The Crying of Lot 49 Analysis

The novel is set in California in the 1960s with Oedipa yo-yoing back and forth between the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. Pynchon lived in California for several years in the 1960s, and t...

The novel is narrated in the third person, with limited access to the minds of Oedipa and Mucho Maas. The narrator is detached, describing the events—no matter how absurd and insane—in a totall...

Late in the novel, Oedipa goes to see her sometime confidante Mike Fallopian. She tells him everything she's discovered about the Tristero since they last met, and he listens patiently. Then he say...

What do we mean by "dark" and "ironic"? Let's just give you an example, straight away.At one point in the novel, we hear the story of an executive at an electronics and rockets company who is repla...

There are times in Lot 49 when you think you're just reading a clever book by an above-average American satirist. There's crisp deadpan dialogue, clearly articulated action, and here and there: a t...

No, this isn't about someone weeping over a vacant lot. The title refers to the ending of the book, when the Pierce Inverarity's collection of stamp "forgeries" is auctioned off as "lot 49" (6.128)...

For those readers who approach The Crying of Lot 49 like a detective story and take the time to trace the insane ins-and-outs of its plot, the ending should provide only one thing: the answer to th...

At the start of the book, Oedipa Maas learns that she has been named executrix of the estate of her ex-boyfriend Pierce Inverarity. Oedipa wonders why she has been named, but is not overly bothere...

A series of super-bizarre clues leads Oedipa to go see The Courier's Tragedy, where she first hears the word "Trystero" and imagines it might be the key to a mystery. Up until this point, Oedipa...

Oedipa only becomes interested in Inverarity's estate gradually. But when she goes to Richard Wharfinger's play The Courier's Tragedy, she hears the name of a group that might explain all of the b...

Before writing Lot 49, Pynchon worked as a technical writer for the Boeing Corporation. Way to be a genius, Pynchon. (Source) At Cornell Pynchon studied under Vladimir Nabokov, whose famous novel...

In Pynchon's world, sex is weird, weird, weird. If you don't believe us, just read up through the end of Chapter Two when Metzger and Oedipa begin their affair. Metzger thinks he has convinced Oedi...

Oedipus (1.1)Jay Gould (1.1)Muzak (1.2)Rapunzel (1.55)Remedios Varo, Bordando el Manto Terrestre (1.55)James Clerk Maxwell, "Maxwell's Demon" (4.17)Sigmund Freud (5.177)Carl Jung (5.177) Note: This...