You Must Be Out of Your Mind

Prior to The Crying of Lot 49, I had never read any of Pynchon’s works and, honestly, I had no idea what type of writer he was or the era from which he presided. (It may sound a bit foolish, but I had to look at the copyright date to figure out the latter.) I found his prose to be a little bit agonizing, and, had somebody heard my inner monologue, he/she would have declared me mad, since most of it consisted of: “WHERE’S THE END OF THE SENTENCE? WHERE IS IT?!” However, I adapted (somewhat) to it after the first few chapters and began to (somewhat) brush that concern aside. I found his naming of characters to be a bit eccentric, but their lack of commonality helped me enjoy these characters more; it helped to start individualizing them. However, I was expecting the odd names to liken either defining or ironic qualities to the characters, e.g. Mike Fallopian truly define his name with an extremely feminine character or completely oppose it with an extremely masculine one (I found him to be neither). Also, as soon as I spotted her name, I expected Oedipa to have an incestuous family background of some sort or have once blinded herself or at least have had problems with her feet (since the name Oedipus was originally Greek for “swollen foot”), but, alas, nothing. (Perhaps I’m looking too deeply into this? Who knows.)

Speaking of Oedipa, what a madwoman. Pynchon really gets inside her head, and even though we’re told this story in the third person, I felt as if she was the one narrating the story the entire time. I may sound a bit sadistic, but I truly did enjoy the gradual breakdown of her overall mental state; the transformation from her merely innocent curiosity at the beginning to her paranoid conspiracy theorizing and even her “vague idea about causing a scene violent enough to bring the cops into it” (151) at the end was absolutely fascinating. The deterioration of sanity here was a key factor to this story: this woman became so involved in a matter she originally had nothing to do with that it eventually consumed her every thought and action, stressing her to a boiling point and even beyond. Even thoughts of suicide crossed her mind (contemplating drowning herself after Driblette did), as well as actions beyond the organization of suicide (driving blindly into the night). I believe that Pynchon is truly trying to hit a point here about human curiosity: no matter how much we should care about certain information or chase after it, no matter what the facts may mean to us, we all have this inherent desire to seek out the ultimate truths of our lives, of our existence, for some unexplainable reason, and we will do just about anything to uncover these truths, even if it includes suffering through paranoia and the realization that we might not enjoy the revelations to come. We accept the unknown, upcoming consequences anyways and continue with the search. Maybe I’m off? This is just my opinion.

I did not really appreciate the way Pynchon chose to end the novel, with Oedipa at a high point of paranoia, seeking out her “enemy, perhaps her proof” (152) by herself from the back of the auction room, quietly awaiting the auction to begin. I do understand the intention of this: an open ending will leave I, the reader, guessing as to who is responsible for the purchase of the stamps. (Personally, I suspected Genghis Cohen, since he showed up by chance, but since so many of the other characters were just as mysterious, the possibilities could be endless. It could even be a character never introduced in the novel.) However, I found this to be too open of an ending, and right now I can picture Oedipa Maas hollering, “GET ON WITH IT ALREADY!” inside her head, envisioning the slaughter of everyone in the room as a process of elimination of suspects. I would have liked to have found out if the Tristero was all a conspiracy or just a figment of Oedipa’s imagination or some highly intricate prank created by the late Inverarity. I also would have liked to follow Oedipa through her mental state in discovering the bidder, and whether or not it was somebody she knew and hadn’t suspected. Would she finally lose it and actually commit some sort of brutal act? I realize that open endings are supposed to generate these sorts of questions in the reader’s mind; however, the story ended immediately before a climax point and just left me confused and expecting a sequel. There are far too many conclusions to draw here, enough to overwhelm my mental state as much as Oedipa Maas’s.

‘Tis all for now.