Crying of Lot 49 is Pynchon dealing with JFKs assassination. What do you think?

[Adrien]

There's a hell of an argument for it here:
http://www.ottosell.de/pynchon/magice...
and it certainly gives the book some depth, for those who came away from it wondering: what was that all about?

[Troy]

After all these years, I still have no idea what that book was about. You could just as easily say it was a response to Moby Dick...

[Atreides]

I think it is a book about paranoia.
Your looking for something you dont know if it even exits and then you see the signs everywhere.
So perhaps it is a book about those people making up theories about the assassination

[Timothy K.]

It seems to follow the same blueprint as the rest of Pynchon's work. The concept of entropy is that a system that is stable will probabilistically become more unstable and disoriented over time.

I've only happened to have read his first three novels, and so far I haven't found one that deviates much from that blueprint.

Each one starts out relatively coherent, and then the plot and the characters disintegrate into a million different pieces.

I think you may be reading too much into things, when you suggest that the novel is about the assassination of a posthumously deified former president.

[Steve]

I agree with Tim K. As far as I have read, Pynchon doesnt even bother with JFK throughout his works, metaphorically or literally.

[Bill]

Pynchon's books are about the search for meaning in life, the pattern-making we humans do in pursuit of it, and the unreliability of that process. To the extent that this theme plays out in JFK assassination conspiracy theories, there's certainly a correspondence, but to suggest that Crying is "about" that is more of the same.

[Adrien]

Ok, if you didn't find that first link I shared convincing, I found a blog entry that ties the entropy thing to the JFK thing: http://myintelligentlife.wordpress.co...
And no, nothing to do with posthumously deifying anybody, but with the assassination conspiracy theories.

Brings to mind the Nicholas Branch character in Delillo's 'Libra', whose job it is to sift though all the evidence gathered by the investigation into the assassination, and he ends up having a nervous breakdown. Like Oedipa.

[Chris]

I think that the novel deals with that sort of paranoia, the "grand conspiracy," thing that fueled a lot of JFK conspiracy stuff, and I wouldn't be surprised if the JFK assassination inspired him. But as a lot of people have said, most of his books deals with paranoia and that sort of thing, so I doubt his work is solely about JFK. I think its more about entropy and paranoia and the enormous amount of information that tends to give birth to these sort conspiracies (much like Nicholas Branch in Libra).
I do think, however, that this sort of thematic material can be very easily applied to the JFK assassination.

[Gaetano]

jfk assassination, elvis'death and area 51..turning up everywhere..

[Franchescanado]

It's the story of a woman's quest to understanding the world around her, and how she ultimately fails. However, in the process, she finds her own stability and her identity after she's been stripped of everything she understands. In the beginning, she thinks she knows who she is, but then she's taken out of her environment, and everyone she has known and trusted in her life has left her. All she has is herself, which she finally understands.

Paranoia is a big part of the book, as is the theme of lack of communication, embracing the absurd, and the adverse effects of holistic thinking. Every time she gets another clue or strips away a layer of the mystery, she actually just multiplies the questions and understands even less.

But I think it's just as much about JFK's assassination as it is about who's going to buy the stamps. So, not at all.

[Stewart]

Timothy K. wrote: "It seems to follow the same blueprint as the rest of Pynchon's work. The concept of entropy is that a system that is stable will probabilistically become more unstable and disoriented over time.

..."

Well, stands to reason that his later novels would get less orderly and stable!