The Crying of Lot 49

>tfw that's my favorite pynchon

am i a pleb guys?

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Pynchon is a psyop, stop reading him.

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Systems, when scrutinized, do not adequately represent the sum of their parts. The post office conspiracy, for instance. Something as simple as the postal service, a system we take to be simple, unassuming, and whole, is actually a ghost of that which makes it up. An individual cannot take a system as such. Additionally, the more complex the system, the more hopeless the individual in seeing beyond its representation and understand its individual parts in relation to its whole. Hence the paranoia.

This is only my opinion. The dreadful sense that political, economic, philosophical, scientific systems are in essence representations, resting on nothing, is what I think makes pynchon so haunting. Basically, to understand the Postal Service fully is to understand that the Postal Service is not the Postal Service as represented, and the madness and deep-seated distrust stemming from that.

>>9551874
"In juxtaposition to its representation***", not "in relation to its whole."

~~decentralization of truth~~

>>9551828
>marathoned this in two hours
>I dont get it

wonder why

>>9551828
Chaos and globalization.

>>9551828
Use this
http://m.sparknotes.com/lit/lot49/

>reading a 180 page pinecone in two hours.
Lol

>>9551828
Stop disconnecting meaning from how its aesthetically grasped. Novels aren't puzzles. If you read a novel and really 'don't get it', come up empty, hate the experience, it doesn't 'make you think', you likely lack an adequate knowledge base.

Keep reading, return later

More like the Pine-ing of lot this book is shit and pinecone is a hack

>>9553414
>Stop disconnecting meaning from how its aesthetically grasped. Novels aren't puzzles
Should be put in the fucking sticky. This whole site has a serious problem with people who treat works of literature and film like the only reason to experience them is so that you can write a "THE MEANING OF THIS WORK WAS..." essay.

>>9553414
>Novels aren't puzzles.

Some are.

>>9551874
I really enjoyed reading this, thanks for writing anon.

>>9551874
You just made me want to pick up the book again and finish it

>>9551874
Very cool idea
Got me interested in this book which is rare for this board

I read GR before tCLo49 so it read pretty fluidly.

pic related edition is 142 pages.

Now I get it, Pynchman was parodying postmodernism whilst simultaneously defining it.

Thats pretty postmodern.

>>9551828
DID YOU KNOW that in this novella, Thomas Pynchon popularized the use of the word "shrink" to denote a therapist?

>>9555370
huh

>>9555386
Didn't need your (You), get out.

>>9555370
How though?

Basically what >>9551874 said except the only thing that's true is that men are selfish horn-dogs
Everyone wants to fuck Oedipa.
It's a "male"/mail conspiracy at the heart of the plot.

>>9555407
have you even read the book?

>>9551828

'Well I think that its jus--' Thank you for bringing that to my attention, I look forward to our next meeting.

BTFO

there are also themes about money being the root of all evil, "bones" resting deep below the surface being used as material to create illusions and conspiracy to thwart would-be truth-seekers (the parallels between the Courier's Tragedy, and the bones at the bottom of the lake surrounding Inverarity's pleasure casino).
With this comes america's discreet nazism, Jews as conquerors of the world (Ghengis Cohen)

>>9551874

Good post. I think we can read Pynchon through the lens of Richard Rorty. I don't know how often people make that link but Pynchon is pretty pragmatic when you break it down - he acknowledges the lack of ability to understand the constituent parts of the sum. He loves getting caught up in the madness and we (well, those of us who finish his books) love getting caught up in it too.

>>9555407
>A 1953 New York Times article on television-industry jargon once again described headshrinker as Hollywood slang for a psychotherapist, but the term became more widely used after the 1955 movie "Rebel Without a Cause," which included scenes in which characters discuss going to a headshrinker. In 1966, novelist Thomas Pynchon made the first known reference to a psychotherapist as a "shrink" in describing the character Dr. Hilarius in "The Crying of Lot 49."

>>9553414
So true. I get really triggered by people trying to argue "ASOIAF has themes too it says war is bad and confusing so it's literature too". The best art allows you to have ideas that the author never had before, as you relate his ideas to your own life and experiences and worldview.

I think the problem is people who read for status rather than actual entertainment. And academia/how we study literature as a culture rewarding "explanations" of texts rather than readings of them.