull until it might just crack. Reading this whirlwind of a book is like some bizarre accupressure along those mental fault lines, with Pynchon knuckle-rapping and pr ...more

flag 73 likes · Like · see review

Jul 16, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it really liked it

Shelves: american-20th-c, novels, post-modern, fiction

I know everyone thinks that this - along with Gravity's Rainbow - is Pynchon's masterpiece and yes, Oedipa Maas is one crazy-ass protagonist and an incredible addition to the post-modern canon. The story itself was funny and absurd and exciting. I guess I just wanted a conclusion. Sort of like with V where I was really invested but then was like, ummm so what does this all mean?
All that being said, it is still Pynchon and is still amazing.
...more

flag 72 likes · Like · see review

Aug 22, 2012 Fabian rated it it was ok

Dumb. Overrated. And the only plus here? That it's a short novel.

A mystery with no solution. I think the only person that can pull this off is David Lynch. But he's no novelist. This is absurdism and pretentiousness at its utmost. I really did not enjoy trying to "figure out" a, truth be told, lost cause.

Skip. Please vanish from the 1001 Musts list! We do not need a hybrid Don DeLillo, Nathaniel West, David Cronenberg. Truly. Sort of a ridiculous embarrassment. ...more

flag 69 likes · Like · see review

Oct 27, 2009 Kemper rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: famous-books, 100

I really want to like Thomas Pynchon. I love the whole brilliant but reclusive author act, and all the cool kids at the library seem to think he’s the cat’s ass. But I’m starting to think that he and I are never going to be friends.

I tried to read Gravity’s Rainbow twice and wound up curled up in the fetal position , crying while sucking my thumb. Supposedly, this is his most accessible book. It was easier to read than GR, but easier to understand? Well…….

Oedipa Maas unexpectedly finds herself ...more

flag 69 likes · Like · see review

Oct 02, 2009 Manny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: blame-jordan-if-you-like, too-sexy-for-maiden-aunts, parody-homage, story-review, pooh-dante, well-i-think-its-funny

"So, what do you think it's about?" she asked, as she took a preliminary sip from her cocktail. "Entropy, to start with," he replied. "If only he'd known the Holographic Principle. It follows from thermodynamic calculations that the information content of a black hole is proportional to the square of its radius, not the cube, and the Universe can reasonably be thought of as a black hole. Hence all its information is really on its surface, and the interior is a low-energy illusion. Wouldn't you s ...more

flag 59 likes · Like · see review

Apr 21, 2012 Paul rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: american-novels

Where do you start with a novel like this. There are so many trails and plays with words and their meaning that it is dizzying. There is a central character called Oedipa who becomes co-executor of an ex flames estate and inadvertantly steps into what may or may not be a global conspiracy stretching back through the ages.
Lots of interesting characters turn up and may (or may not) be part of the conspiracy. Oedipa's therapist turns out to be an ex-Nazi who worked in Buchenwald and there is an on ...more

flag 56 likes · Like · see review

Nov 20, 2011 Richard Derus rated it it was ok

Og think nasty writer-man laughing at Og.

flag 56 likes · Like · see review

Jul 23, 2018 Ivana Books Are Magic rated it really liked it

Sign me in for more Thomas Pynchon, please. This was my first reading of him, and I was honestly blown away. How is it possible that I haven't read him sooner? Well, it's never too late to discover a good writer. I'm actually happy that I dived into this novel blissful unaware of anything regrading the author, the time period it was written in or the novel itself. That made the reading all the more fun. The Crying of Lot 49 has proved to be such an exquisite literary surprise! If this novel is a Sign me in for more Thomas Pynchon, please. This was my first reading of him, and I was honestly blown away. How is it possible that I haven't read him sooner? Well, it's never too late to discover a good writer. I'm actually happy that I dived into this novel blissful unaware of anything regrading the author, the time period it was written in or the novel itself. That made the reading all the more fun. The Crying of Lot 49 has proved to be such an exquisite literary surprise! If this novel is anything to go by, Thomas Pynchon has a really peculiar writing style. The narrative in this novel often felt chaotic, but I absolutely enjoyed its potent mix of wild humour, entertaining characters, delicious sarcasm, social commenting and alternative history! I didn't find it hard to follow at all. Maybe it was because of my mood at the time, but I found myself immersed in the novel.

But first things first. I read this book in the course of one day and night, under circumstances that were a bit strange. My personal state of being went well with the mood of this one. By the end of this novel, I was nearly hallucinating myself, not for the reasons the characters themselves but still it felt appropriate. Recently I have had an operation that went wrong and my recovering was slower that excepted. Yesterday I had 'the bride of Frankenstein' look down, my neck was terribly swollen and I was pale as death. I was able to get a wink of sleep, so I entertained myself with reading this novel and some other works. Around 3 am, my surgical wound has started to bleed. There I was drying to drain my wound, opting not to go to ER, applying the medical alcohol and figuring it is best to wait until the morning and try to catch a decent surgeon (which I did managed to do, I got my wound fully treated and am currently on antibiotics). Still, it was a pretty wild night, no sleep and blood everywhere.

Let's talk a bit more about the novel. The Crying of Lot 49 features a female protagonist, Oedipa Maas. Her name, filled with Freudian and other references, is as symbolic as everything she notices around herself. As Oedipa's story opens, she is a married housewife who, all of the sudden, becomes the executor of will of her ex (dirty rich) lover. Her husband Mucho, the disk jockey, is having an identity crisis of some sort. Mucho is beaten by years of selling cars, of seeing dirty vehicles of failed individuals and/or families being sold to other equally dysfunctional individuals and/or families. That 'incest car circle', as Mucho likes to call it, has driven him mad. It seems that his previous job as a car seller has mucho traumatized Mucho. He wakes in terror at night, and Oedipa struggles to comfort him.

“Yet at least he had believed in the cars, maybe to excess: how could he not, seeing people poorer than him come in, Negro, Mexican, cracker, a parade seven days a week, bring with them the most godawful of trade-ins: motorized, metal extensions of themselves, of their families and what their whole lives must be like, out there so naked for anybody, a stranger like himself, to look at, frame cockeyed, rusty underneath, fender repainted in a shade just off enough to depress the value, if not Mucho himself, inside smelling hopeless of children, of supermarket booze, or two, sometimes three generations of cigarette smokers, or only of dust--and when the cars were swept out you had to look at the actual residue of these lives, and there was no way of telling what things had been truly refused (when so little he supposed came by that out of fear most of it had to be taken and kept) and what had simply (perhaps tragically) been lost: clipped coupons promising savings of 5 or 10¢, trading stamps, pink flyers advertising specials at the market, butts, tooth-shy combs, help-wanted ads, Yellow Pages torn from the phone book, rags of old underwear or dresses that already were period costumes, for wiping your own breath off the inside of a windshield with so you could see whatever it was, a movie, a woman or car you coveted, a cop who might pull you over just for drill, all the bits and pieces coated uniformly, like a salad of despair, in a grey dressing of ash, condensed exhaust, dust, body wastes--it nauseated him to look, but he had to look.”

Anyhow, when Oedipa shows her husband the letter, he seems indifferent. Perhaps that is why Oedipa accepts the job. There is a catch naturally. Almost immediately, Oedipa realized that she is in over her head. She gets involves with the lawyer who is to help her execute the will. The lawyer, once a child movie star know as Baby Ivan, is working on a series where an ex lawyer turn a movie star is supposed to play him, but that 'pilot' will probably live in some drawer internally. Oedipa and lawyer get drunk watching some old film of his. Oedipa tries to get as much information of him as she can, and when they agree to play strip poker she excuses herself and puts as many of items of clothing as possible. When Oedipa sees herself in the mirror, she laughs so hard she knows down a hair spray and causes an explosion, which draws in the attention of a young band that will soon accompany them in their 'search'. The description of Oedipa's and Baby Ivan's 'hooking up' is comical, but still strangely erotic. Oddly enough, this is how I would describe much of the novel's prose. There is nothing juicy about it except its humour, in other words, there are no erotic descriptions but there is a fair share of erotic references & jokes.

The novel progresses rapidly from that point. Once Oedipa learns of a secret sign and copies it into her notebook, she becomes obsessed with it. What does this have to do with the will? It is uncertain. The will is full of mysteries but so it life. Maybe her ex is playing tricks on her? Oedipa sees a brilliantly morbid play dating back to Puritan times, and she is haunted by it. She storms into the wardrobe of the direct and the principal actor, who refuses her the original version of the play, but treats her to a strong mystical passage. Through this play, and some other occurrences, Oedipa find out about Renaissance postal system. It seems that a similar, underground postal system still exists in USA! As Oedipa becomes increasingly obsessed with it, learning about various underground groups, the term Triestero keeps to haunt her. At times it seems that Oedipa sets to explore, not just her soul, or the USA social mysteries, but the human condition itself.

“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 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 the tapestry, and the tapestry was the world. 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?”

As Oedipa encounters marginal groups that use the alternative postal service, things move from strange to stranger. There are engineers that believe in demons, AA society that is about stopping people from falling in love or forming meaningful relationships and all sorts of groups unknown to a common men. Oedipa goes to meet a man who will believes in a demon. When she arrives at his home, he is watching some kind of dance, saying there is something about girls that age. Oedipa says she understand, because her husband, shares a passion for underage girl. The novel is full of disturbing sentences like that, sentences that are just thrown at the reader. Deeply ironic, this novel is soaked with social satire. The characters are not free from paradox. Sometimes they seem to act as symbols, but despite all of the insanity or perhaps because of it, they seem human enough. Not long into novel, some readers might feel like the are almost hallucinating. Everything seems to be happening so fast- most of the time. There is a lot of information thrown around. Alternative history plays a big part of this novel. For some people, it might be hard to follow, but for me it was an absolute delight.

...more

flag 45 likes · Like · see review

Dec 17, 2010 Praj rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: pynchon

Interested in sophisticated fun? You, hubby, girlfriends?
The more the merrier. Get in touch with Tristero, through
WASTE only, Box 49.

Its funny how Pynchon does not scares me anymore. He is not the tentacled Cthulhu (thanks Mr. Lovecraft for my insomniac exhibits) I thought he was. I guess Gravity’s Rainbow was the ice-breaker. But what’s this obsession with myriad dimensions of entropy, Thomas? The explosive universal "black hole". Drives me nuts at times!! Who am I kidding? Entropy and thermo ...more

flag 43 likes · Like · see review

May 13, 2011 Trevor rated it really liked it

Shelves: literature

This is one of those books – you know, those books where the author would be too clever by half if he wasn’t so clever to be able to get away with it. There is something very ‘adolescent male’ about this book – accept it is probably just too smart to be really understood by your average adolescent male. It is also, at times, very funny.

I was going to write a review that would be just the string of discordant images this book throws at you at machine-gun speed – but instead I am going to put myse This is one of those books – you know, those books where the author would be too clever by half if he wasn’t so clever to be able to get away with it. There is something very ‘adolescent male’ about this book – accept it is probably just too smart to be really understood by your average adolescent male. It is also, at times, very funny.

I was going to write a review that would be just the string of discordant images this book throws at you at machine-gun speed – but instead I am going to put myself on the line and say this is a book about information theory. Okay, I know it’s not only about that, but stay with me. There’s the postal service – which, if anything, is fundamentally about transmitting information. There is the discussion of entropy and Maxwell’s Demon – two central ideas of info theory. There’s all of the stuff at the start about her having sex with her lawyer and all of the ‘mixed signals’ each is sending the other. There is the will she is trying to sort out – and what is a will if not a final message to the world that invariably needs to be interpreted. And there is the story itself, with so many other stories within stories and allusions and self-references that it is impossible to know what is signal and what is noise.

I thought it was clever, for example, that the husband at the start of the book had worked in a used car lot and had hated it. What is it that the crying of lot 49 means? It is all too easy to say it is a reference to how the book ends – but perhaps it is also a reference to how the book starts and maybe it doesn’t really mean at all. Nothing is simply what it is, nothing is clear, everything is up for interpretation and doesn’t the author stress that fact! There is the lovely line (mentioned at least twice) that of all the alternatives that would explain the particularly strange world our heroine has found herself in, she hopes that her own insanity is the actual explanation. “Oh no, it’s fine, I’m just nuts.”

What is message, what is truth, what is fact and what is reality? Any wonder the guys that started this whole information theory thing said information is entropy and patterns so that as long as there is signal and noise and those can be somewhat separated, that’s as good as it gets, don’t ask for more meaning than that.

This is a very clever book – perhaps too clever, hard to say. I found the homosexual humour particularly funny – the next gay bar they were going to go to was called Finocchio’s (Italian for both fennel and gay man – not quite sure why) and when she left the gay bar she did so via ‘The Greek Way’. All of this is presented completely deadpan – as is the stuff about the band at the start that are an American band trying to learn English accents in a kind of mirror of The Beatles singing in American accents. His songs, dross all, are particularly funny. Especially the one about the various companies involved in the military industrial complex.

I haven’t mentioned the play, LSD, the broken mirror, WASTE, Freud, Gallipoli, the actor who had been a lawyer who is acting a lawyer who had been a child actor and who sometimes goes back to acting even though being a lawyer is pretty much the same as acting anyway. But then, I need to leave you some reason to read this book.
...more

flag 42 likes · Like · see review

Oct 05, 2010 Mike Puma rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2010

Language that cannot be attended to casually. A novel where the plot isn’t used to move the story but to move the language, to compel it. Whitman’s 20th century novel. If you’re wanting a good story, this probably isn’t what you’re looking for (so, by all means, blame the author for you’re having read the wrong book). If you’re looking for a good story told with a compelling use of language—language to be savored and considered and wallowed in—this is a great one.

For a good intro to this novel ...more

flag 42 likes · Like · see review

Dec 18, 2007 Ricky rated it it was ok

Shelves: library-books

Harold Bloom (and apparently everyone else I know) is clearly out of his G.D. mind. This book is not hilariously funny. I did not appreciate the humor in this book at all. I liked the bit about the play but the book seemed too cutesy and gimmicky to me. I've been looking at reviews all over and (much like the reviews for the film No Country for Old Men) I seem only to find the same old enthusiastic descriptions of the book and no compelling reason for why I should appreciate the longest 183 page ...more

flag 41 likes · Like · see review

Jun 24, 2012 Mary rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, 2012

Reading The Crying of Lot 49 reminded me of the first time I watched Mulholland Drive. There was hair pulling. There was rewinding and pausing and what?!what?!thefuck?!what?! The remote was flung across the room. There may have almost been tears. It was wonderfully frustrating and deliciously delusional. Yes, Mr Lynch, Mr Pynchon , you're so so clever and lil average me is a mere mortal squirming around on your chess tables...

But I don't care. Confuse me. It's better than most of the crap out t ...more

flag 40 likes · Like · see review

May 29, 2018 Το Άθχημο γατί του θενιόρ Γκουαναμίρου rated it it was amazing

This story reminded me of works such as Robert Shea's and Robert Anton Wilson's "Illuminatus Trilogy" released in 1975 and Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" released in 1988. This is a book written by an American writer (little is known about Pynchon's identity) , released in 1966, telling the weird story of a young married woman, Oedipa (or Oed) Maas, who, quite unexpectedly, becomes the executor of the late Pierce Inverarity's will .

Her seemingly tranquil and conventional life turns upside ...more

flag 36 likes · Like · see review

Oct 09, 2018 Steven Godin rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: postmodern-fiction, america-canada

TP number three for me, and the one that made the least sense, hence the three stars.
A thundersome, scorching, paranoid, strange, rollicking novel, one of a kind. A constant circling in on reflections that may be reality, or a simulacrum of reality, or just a dead end where you will bang your head against the nearest wall muttering WTF!. Don't want to bring on a headache writing a detailed review, so briefly - the novel centres on Oedipa Maas, and an estate to settle in the wake of her former pa ...more

flag 44 likes · Like · see review

Jul 25, 2019 Michael rated it liked it

I really enjoyed both Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon, but this effort felt flat to me, all joke and no seriousness of purpose. Whereas both GR and MD had their share of satire and often strained attempts at humor, they also had a deadly serious side, a sense that they were "about something" larger, that I confess I couldn't glean from this slimmer work. Really, there are only so many puns and crazy character names and odd paranoid acronyms I can take. I'm sure much of the fault lies with me ...more

flag 37 likes · Like · see review

Nov 04, 2020 Algernon (Darth Anyan) rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2020

Amid the exhaust, sweat, glare and ill-humor of a summer evening on an American freeway, Oedipa Maas pondered her Trystero problem.

What the heck is Lot 49 and why should I feel like crying over it? Oedipa Maas, a young California housewife, is named executor in the will of a former boyfriend, an elusive billionaire named Pierce Inverarity. Her work takes her along unexpected paths where she meets many oddball characters acting increasingly suspicious. Many events appear related to the performan Amid the exhaust, sweat, glare and ill-humor of a summer evening on an American freeway, Oedipa Maas pondered her Trystero problem.

What the heck is Lot 49 and why should I feel like crying over it? Oedipa Maas, a young California housewife, is named executor in the will of a former boyfriend, an elusive billionaire named Pierce Inverarity. Her work takes her along unexpected paths where she meets many oddball characters acting increasingly suspicious. Many events appear related to the performance of a Jacobean revenge play by an amateur troupe, alluding to a secret organization named Trystero , also known under the acronym WASTE and using for self-identification the symbol of a muted post horn. Decorating each alienation, each species of withdrawal, as cufflink, decal, aimless doodling, there was somehow always the post horn.

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, which must somehow each time be too bright for her memory to hold; which must always blaze out, destroying its own message irreversibly, leaving an overexposed blank when the ordinary world came back.

Oedipa Maas is not the only one wondering what is the purpose of this whole circus.
Let me make it easier to potential new divers into the Pynchon literary universe: relax, let it happen and enjoy the ride! Making sense is not all it’s cracked to be. “The Crying of Lot 49” is an anti-novel, a post-modernist experimental piece of literature that aims to unsettle the readership expectations in order to make them more open to active participation in the project. Coming soon on the footsteps of Julio Cortazar in this year’s personal journey, I find it very easy to draw parallels between the two stories, especially in view of the way Pynchon ‘hopscotches’ from one wild scene to the next, from one metaphor to another, without the slightest regard for plot progression or character arcs. Yet, in both cases, a clear image, a sort of final message, can be deduced from the maze-like journey.

The act of metaphor then was a thrust at truth and a lie, depending where you were: inside, safe, or outside, lost. Oedipa did not know where she was.

Oedipa Maas starts the journey safe in her home, with a DJ husband and weekly visits to her psycho-therapist, dr. Hilarius. Each step she takes following the Inverarity legacy takes her further and further away from her comfort zone and into what Pynchon alternately refers to as: a salad of despair, a conspiracy theory extravaganza, the entropic death of communication, experimental-induced insanity (‘an experiment on effects of LSD-25, mescaline, psilocybin, and related drugs on a large sample of suburban housewives’), a whole underworld of suicides who failed, a clandestine Mexican outfit known as the Conjuration de los Insurgentes Anarquistas (the CIA), music made purely of Antarctic loneliness and fright ... an avalanche of metaphor that becomes increasingly clear is meant to represent the growing alienation of modern life.

... clipped coupons promising savings of 5c or 10c, trading stamps, pink fliers advertising specials at the markets, butts, tooth-shy combs, help-wanted ads, Yellow Pages torn from the phone book, rags of old underwear or dresses that already were period costumes, for wiping your own breath off the inside of a windshield with so you could see whatever it was, a movie, a woman or a car you coveted, a cop who might pull you over just for drill, all the bits and pieces coated uniformly, like a salad of despair, in a gray dressing of ash, condensed exhaust, dust, body wastes ...

With a panoply of wild characters such as Peter Pinguid, Mike Fallopian, Mucho Maas, dr. Hilarius, Randy Driblette, Thomas Wharfinger, Genghis Cohen, Inigo Barfstable, John Nefastis, Jesus Arrabal, Emory Bortz, Winthrop Tremayne, Diocletian Blobb and many others, Oedipa’s journey is often funny/ ridiculous, prompting speculation that Pynchon is actually sabotaging his own post-modernist credentials. His own commentary on the novel points more towards a searching for a personal voice in this debut novel, of experimentation with style and content. It is in my view a sort of ‘Sturm und Drang’ campaign to make a splash and get noticed, and it succeeds in a rather spectacular way.

In one of the latrines was an advertisement by ACDC, standing for Alameda County Death Cult, along with a box number and a post horn. Once a month they were to choose some victim from among the innocent, the virtuous, the socially integrated and well-adjusted, using him sexually, then sacrificing him.

The leitmotif of insider/outsider positioning becomes more evident with each iteration of the post horn symbol, with each revelation about yet another secret organization, functioning in parallel with official post service or government services. Insiders are the people who accept things as they are and don’t bother with existentialist anguish. Outsiders are those failed suicides who use the WASTE system to communicate or those who join clubs like ACDC or IA.

“The pin I’m wearing means I’m a member of the IA. That’s Innamorati Anonymous. An innamorato is somebody in love. That’s the worst addiction of all.”

Oedipa starts on the inside, but she is increasingly worried about her identity and about her future in this world of rampant secrets and wild acronym societies.

They are stripping away 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.

For all his apparent disdain for classic forms of the novel, Pynchon hides all his clues, all his keys to locked rooms, in plain view and delivers them with a poetic flair that can take your breath away when you least expect it.

“I came hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy.”
“Cherish it!” cried Hilarius, fiercely. “What else do you have? Hold it tightly by its little tentacle, don’t let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.”

So maybe Trystero and all that jazz is just a fantasy, a by-product of drug experimentation and frustration with a boring life, but I would rather be outside in the cold with the crazies and the suicidal poets than inside with the bingo-night or TV dinner crowd. Which takes us back to the question of the significance of Lot 49 (view spoiler). The answer is one of those clues hidden in plain sight, taken from another conversation between Oedipa and her fading away men : a real alternative to the exitlessness, to the absence of surprise in life, that harrows the head of everybody American you know, and you too, sweetie. , the answer is in one of those haunting images of walkers along the roads at night, zooming in and out of your headlights without looking up, too far away from any town to have a real destination.

I don’t consider these final revelations spoilers since they make following the journey of Oedipa Maas easier on an eventual re-read. They are also explaining why I kept humming a Simon & Garfunkel tune as I turned the final pages (the one with the line "I'm empty and aching and I don't know why") :

She had dedicated herself, weeks ago, to making sense of what Inverarity had left behind, never suspecting that the legacy was America.

Highly recommended!

>>><<<>>><<<

I’ve left out a striking episode in a strip mall, where Oedipa confronts Winthrop Tremayne, an opportunist who sells ‘government surplus swastikas’ . The episode might sound at first glance like a funny throwaway scene, but as I am writing my review on Election Day 2020, the reference seems ominously predictive of current affairs. Yikes! ...more

flag 34 likes · Like · see review

Sep 22, 2015 Matthew rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: completist-book-club, library, classic, 2015

Maybe 3.5 stars

It was weird! It was unique!

Hey, Thomas Pynchon - could you write us a book where a woman goes to oversee the estate of a real estate mogul and along the way deals with her DJ husband on LSD, an adulterous pedophilic lover, a Nazi psychiatrist on a shooting spree - all in search of information about a secret society who's only anti-government movement is to run their own postal system (which she becomes intrigued about because of a play she sees with one word that seems out of pla ...more

flag 34 likes · Like · see review

Mar 02, 2008 Martine rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: conspiracy theorists

Shelves: north-american, postmodern, modern-fiction

I'm not sure how much I care for Thomas Pynchon's brand of postmodernism. On the one hand, The Crying of Lot 49 contains interesting ideas, culminating in a weird trip down Paranoia Lane. On the other hand, the writing is so detached and plain weird that it is hard to emotionally invest in the characters. As a novel of ideas, then, The Crying of Lot 49 has some merit; as a reading experience it's rather less rewarding. It feels like a 200-page story crammed into 127 pages, and that's not a compl I'm not sure how much I care for Thomas Pynchon's brand of postmodernism. On the one hand, The Crying of Lot 49 contains interesting ideas, culminating in a weird trip down Paranoia Lane. On the other hand, the writing is so detached and plain weird that it is hard to emotionally invest in the characters. As a novel of ideas, then, The Crying of Lot 49 has some merit; as a reading experience it's rather less rewarding. It feels like a 200-page story crammed into 127 pages, and that's not a compliment.

For what it's worth, the story is as follows. Oedipa Maas, a married lady living in 1960s California, is unexpectedly made executrix of her dead ex-boyfriend's estate. While carrying out her duties, she comes across strange goings-on which may or may not point to the existence of a secret postal service. The clues keep piling up. Are they mere coincidences or is there a sinister conspiracy afoot? And if even something as basic as post delivery is subject to a conspiracy, what else may be going on in society? Keen to find answers, Oedipa digs into the clues, only to get sucked into what is best described as a wild and obsessive brainstorm.

As I said, there are some interesting ideas going on here. Pynchon has a definite knack for mixing fact and fiction, to the point where you find yourself Googling things to see what is truth and what is fiction. He also quite successfully makes you buy into the conspiracy theory. Sadly, though, he's rather self-indulgent, blending good stuff with lengthy passages of dense, impenetrable prose that don't really seem to go anywhere. These passages do serve a purpose in that they make the reader as confused as Oedipa herself (a confusion further strengthened by the maddening open ending), but for all their paranoia-inducing quality, I wish Pynchon had taken more time to flesh out his story, to turn it into an actual novel with flesh-and-blood characters and emotions rather than an exercise in cleverness. In short, I wish the book had more pages. I didn't think I'd ever say that about a Pynchon novel, but here it's true: less is not always more. Alas.
...more

flag 31 likes · Like · see review

Jun 17, 2011 Jan-Maat added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 20th-century, usa, novel

Er...
you really have to read it for yourself...
Abruptly change the subject...
A literary precursor to The big Lebowski but with more about the postal systems of renaissance Europe...
The figure of the detective or private investigator merges with the quest tradition, at the end do we find C.G. Jung's Synchronicity? An intricate and cunning plot from beyond the grave? Nothing? Mid sixties American picaresque adventure? It you read it yourself you can make your own mind up, or not.
The investigator c ...more

flag 30 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Doomsday preppers: and when she said that, what did you say?	1	3	Oct 23, 2020 03:31PM
Boxall's 1001 Bo...: May {2020} Discussion -- THE CRYING OF LOT 49 by Thomas Pychon	7	90	Jun 29, 2020 05:00PM
The Crying of Lot 49	1	23	Apr 30, 2019 10:10AM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Fiction

2,219 users

Classics

708 users

Literature

342 users

Novels

263 users

Literature > American

247 users

Mystery

141 users

Literary Fiction

133 users

Literature > 20th Century

121 users

Contemporary

119 users

The United States Of America

81 users

See top shelves…

About Thomas Pynchon

Thomas Pynchon

5,271 followers

Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. is an American writer based in New York City, noted for his dense and complex works of fiction. Hailing from Long Island, Pynchon spent two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known today: V. (1963 ...more

Books by Thomas Pynchon

More…

A Debut Novelist's 2020 Reading that Mirrors Our Timeline

Mateo Askaripour is a Brooklyn-based writer whose debut novel, Black Buck—which Colson Whitehead calls a “mesmerizing novel, executing a high...

Trivia About The Crying of Lot 49

21 trivia questions

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from The Crying of Lot 49

“I came," she said, "hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy."
Cherish it!" cried Hilarious, fiercely. "What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by it's little tentacle, don't let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.” — 213 likes

“Shall I project a world?” — 128 likes

More quotes…

See a Problem?

Preview — The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

The Crying of Lot 49

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Thomas Pynchon

Books by Thomas Pynchon

Related Articles

Trivia About The Crying of Lot 49

Quotes from The Crying of Lot 49

See a Problem?

Preview — The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon

The Crying of Lot 49

Get A Copy

Friend Reviews

Reader Q&A

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topicDiscuss This Book

Readers also enjoyed

Genres

About Thomas Pynchon

Books by Thomas Pynchon

Related Articles

Trivia About The Crying of Lot 49

Quotes from The Crying of Lot 49

new topic
Discuss This Book