I still haven't cracked the gibberish left at Xade's, Beltaine's, or now here, and I suppose it's possible -- as Xul suggests -- that the author is merely impersonating Iocus Severus. Nonetheless, The Crying of Lot 49 seems to be the new game in town (I do wish somebody who was a known quantity would confirm whether this assignment is actually originating from the Cam). As such, I can only assume we were meant to find the following (or something similar). Warning #1: Possible book spoilers ahead. Warning #2: Extremely long blockquote ahead. I'm probably a plagiarist now.
1.4. Thomas Pynchon
The search for meaning is one (if not the most important one) of many themes in
Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. The plot tells the story of Oedipa Maas
whose late lover Pierce Inverarity named her in his will the executor of his estate.
Oedipa leaves for Los Angeles and San Narciso where Inverarity is said to have left
numerous assets.
As she goes about the business, Oedipa begins to sense the impossibility of
arriving at the knowledge she was supposed to obtain. Instead, she encounters more and more of mysterious signs (muted post horns, various mutations of the name “Tristero,” etc.) testifying to the existence of a veiled, alternative reality which is in strict opposition to the “official” one. Resembling a system of binaries (either/or), the world around her seems to be prearranged and determined by something or somebody – Oedipa, in a state of growing paranoia, feels trapped within a plot, a conspiracy. She even suspects that it may have been Inverarity’s secret plan. Yet, in her desperate attempts at comprehension, she falls victim of the opposite, solipsistic view that reality surrounding her is only her invention. When visiting an exhibition of Remedios Varo’s paintings in Mexico City, she becomes frustrated, although she finds in them a metaphor of her predilection:[I]n the central painting of a triptych, . . . were a number of frail girls with heartshaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in this tapestry, and the tapestry was the world.
Oedipa experiences something that may be called “epiphany,” a feeling verging
on religious enlightenment. She senses an outside “force” – she calls it “magic” –
imposing a “meaning” which nevertheless remains ambiguous. Oedipa is uncertain
whether she weaves or is herself woven: “Such a captive maiden, having plenty of time to think, soon realizes that her tower, its height and architecture, are like her ego only incidental: that what really keeps her where she is is magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all.
Pynchon, who often employs science for literary experiments, uses in The Crying
the metaphor of entropy – the Second Law of thermodynamics – which is a measure of
randomness or disorder in a closed system. It is based on the principle of constant
cessation of difference (heat/cold) until a state of sameness, balance and ultimately
death is reached by the system. That is why the universe (as all closed systems) is said
to be “running down.” Pynchon’s application of this term is, however, more
complicated than that, for he draws on information theory as well, and this context
yields a different understanding of entropy. Here, disorder raises the amount of
information a message carries. Thomas Schaub suggests that Pynchon exploits entropy
in the two contexts simultaneously: according to him, the writer uses entropy in the
thermodynamic sense to describe the American Dream which Oedipa witnesses as
running down. On the other hand, the heroine’s sorting out may, in the information
theory context, represent a counter force to chaos and death. Therefore it may be
suggested that Oedipa is metaphorically Maxwell’s Demon involved in the process of
sorting out molecules. What is more, the metaphor can be extended to denote the act
of reading itself. Like Oedipa, Pynchon’s readers search for clues through the dubious
“information system” and try to connect them, to create a pattern which should
ultimately produce coherence and intelligibility. The whole novel, however, seems to be built on a struggle between the metaphorical on the one hand and the literal on the other. This constant friction produces ambiguity which is never to be resolved and implies a middle ground between the said polarities.
Pynchon’s novel is preoccupied with communication and the promise of meaning
it offers and negates. In fact, true communication is unreachable. Schaub notes: “As
[Oedipa’s] talent for sensing meaning behind patterns ripens, the patterns proliferate and haunt her. . . .” The nature of language, or any system based on signs for that matter, is not representational. The text is not a tool for a message, it is the message itself. Oedipa finds more and more data, but instead of being closer to the “truth,” she seems to be even more lost in the labyrinth. Paradoxically, the more information one gathers, the less information one gets; entangled in a maze of signifiers constantly deferring any verifiable “truth.”
As a metafictional novel, The Crying of Lot 49 is a commentary not only on the
search for meaning of Pynchon’s readers but also on the general tendency of applying
order, coherence and patterns to fiction. At the end of the novel, Oedipa is still lost in
pervading ambiguity, as is the reader who will never be able to arrive at the “meaning” or “correct” interpretation of what he/she has read.
