Wednesday, December 6, 2006

Pynchonesque

I have always regretted not heaving read "The Crying of Lot 49" during my studies so now, I thought, came the time to face it. Well, if I DON'T now, then when? My first reading a few years ago ended up reluctantly putting it back on the bookshelf. Well, a little bit of determination could make it.

Thomas Pynchon appears to be the "must read" of twentieth century, and there is much truth in it. He himself is an interesting figure in literature, a typical kind of a "nocturnal" writer who usually starts his day at 1PM and keeps on working until late at night. He might appear a unique man considering the fact that he used to read physics and math books just for... ehemmm... fun. His prose is fulfilled with postmodern ideas that are, in my humble opinion, so apparent at times, that it must be a parody of some sort...

Pynchon, quite apparenly, also suffered from an obsessive fear of revealing his actual image (this being rendered in one of the Simpsons' series) to such an extent that he even once literally "escaped through his rear window" when a journalist came to his house to make an interview. The author himself justified this little accident by admitting that his front teeth make him look like Bugs Bunny. Whoah. So far, so good. The world has left with merely 2 or three real photos of the author, one of them showing his young face dating back, presumably, to his school years.

He has even been suspected of being the infamous terrorist called the "Unabomber," who scared people around the States. Anyway, the reference is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unabomber. What I think, is that it could just fortify Pynchon's fear of ubiquitous conspiracy, apparent in his writing. To say the least, he was a major influence for Don DeLillo, the author of conspiracy books (JFK assassination story among others.)

Anyway... I wholeheartedly recommend reading of the "Crying of Lot 49" as it is an intellectual piece of writing, and, you could actually get through it during one evening. It's very complex postmodern book, and it's so postmodern that some people might deem it ironic parody. This is all about filling your life with sense. Oedipa Maas (my ass?) has been chosen by her long-lost lover named Pierce Inverarity to execute his will. In the course of the plot Oedipa happens to discover a mystery concerning a clandestine organization called Trystero. Anyway, the plot is not THAT important. The most important things consist in details. The interpretation of the characters' names seems to be the key to understand the novel - Pierce Inverarity might be interpreted as an element who insisted on Oedipa to find sense to her life but actually he decided to "pierce in verarity" , not to reveal truth about himself (the name has been quite wrongly interpreted by sparknotes.com as pierce in variety). Oedipa, on the other hand bears resemblance to her prototypical and mythological Oedipus - which shows WHY she is not able and not even supposed to know the truth about her existence. Oedipa's husbands radio station's name is KCUF, which quite obviously could be read the othey way round. His name is Mucho, but his surname is Maas (much more?). There are several interpretations and I don't feel like providing anyone with my favourite. Maas could as well be interpreted as wrongly spelled 'mass' which would be another reason to read it as 'something that is inert and unable to interact with environment.'

She is living in an illogical, chaotic world where coincidence and inability to communicate is the only thing able to produce actual new entities. For that matter, we have to consider her futile travels around the coast and several situations where for instance a spray can starts propelling around the toilet. She is not able to see her image in the mirror as well.

The Pynchonian world is surreal and indefinable. But, hey, that's what I like about it.

Mike

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