Thomas Pynchon

 Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. born May 8, 1937 (is currently 80 years old)
 He is an American novelist, best known for his dense and complex novels
 His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres
and themes, including history, music, science, and mathematics
 After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began
composing the novels for which he is best known: V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49
(1966), and Gravity's Rainbow (1973)
 Pynchon is notoriously reclusive; few photographs of him have been published, and
rumors about his location and identity have circulated since the 1960s
 Pynchon's most recent novel, Bleeding Edge, was published on September 17, 2013

The Crying of Lot 49

 It is a novel by Thomas Pynchon, first published in 1966
 It is the shortest of Pynchon's novels
 The main character is Oedipa Maas
o At the beginning of the novel, she receives a letter from a lawyer called
Metzger that her former lover Pierce Inverarity named her co-executor of his
estate (he is dead)
 Pierce Inverarity was a real estate mogul who had numerous assets
 Oedipa recalls a phone call that occurred around a year before this event, received in
the middle of the night (3 AM), and even though she wasn’t entirely sure, she thinks
that the caller was Inverarity
 She doesn’t understand why Inverarity would make her co-executor since she has no
legal knowledge and they have not seen each other in years
 After discussing this with her husband, Wendell ‘Mucho’ Maas, and later their lawyer
(Roseman), she decides to go to San Narciso and sort out the mess left to her in the
will
 Once in San Narciso, she chooses a motel to stay in (Echo Courts) where a young
aspiring artist worked -> his name is Miles, and along with his friends Dean, Serge
and Leonard, plays in a band called Paranoid (they all have hair like the Beatles and
can’t see well because of the bangs; they also sing with a British accent because their
manager thinks it is better for publicity)
 Later that night, while she is watching TV, someone knocks on the door, and when
Oedipa opens it, she sees a man who is good-looking enough to be an actor
o It turns out that this is the lawyer Metzger, the co-executor of the will, and he
was indeed an actor as a child
 They end up watching TV together (it is actually the movie Metzger acted in), they
make a bet about the ending, and Metzger proposes that for every question Oedipa
asks about the movie, she has to take off one article of clothes (the game is called Strip
Botticelli)
 o She gets a brilliant idea and puts on everything she has in the closet
o There is an incident where she knocks off a hair spray that almost kills them
and destroys half of the room, they are lying on the floor (she can’t get up
because of the clothes and Metzger is protecting her against the spray), the
Paranoid walk in the room because they heard a commotion
o The band invites them to come hang out with them but they decide against it
 The questions start and both of them start taking clothes off
o Oedipa goes in the bathroom to put on more clothes, she panics when she
realizes she cannot see her reflection, then we find out her age because she
says that she will be 35 when the bad luck ends (so she is 28)
o When she returns to the room, Metzger is asleep on the floor with nothing but
his boxer shorts on
o Oedipa and Metzger are about to have sex, and she falls asleep once or twice
before he takes everything off of her
o It is great, she really enjoyed it and they start having an affair
o After they have sex, the film ends and it turns out that Oedipa won the bet, she
asks Metzger what Inverarity said about her and he responds “that you
wouldn’t be easy” (ironically, she was pretty easy to get into bed)
 While they were watching TV, Oedipa finds out through commercials that Inverarity
owned, or at least had a stock in, a lot of companies
 After she started the affair with Metzger, some strange things started to happen
 The first thing that happened was Mucho’s letter
o It was a response to her twice a week note she would send him
o The letter itself was meaningless, not containing any important information,
but on it she saw the stamp with the muted horn on it
 The third chapter is also the first mention of Inverarity’s stamp collection, which will
become important later in the story
 Another weird event occurred at The Scope, a bar out on the way to L.A.
o It was near Yoyodyne and the people who worked there gathered in this bar
o It seemed to be the payday because everyone was already drunk when they
came in, and Oedipa and Metzger were not particularly welcomed there
 In the bar, they meet Mike Fallopian, a member of the Peter Pinguid Society
 While the three of them were talking, there was a mail call and Fallopian went to
collect his letters
 In the meantime, Oedipa went to the bathroom and there she found written on a wall
"Interested in sophisticated fun? You, hubby, girl friends. The more the merrier. Get in
touch with Kirby, through WASTE only, Box 7391, L. A."
o Beneath this inscription, there was a muted horn drawn
o For some unknown reason, Oedipa decided to copy and started asking
questions about the WASTE
 Back at the table, Fallopian has returned and he explains to Oedipa and Metzger that
the Society uses Yoyodyne’s inter-office mail system, but each member has to send at
least one note a week, so the letters very often turn out meaningless
 After this episode, Oedipa begins her search for Tristero and WASTE system
 One of the important events for her search is the trip to the Fangoso Lagoons where
Oedipa and Metzger went with the Paranoids and their groupies
 There they meet Many Di Presso, a lawyer turned actor turned lawyer again, who
represented a mob boss in a court case he had against one of Inverarity’s company’s
o Tony Jaguar, the mob boss, sold bones he extracted from a lake in Italy to a
company Inverarity has stock in
o The bones were later used to make charcoal for cigarette filters
 While Di Presso explains the story of the lost bones turned in charcoal, one of the
groupies mentions that the story reminds her of a play they saw, The Courier's
Tragedy
o Since the bones are connected to Inverarity’s estate, Oedipa becomes curious
and makes Metzger go see the play with her
 During the play, Oedipa hears another term, Thurn and Taxis, which was a real
underground mail system in Europe
o There is a certain similarity to the charcoal used in cigarette filter with the
scene in the play, since the bones of the Faggio's Lost Guard were retrieved
from a lake and later used to be made into charcoal from which ink was made
 At the end of the 4th act there is a mention of Trystero and we can assume that what
once was Thurn and Taxis, was now Trystero, but it is not specifically said anywhere
in the play
 Oedipal, curious about the bones, goes to backstage to find the director Driblette, who
also played the role of Gennaro, the only character who survived till the end
o Before she goes backstage, Oedipa and Metzger have an argument which
reveals that Oedipa doesn’t really have a goal in her quest, she doesn’t know
why she is seeking answers, she only knows that she has a feeling she has to
find them
 Driblette doesn’t understand Oedipa’s interest in the play, he believes it to be
meaningless, its only intentions in to entertain people, nothing more
 When Oedipa asks for the script, she cannot find a readable copy, and the paperback
which Driblette used as the original was stolen
 Driblette then goes on to explain to Oedipa that she should not take everything that
was written in the paperback literally, he improvised while he was making the play,
and some things are only kept inside his head
o as he said, the only reality is inside his mind and he just projects it to the world
 Oedipa felt a bit useless so she decided to go to Yoyodyne stockholders meeting
o The meeting sounds more like a joke than a real meeting; they are all in
Yoyodyne cafeteria and people are carrying food
o The first hour was a routine meeting, and the second hour they had a songfest
 While she was wondering around the Yoyodyne office, Oedipa encountered Stanley
Koteks, a man who was doodling the muted horn sign when she saw him
o She starts talking to him because she thinks she will find out something about
the sign
o Instead she finds about the company’s policy about the patents (all employees
sing away the rights to patents when they sign their contracts)
 o This conversation brings out one of the key points postmodernism claims ->
everything was already invented, there is nothing new in possible in today’s
society
 Koteks also mentions Nefastis Machine and Maxwell’s Demon, and Oedipa later in
the novel searches goes on a search for John Nefastis to find out if she is one of the
sensitives
o The sensitives are people who are able to control the Maxwell’s Demon
 In the conversation with Koteks, Oedipa also finds out that the word WASTE she saw
on the bathroom wall, is actually an acronym and pronounced as W.A.S.T.E.
 Oedipa and Metzger went back to The Scope one day because she hoped that she will
find out more about this mystery, but she was left disappointed because all the night
out brought her was a drunk argument between Metzger and Fallopian
 However, she did see a sign on Fangoso Lagoons On this site, it read, in 1853, a dozen
Wells, Fargo men battled gallantly with a band of masked marauders in mysterious
"black uniforms. We owe this description to a post rider, the only witness to the
massacre, who died shortly after. The only other clue was a cross, traced by one of the
victims in the dust. To this day the identities of the slayers remain shrouded in
mystery.
o This reminded her of the men wearing black uniforms in the play, but when
she called Driblette to see if there was a connection, no one answered the
phone
 After this she went to Zapf’s bookstore to find the original used as the basis for the
play
 The only somewhat useful clue she found in the book led her to a hardcover that was
published in Berkley
o Since she couldn’t find it in L.A. library, she decided to go to Berkley to find it
and to visit John Nefastis while she’s there
 On one of her adventures, Oedipa meets a man called Mr. Thoth
o Mr. Thoth’s grandfather once fought some men dressed all in black who
pretended to be Indians
o The grandfather cut off a finger from one of them, and the ring he took from
him has the WASTE symbol
 When Oedipa asked Fallopian about the Pony Express and this event, he couldn’t give
her a concrete information because he himself didn’t have one
 She got a real clue from one Genghis Cohen, a stamp expert, who was hired by
Metzger to appraise Inverarity’s stamp collection
o Some of the stamps in Inverarity’s collection has the WASTE symbol and
Cohen is not sure what it means so he wants to send them to other experts
o The stamps with the muted horn sign were forged and Cohen concluded that
the Tristero system could be as old as Thurn and Taxis judging from the dates
of these stamps
 Oedipa decides to go to Berkley to see if she can find out where Richard Wharfinger
got his information of Trystero
o She also wants to look up John Nefastis because she’s interested in the
WASTE system
 Metzger did not seem too sad before she left, and she contemplated going to Kinneret
but she missed the exit and that solved it
 She drove up to a motel that had a sign “welcome california chapter american deaf-
mute assembly” and when she got a room she slept for a really long time
 She eventually found the book she was looking for, but the last sentence was different
in this edition
o There is another version with lines “This tryst or odious awry, O Niccoló”
which could explain the “Who's once been set his tryst with Trystero” version
o But even with this new knowledge on her mind, she still couldn’t explain what
Trystero really means
 After her search for the book, she went to look for John Nefastis to find out if she was
one of the sensitives
o “The Demon passes his data on to the sensitive, and the sensitive must reply in
kind. There are untold billions of molecules in that box. The Demon collects
data on each and every one. At some deep psychic level he must get through.
The sensitive must receive that staggering set of energies, and feed back
something like the same quantity of information. To keep it all cycling. On the
secular level all we can see is one piston, hopefully moving. One little
movement, against all that massive complex of information, destroyed over
and over with each power stroke.”
o To see if she was sensitive, she had to watch Maxwell’s picture and
concentrate on a cylinder
o Oedipa stared at Maxwell’s picture for what seemed to be hours, but it turns
out she’s not a sensitive
 When she was swept away by a bunch of tourists into a gay bar where she found a guy
who had a pin with the muted horn on his clothes
o She started a conversation with him because she hoped it will bring her closer
the Tristero system and finding out how it works, but it was a different story
altogether
o The man was part of the Inamorati Anonymous organizations, a group of
people who refused to fall in love, started by a guy whose wife cheated on him
so he started a support group for all the people who don’t want to suffer
anymore
o The reason why their sign is the, muted horn is pure coincidence, the guy who
started the group put an ad in the newspaper because he wanted people who
tried to commit suicide but gave up to give him a reason to live, when he got
the letters, a lot of them had a postmark with the muted horn sign so he decided
to use it as a recognition symbol for the Inamorati Anonymous
 After this encounter, Oedipa wandered around the city, not looking for anything in
particular
o She saw some kids in the park who were playing a game and they heard of the
muted horn
o The kids were singing “Tristoe, Tristoe, one, two, three, Turning taxi from
across the sea”
 In an all night Mexican restaurant, she met Jesus Arrabal, someone she already knew
 o She met him a while ago while she was still with Inverarity, they saw him on a
beach during a protest, an anti-government rally, where no one but him showed
up
 She continued walking around the city aimlessly and she saw some kind of sign of
WASTE and Tristero everywhere, it was either the muted horn or an acronym similar
to WASTE written somewhere
 At the airport she saw a boy going to Miami who was saying goodbye to his mother by
kissing her passionately with tongue and she told him to write by WASTE or the
dolphins will be mad at him
 Just before the morning rush hour, she saw an old man through a doorway, huddled
with sadness and grief
o He had a muted horn tattoo on the back of his hand
o He gave Oedipa a letter for his wife whom he left in Fresno a long time ago
o The letter was to be sent through the WASTE system and the man explained to
Oedipa where she has to go to mail it
o She then held the man in her hands and let him cry until another man came
looking for him and asked Oedipa to help him carry the sailor to his room
 She found the can in which people in San Francisco dropped the letters to be sent
through the WASTE system
o She decides to stay in the shadows and wait for someone to pick up the letters
o When a boy comes, she follows him around the town trying to figure out how
the system works
o Following him around the city, over to Oakland and later to Berkley, she ended
up exactly where her adventure had started 24 hours before that – in front of
John Nefastis’ house
 Back at the hotel, she was swept into a ballroom full of deaf-mute dancers
o A handsome, young man grabbed her and they started dancing
o Everyone in the ballroom was deaf-mute, dancing differently, not hearing any
kind of music, but the room was in complete order, there were no collisions or
other indiscretions
o When they took a break, Oedipa fled and went to sleep in her room
 The next day, Oedipa checked-out of the hotel and went to Kinneret
o She had decided to go see her shrink, Dr. Hilarius, and tell him everything
o She wanted him to tell her it was all a sign of psychosis, that she imagined
everything and that there is no WASTE or Trystero system
 When she came to Hilarius’ office, it was already after sunset
o She heard a gunshot and ran towards the doors that were locked, she tried to
break the window but with no luck
o Dr. Hilarius’ assistant was inside and opened the doors for her and told her
what was going on
o The shrink is convinced that someone is after him and Helga doesn’t know
what to do
o Oedipa decides to try and talk some sense into him
 The shrink tells her how the Israeli is after him, he cannot take it anymore, all the
people coming in with their problems and that the face of some man who is hopefully
still in Europe haunts him
o When the police show up, Hilarius taker Oedipa as a hostage inside his office
o Hilarius told her about the experiments he did on Jews and how they were shut
down before getting any real results
o Now he is afraid it’s all coming to get him because of what he’s done
o He leaves the rifle on the desk and Oedipa takes it
o The police busted through the doors and arrested Hilarius
 Outside the office, everything is full of cops, doctors about to take Hilarius in strait-
jacket, and media
o Of the media vans is KFCU where Mucho works, and indeed it is him inside of
it
o He asks her a few questions on air and at the end pronounces her name as Edna
Mosh
 At the KFCU station, Caesar Funch tells Oedipa that Mucho is not himself lately
o When he enters a room, it is suddenly full of people (from all the different
personalities he has inside of his head)
 Mucho and Oedipa go to a pizza place while he is on a break on she realizes that
Caesar wasn’t far from the truth, Mucho is really losing it
o It turns our that Mucho has been taking LSD Dr. Hilarius has prescribed him
 He finally tells her about the nightmares he has
o Mucho is at the parking lot where he worked and he sees a metal sign that says
NADA (National Automobile Dealers' Association) and all he sees is nada,
nada, nada (nothing) all night long and it haunts him so he wakes up screaming
 When Oedipa returned to San Narciso, she found out that Metzger and Serge’s
girlfriend ran away to Nevada to get married
o Metzger left her a note on the TV to inform her that she doesn’t have to worry
about the will because he gave the job of the co-executor to someone else in
his firm
 Oedipa decided to call Driblette to see if she can find out anything else about the
Trystero but his mother picked up the phone, told her she had nothing to say and hung
up
 Oedipa went to see professor Emory Bortz, who was the editor of one version of the
book she found in Berkley
o She hoped he will have some information on Trystero and the other edition
which contained the name
o At the Bortz home, she finds the professor in company of three of his graduate
students, two male and one female
o There she finds out that Driblette is dead, he drowned himself
 Bortz was actually an excellent source of information and a person who was perfect to
talk to about the Trystero
o In the next few days, she spent a lot of time at his house, discussing different
theories and reasons behind Trystero
 Oedipa was even able to figure out a more or less believable story about Trystero
 o “From 1578 until Alexander Farnese took Brussels back again for the Emperor
in March, 1585, Tristero kept up what amounted to a guerrilla war against his
cousin-if Hinckart was his cousin. Being Spanish, he got little support. Most of
the time, from one quarter or another, his life was in danger. Still, he tried four
times to assassinate Orange's postmaster, though without success.”
o “He styled himself El Deshe-redado, The Disinherited, and fashioned a livery
of black for his followers, black to symbolize the only thing that truly belonged
to them in their exile: the night. Soon he had added to his iconography the
muted post horn and a dead badger with its four feet in the air (some said that
the name Taxis came from the Italian tasso, badger, referring to hats of badger
fur the early Bergamascan couriers wore). He began a sub rosa campaign of
obstruction, terror and depredation along the Thurn and Taxis mail routes.”
 The next few days, Oedipa prayed to Driblette a lot
o She was afraid she had something to do with his death
o She wanted him to tell her if his suicide had anything to do with Tristero
o She wondered if she could have saved him somehow
 She then avoided talking about Tristero, about Driblette, about anything that happened
o She stopped searching for answers, afraid of what she’ll find and what will be
the consequences
 One night, she went to The Scope alone, and saw Mike Fallopian
o She told him everything she found out
o He then asked her if she has ever considered that someone is putting her on
o Even though she considered it, she refused to believe it
 One day, Genghis Cohen called her excited because he got a stamp through the US
mail that had the muted horn sign, a belly-up badger and the moto “we await silent
tristero's empire”
o The stamp, designated 16311,1, was reproduced, under the title "Tristero Rapid
Post, San Francisco, California,"
 Oedipa figured out that each and every place she has found something connected to
Tristero has been owned by Inverarity
o She starts to doubt the truth behind everything she found out and thinks that
everyone she talked to had somehow been bought by or just loyal to Inverarity
 Soon after that Genghis Cohen called her to tell her that Inverarity’s stamp collection
will be sold in an auction under the name of lot 49 (hence the name of the novel)
 Oedipa got desperate, got drunk and drove around on the freeway
o She ended up in a phone boot and called the Inamorati Anonymous she met in
San Francisco to ask him if it was all a big joke someone is playing on her
 At the end, Oedipa went to the auction to meet the anonymous bidder since she
thought he might have something to do with Tristero
 The novel ends with Oedipa sitting in the auction and waiting for the crying of lot 49