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Thomas Pynchon The Crying of Lot 49

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Thomas Pynchon - The Crying of Lot 49 Unabridged
Narrated by George Wilson
6hrs11min
80kbps 32kHz Mp3

Lit Crit-
Oedipa Mass strives to uncover the secrets behind the death of her recently deceased ex-boyfriend after being named the executor of his will. Set against the backdrop of Hollywood, Oedipa follows several dead-end paths to unfold not only the mystery of her ex-lover's death, but to uncover the the depths of her inner soul. Pynchon demonstrates that lost causes are the only kind worth fighting for in this novel, because they lead to self-discovery, even if that discovery is only the realization of all that we don't know and understand. As Oedipa becomes more entwined in the lies and the hope of discovering truth becomes more vague, she strives even more to uncover it. There's something terribly heroic about a person who continues searching for truth despite the realization that such a quest is a lost cause. She searches not simply to find answers, but to find questions and to realize that her quest is about the journey and not her destination. This novel is ultimately about a modernist heroine striving to find her place in a postmodern world.

Pynchon’s novel also critiques certain aspects of modernity by exemplifying a society that is filled with both discarded objects and discarded people. The most obvious example of this is the acronym WASTE, which evolves into a central theme of the book for both the reader and the protagonist, Oedipa Maas. WASTE is supposedly an underground mailing system created by dissatisfied members of society to subvert the U.S. Postal service. Oedipa becomes obsessed with the concept of WASTE and goes on a frantic journey to attempt to uncover this mystery. Along the way, she encounters various people who have formed their own underground organizations in response to various forms of rejection. There is the IA group, founded by a man who swore off love after his wife cheated on him, The Alameda County death Club that sacrifices well-adjusted members of society on a monthly basis, the Peter Pinguids, who are against industrial capitalism, etc.

Reviews-
May 6, 1966 - Time Magazine - "THE CRYING OF LOT 49, by Thomas Pynchon (Lippincott; 183 pages), the author of V., is a metaphysical thriller in the form of a pornographic comic strip. The heroine, a girl named Oedipa Maas, one day finds her "Chevy parked at the center of an odd, religious instant. A revelation trembled just past the threshold of her understanding, a hieroglyphic sense of concealed meanings, of an intent to communicate." She pursues the revelation, and finds herself involved with a mysterious organization named Tristero."

May 1, 1966 - The New York Times - Richard Poirier: "Thomas Pynchon's second novel, "The Crying of Lot 49," reads like an episode withheld from his first, the much-acclaimed "V.," published three years ago. Pynchon's technical virtuosity, his adaptations of the apocalyptic-satiric modes of Melville, Conrad, and Joyce, of Faulkner, Nathanael West, and Nabokov, the saturnalian inventiveness he shares with contemporaries like John Barth and Joseph Heller, his security with philosophical and psychological concepts, his anthropological intimacy with the off-beat — these evidences of extraordinary talent in the first novel continue to display themselves in the second. And the uses to which he puts them are very much the same."

Publisher's Summary-
Quite unexpectedly, Mrs. Oedipa Maas finds herself the executor of the estate of Pierce Inverarity, a man she used to know in a more-or-less intimate fashion. When Oedipa heads off to Southern California to sort through Pierce's affairs, she becomes ensnared in a hilarious and puzzling worldwide conspiracy.

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