Universitatea Spiru HaretFacultatea de Litereprogramul de studii : română – engleză ANUL III, ZIStudent NANU ( PETRACHE) ALINA DANIELA

Proza Americana in secolul XX

Pe baza bibliografiei din Fisa disciplinei, redactati un articol de opt pagini, in limba

engleza, avand urmatoarea tema:

Caracteristici ale postmodernismului in romanul Pynchon, Thomas –Strigarea lotului 49

1

Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49 embodies the postmodern

exploration so prevalent in American fiction of the mid-20th century. The novel is

often classified as a notable example of postmodern fiction.

In the novel, Pynchon plays upon such postmodern themes as conspiracy

theories, paranoia, the challenge of a central government's authority and

omniscience, underground rebellions staged quietly yet aggressively, the

deterioration of personal relationships, and the general state of confusing decay in

America. He does so through his satirical examination of the subculture of

Southern California. He mixes metaphors and modern media such as television,

radio, and rock-and-roll music as he weaves an intricate and sometimes

disorienting web of lies, intrigue, and self-doubt around the previously pedestrian

life of the main character, Mrs. Oedipa Maas. Oedipa Mass, as she 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

2

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.

The novel opens as Oedipa discovers that her ex-boyfriend has died and

has named her executor of his estate. Oedipa does not immediately feel grief over

the loss of her ex-lover; instead, she is preoccupied with the practical matters and

annoyances associated with her new duty as executor. This theme of emotional

detachment and the isolation that separates individuals even in close relationships

is prevalent throughout the novel and is embodied in each of the relationships that

Oedipa forms during her quest. Oedipa leaves her quiet suburban hometown of

Kinneret, California, and her husband, who, in typical Pynchon fashion, is

emotionally damaged himself, to carry out her duties in the peculiar city of San

Narciso, the home of her ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity. Here she meets a range

of strange, disenfranchised, misfit characters. The relationships that Oedipa forms

with these characters help to reveal elements of her personality and represent

symptoms of the dysfunction Pynchon sees as characteristic of the government and

3

culture of America at the time.

Oedipa first stumbles across the Tristero as a result of a strange stamp on one

of her ex-boyfriend's otherwise unremarkable letters. The Tristero is a secret

organization whose origins reach into the 16th century in Europe and whose main

purpose seems to be as an avenue for undermining the postal service, which

represents the government and mainstream America. The Tristero acts as an outlet

for the frustrations, disgust, and distrust of underground America, "a host of

hitherto unnoticed, sometimes alarming, often tremendously pathetic elements

curdling America's cream" (Cowart). As Oedipa becomes obsessed with the

Tristero, the question becomes not how and why the Tristero functions, but

whether it truly exists. Is it an actual organization or is it a conspiracy against

Oedipa orchestrated by the deceased Pierce Inverarity? Or, worst of all, is it a

delusion of Oedipa's paranoid mind, a by-product of the banal suburban life she

has led, much like her husband Much Maas's schizophrenic madness resulting

from his attempt to escape the "unvarying gray sickness" of the cultural

mainstream American life (presented poignantly in the description of Much's

career as a usedcar salesman) through self-medication? The novel, therefore, asks

which is truly the illusion: the underground American culture revealed to Oedipa

through her quest to discover the Tristero or the white suburban middle-class life

she has led up until this point? As the novel comes to a close, this question is left

4

unanswered. We leave Oedipa at the beginning of the auction, aware that she is

being somehow threatened, but unsure of who or what poses this threat--whether it

comes from within Oedipa herself or is, in fact, an outside force.

The story is told by an impersonal third person narrator. He doesn’t seem

to be omniscient, rather limited to what Oedipa sees, but sometimes (rather rare)

the narrator gets an omniscient tone, e.g.: “If she’d thought to check a couple

lines back in the Wharfinger play, Oedipa might have made the connection by

herself.” The narrator is always around Oedipa Maas, like an always-present

ghost. You could almost expect the narrator to be her former lover Pierce

Inverarity, who died and puts Oedipa on her quest.

The reader also doesn’t know, because the narrator doesn’t elaborate

outside Oedipa’s universe (about the plot), but we get the feeling something out

there does exist and it’s probably more than just a practical joke played on

Oedipa. It is however true that “Oedipa’s subjective processes, like those of a

scientist examining submicroscopic behaviour, distort to an indeterminable

degree the phenomena she is trying to observe; she partially creates the patterns

she sees.”

The novel features many characteristics specific to postmodern literature.

For example, consumerism and capitalism are a recurring theme in the novel,

5

which the author challenges and critiques.

Oedipa lives in a society saturated by consumerism. “Waste” is prevalent in

the novel because consumerism is so ubiquitous and new objects are constantly

replacing the old. Pierce Inverarity becomes a key symbol of consumerism and

capitalism because he owns much of the world that Oedipa is thrown into during

the course of the novel. There is even a reference to Pierce “using one of his many

credit cards for a shim” to reach Oedipa. Initially, Oedipa is immersed in this

world of consumerism, living as a suburban housewife who attends Tupperware

parties and cooks dinner for her husband every night. It becomes apparent that

amidst these Tupperware parties and multiple credit cards, Pynchon is creating a

vision of a plastic society. This plastic society is one that is always changing in

hopes of improvement. A critical example of this occurs early on in the text when

the narrator describes Mucho’s feelings about working as a used car salesman:

-he could still never accept the way each owner, each shadow, filed in only to

exchange a dented, malfunctioning version of himself for another, just as

futureless, automotive projection of somebody else’s life .

This quote illustrates the idea that people are always shifting, ignoring the past,

and looking for an improved version of life. This is a very modernist idea, and one

that Pynchon is obviously critiquing because he regards this exchange as

6

“futureless.” Simply because things change in the novel does not imply that things

necessarily evolve. In fact, the more new information that both Oedipa and the

reader receive, the more chaotic the book becomes. Having these new concepts

and conspiracy theories introduced makes it difficult for Oedipa to make sense out

of the increasing chaos:

Oedipa wondered whether at the end of this,…she too might not be left with only

compiled memories of clues, announcements, imitations, but never the central

truth itself, which must always blaze out, destroying its own message irreversibly,

leaving an overexposed blank when the ordinary world came back .

The latter quote demonstrates how new information is constantly

replacing and confusing old information. There is also the idea that the information

is being replaced by “imitations” and not the truth. This results in the destruction

of truth. Pynchon illustrates a common postmodern idea that:

“If we are unable to unify the past, present, and future of the sentence, then we are

similarly unable to unify the past, present and future of our own biographical

experience of psychic life” (Jameson )

Oedipa seems to be suffering from a sort of identity crisis because of her inability

to uncover the past. She fears that she will be unable to remember past events and

therefore she will not know herself. There is the trepidation that “a life’s base lie,

7

rewritten into truth” (Pynchon ) is a reality in this novel. 

Although The Crying of Lot 49 seems to have pessimistic tone to it,

throughout the course of novel, Oedipa evolves as a character. Initially, she is an

enclosed housewife, dependant on her husband and living in the suburbs.

However, she evolves into a postmodern heroine. Even if she never discovers the

truth behind WASTE and Trystero, she still triumphs as a character because she

acknowledges the necessity of discarded objects and discarded members of

society. Discarded things become a means of gaining consciousness for her as they

bring her outside of the sheltered suburban life. She becomes her own heroine, no

longer relying on husbands, wealthy boyfriends and insane psychiatrists to save

her. She learns to recognize that the seemingly useless, discarded people and

objects are vital links to a past that modern society is trying to undermine. It is

only by looking to the past that she will be able to look towards the future. Her

character experiences a submergence of consciousness, and it is through the

presence of discarded objects that she is able to evolve into a human being as

opposed to remaining a plastic product of a consumer driven society. Pynchon

devotes a significant part of the book to a "play within a play", a detailed

description of a performance of an imaginary Jacobean revenge play, involving

intrigues between Thurn und Taxis and Tristero. Like the Mousetrap which

Shakespeare placed within Hamlet, the events and atmosphere of The Courier's

8

Tragedy (by "Richard Wharfinger") mirror those in the larger story around them.

As in his earlier novel, V., Pynchon seems to be making a point about human

beings' need for certainty, and their need to invent conspiracy theories to fill the

vacuum in places where there is no certainty. Also, as he had in V., Pynchon laces

the book with original song lyrics and outrageously named characters—e.g.,

Genghis Genghis Cohen, Manny DiPresso. "Mike Fallopian cannot be a real

character's name," protests one reviewer.

Some have hypothesized that Pynchon was influenced by the racial tensions

in southern California that would later turn into riots across the country. Critics

have read the book as both an exemplary postmodern text and an outright parody

of postmodernism. Pynchon himself disparaged this book, writing in 1984, "As is

clear from the up-and-down shape of my learning curve, however, it was too much

to expect that I'd keep on for long in this positive or professional direction. The

next story I wrote was The Crying of Lot 49, which was marketed as a 'novel,' and

in which I seem to have forgotten most of what I thought I'd learned up until t

Bibliography:

Pynchon, Thomas –Strigarea lotului 49, Editura Univers, Bucuresti,, 1999The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon,

9

www.sparknotes.com/lit/

10

11

12

13