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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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.
Amazing tour through mid-60s drenched in the paranoia which is so characteristic of Thomas Pynchon. Don't be scared, if you like this weirdness, you'll find plenty more in his other work too!
I finally read this because Ive never yet managed to complete a Thomas Pynchon story. I managed to finish this novel only because its short. Im left confused about many things, but not about this: I enjoy interesting and different books, but books loaded with pretentious intellectualism bore me to death. Theres story-telling (which entertains and moves its readers) and theres word play. The Crying of Lot 49 clearly falls in the last category and, while it might provide many readers with a satisfying read, I find the weirdness too weird, the cleverness too clever for its own good and the deliberate manipulation of names, references and language constructs silly. Is Pynchon actually laughing at us, the readers, who swoon at his brilliance? Either that or, like Sacha Baron Cohen of the dreadful movie Borat fame, Pynchon is a sad man with a rather warped and gloomy view of the world. As a reader, I want more to a novel than pretentious intellectualism posing as literature. I enjoy reading a wide variety of genres and styles, fiction and non-fiction. I dont care what I read as long as its good writing and keeps me engaged. Despite the occasional glimpse of what could attract people to this story (for example, Mucho & Oedipas obsessions apparently suggesting ordinary folks obsessive need to believe in some kind of reality and order I say apparently, because Im not entirely sure I got it), Pynchons writing required too much effort to make any sort of sense to me. Perhaps that was the point of the difficult, delirious writing style: that, despite modern technology supposedly assisting mankind in communicating, Mucho & Oedipa (representing the average human) were still unable to communicate with each other. This novel, far from solving this dilemma, exacerbated it! It does have its moments of post-modernist epiphany (modern life is uncertain; there is no guarantee of a happy ending), but Im a reader who prefers a more traditional (and optimistic!) form of story-telling and will leave Pynchons existential explorations of an entropic society to those readers who prefer high literature.
Imprint | HarperPerennial |
Country of origin | United States |
Release date | October 2006 |
Availability | Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days |
First published | October 2006 |
Authors | Thomas Pynchon |
Dimensions | 204 x 134 x 10mm (L x W x T) |
Format | Paperback |
Pages | 152 |
Edition | 1st Perennial fiction library ed |
ISBN-13 | 978-0-06-091307-6 |
Barcode | 9780060913076 |
Categories | |
LSN | 0-06-091307-X |