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The Crying of Lot 49 | 
 enlarge | Author: Thomas Pynchon
Publisher: Harper Perennial Modern Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $11.95
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Rating:  183 reviews
Sales Rank: 35235
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 160
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 0.4
ISBN: 0060931671
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780060931674
ASIN: 0060931671
Publication Date: April 1, 1999
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The highly original satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy, meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self knowledge.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 178 more reviews...
 Literature? December 22, 2008
I must disagree with the reviewers that found "Crying of Lot 49" unreadable. It's as easy to read as the back of a cereal box (and just as edifying - perhaps less so). I can imagine the author giggling as he came up with the silly character names. The names are about all they have to distinguish them - the characters are so lacking in depth as to make Cap'n Crunch look like Captain Ahab in comparison. The nonexistent plot consists of nothing more than a string of pointless incidents that could just as well be read in reverse order with no loss of meaning.
Pynchon concludes the novel with the unforgiveable sin of failing to write the final chapter. If he meant that the mysterious bidder's identity is both everyone and no one, he succeeded - it doesn't matter who it is. If the author doesn't care, why should we?
Postal paranoia & other vast evil government conspiracies... December 9, 2008
Because it's so short, *The Crying of Lot 49* is likely the book those coming to Pynchon for the first time are most inclined to sample. It's not, however, anything but a shadow--in this case, a foreshadow--of his really great work. So one shouldn't form a definitive judgment on Pynchon based on what one finds here. Still, it's not a bad intro given the length and complexity of Pynchon's better-known signature novels.
The story, stripped to its barest essentials, goes something like this: Oedipa Maas is informed that she's been named co-executor of the will of a former lover--a SoCal real-estate developer, Pierce Inveriarity. A rapid sequence of connected coincidences soon puts her on the trail of a secret postal service with a history stretching back to 15th century Europe.
A semi-pornographic Renaissance play, a machine for measuring psychic ability, and a 12-step program to help kick the habit of falling in love--all these disparate elements and others even more disparate have their place in a mystery of an ancient underground organization whose age-old symbol of the muted post horn is turning up all over modern-day California. For it seems that the monopoly that the government has sought over communication is still being challenged in a shadow war for the rights to the free enterprise of privacy and information.
Or not.
The whole thing may just be a paranoid delusion Oedipa is suffering--or an elaborate practical joke someone is playing on her.
If this sort of thing seems a little familiar, it's because it is--and Pynchon, one of the great originators and masters of conspiracy literature, has helped to make it so. I'm not certain I'd go on to read the rest had this been the first Pynchon novel I'd ever read, but I'd encourage the reader to do so if anything at all about *Lot 49* appeals to them. It feels a little dated and a little creaky, but *The Crying of Lot 49* is still a tight, dense, and--at less than 200 pages--occasionally surprising enough book to make it well worth reading.
A good lot for "Lot" November 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A great cross-section of society, where a middleclass suburban woman's psyche is cleaved into multiple parts and has to deal with more than what the world is outside of her expertise. Written with a Carrollian whit and humor, "Lot" exposes the idiosyncratic. No matter what interpretation one chooses, "Lot" is a hysterical journey, surrounded by the absurd and possibly one of the biggest jokes played on the literary public, where red herrings bound from page to page and reality is weaved by those who are shut out from society.
~John J. Petrolino III: November 5, 2008
Author of Galleria: A collection of poetry and the short story "Three Lonesome Travelers"
 A Good Place to Start October 31, 2008
God knows Pynchon isn't for everyone. However, if you are thinking of taking on the adventure his work can be, I highly recomend starting with The Crying of Lot 49. In this novel, you are going to find all of his major themes (some being paranoia, difficult even obscure scientific references, and long twisted digressions). Why start here? This novel is his shortest at just over 200 pages while most of his novels run 700 or more pages. Of his six works to date, this is the most accessible to new comers. This novel allows one to become familiar with his wit, writing style, and. . .well. . .his Pynchon-ness.
Enjoy!
 Mercifully Brief, But Hardly a Modern Classic October 7, 2008
The Crying of Lot 49 must have seemed incredibly witty when it first appeared in the mid-60's. This satire, which follows the twists and turns of Oedipa Maas' adventures in being the executor of a dead friend's will is a satire on Southern California culture in the mid-60's.
The back of this book compared it to Joyce's Ulysses; while I won't doom Lot 49 with such unfortunate company, it, like Ulysses, is probably more admired by critics than actually enjoyed by readers. The prose is intentionally dense, and the characters and events, which are set just before the rise of the hippie culture in the late 60s, seem almost quaint in comparison to what the 1960s are remembered for fourty years later.
While the first 30 pages are easily the toughest to get through, the story starts to move along after that following an intereting, if not particularly compelling, conspiracy angle. To Pynchon's credit, I didn't feel that the book was artificially lengthened in order to give the story heft--at 150 pages, Lot 49 is surprisingly brief for a critical darling.
Lot 49 reads like a poor-man's Joseph Heller, and it hasn't aged well. But, underneath it all you can pick up some interesting commentary about California just before flower power.
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