Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 is a trip, in many senses of the word. It feels like an acid trip, contains a number of actual journeys, and throws the reader off balance constantly as if he or she has stumbled on a buckle in the sidewalk. Thanks to Lurker Mike for encouraging me to read this remarkable book.
Pynchon's style is a barrage of imagery and sensation, rarely pausing for the reader to catch up. There is a tremendous forward momentum to the book, which makes me recommend that it be read in one sitting. I can't imagine having to throw my mind back into this narrative after leaving it.
The story revolves around Oedipa Maas, a woman who has been named executor of her dead ex-lover's will. In carrying out her duties, she is caught up in the quest to find out if a secret mail-carrying society exists or not. Doesn't sound like much, but Pynchon's prose is dense and, at times, laborious. Just when you think his grasp of sentence structure and language has gone too far, he uses a quick plot point to pull you back into the general flow of the plot. His characters have whimsical names (Ghengis Cohen, etc.) and the puns are plentiful and absurd. The long description of a play within the story (which sets the stage for the second half of the story) is reminiscent of Hamlet's 'The Mousetrap' device. Pynchon's apparent knowledge of a variety of topics had me scrambling to Wikipedia time and again to see what was fact and what was fiction.
This book (published in 1966) seems to take the piss out of the 1960s counterculture and wallow in it at the same time. Oedipa's paranoia and the situations she finds herself in reflect the times very well, especially for a novel that was contemporary to the events depicted. Pynchon riffs on the Beatles, Nabokov, Elvis Presley, and various lifestyle choices in California during this time.
Most aficionados of Pynchon say that this book is the best entry point. It is short and relatively easy to follow once you get the hang of it. It does make me both anxious and nervous to tackle his longer works.
I can't imagine reading a book like this very often, but I have no doubt I'll return to this one over the years. Pynchon's work has a wiki devoted to it, which may be helpful when tackling his novels.
