The Crying of Lot 49

by Thomas Pynchon

Though she knew even less about radios than about Southern Californians, there were to both outward patterns a hieroglyphic sense of concealed meaning, of an intent to communicate.

Oedipa, to retaliate, stopped believing in them.

he said. “Love the dolphins,” she advised him. “Write by WASTE.” So it went. Oedipa played the voyeur and listener. Among her other encounters were

The act of metaphor then was a thrust at truth and a lie, depending where you were: inside, safe, or outside, lost.