Typically, I have little trepidation expressing my feelings about a book--I like it, I didn't like it, and here's why. With The Crying Lot of 49, however, I'm not sure what to say. Not because I don't know how I felt about--not entirely, anyway. More so, because I know a great many people whose o...
Inasmuch as The Crying of Lot 49 has a plot, it's about a suburban housewife, Oedipa Mass (all the characters in this book have pun-ny names like that) who, after being named the executor of her wealthy ex-boyfriend's will, discovers a secret society connected by an underground mail service. Or, she...
This book epitomizes exactly what bothers me about post-modernists. You could spend your life decoding all the images and symbols and patterns and names and places and endless conspiracy theories that Pynchon has so densely packed into only one hundred and fifty pages; you could think and think and ...
Language that cannot be attended to casually. A novel where the plot isn’t used to move the story but to move the language, to compel it. Whitman’s 20th century novel. If you’re wanting a good story, this probably isn’t what you’re looking for (so, by all means, blame the author for you’re having r...
I was introduced to Thomas Pynchon during a chemistry course (of all places) in late 2008. We were discussing aqua regia (if I recall correctly, it's the process of liquifying gold), and a colleague announced that Pynchon mentioned aqua regia in The Crying of Lot 49. It seemed utterly ridiculous at ...
[21:20] Elizabeth: hi[21:20] Ceridwen: testing.[21:21] Ceridwen: I think we started with the 4 stars two stars divide....[21:25] Ceridwen: Something big with prawns happened that year- something about a big trial about obsenity?[21:25] Elizabeth: it still has all of that american dream stuff from th...
I just got an e-mailed "info update" from w.a.s.t.e., Radiohead's marketing arm, in my inbox. I signed up for updates when I bought In Rainbows online in late 2007, long before I read this book. Apparently, Pynchon is quite an influence on the band. I suddenly wonder, if I listened to the tracks bac...
Stupid, stupid, stupid book! I really gave this a good try. It's 150 pages long, and I read 50 of those pages. I kept thinking a story worth reading would eventually emerge, but it doesn't. Don't waste your time!
I read this in one of my American lit classes in college...and hated it. I really do not enjoy absurdist fiction, and this seemed to me to be very much in that category.
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