Thos Pynchons The Crying of Lot 49 - Embattled Underground Essay

The Crying of Lot 49 Embattled underpass        In whitethorn of 1966, Richard Poirier wrote an article on Thomas Pynchons latest legend at the time, The Crying of Lot 49. Clearly a fan of Pynchons precedent novel V, Poirier praises what he calls another sample of Pynchons technical virtuosity at apocalyptical satire, of saturnalian inventiveness comparable to John Barth and Joseph Heller (Poirier 1). He admires Pynchons adept effrontery with philosophical and psychological concepts &endash his anthropological intimacy with the off-beat (1).   Before addressing what he believes to be flaws in the authors narration (the heaviest focus of the scope of his opinions), Poirier starts with a considerable survey of Pynchons intentions with form. Poirier suggests that the various interwoven quests of the protagonist Oedipa Maas is willfully elaborate to mull the intricacies of the mind, a wasteland of suspicion and imagination. The imagination of the no vels characters first create and is consequently enslaved by its own plottings, its machines (1). Late in the novel, as connections to the Tristero cult jam up, Oedipa wanders into the dense environs of nighttime San Francisco, dizzy with her imagination (or was it?) of the underground sign This nights profusion of post horns, malignant, deliberate replication . . . one by one, touch sensation by precision pinch, they were immobilizing her (Pynchon 124). Like the characters in V, Oedipa Maas runs from the responsibilities of love and finds herself in a maze. Pynchon mocks these situations devoid of love with Byzantine complications of plot (Poirier 1).   Concerning Pynchons characters, Poirier also notes their epic efforts of co... ...ility to describe objects within the American scenery with a tenderness for the precise physical waste of our yearnings, . . . the anonymous scrap heap of Things wherein our lives are last joined (5). Pynchon has extraordinary metaphoric sk ill illustrating his reverence for the human mark to code, decode and leave messages, to communicate his own cry at the ludicrous and the haunting failure to communicate. Finally, Poirier states that the largest character throughout the Crying of Lot 49 is Pynchon himself, whose voice moves passionately with its capacity to move from the elegy to the epic entry . . . like a survivor looking through the massed wreckage of this civilization (5).   whole caboodle Cited Poirier, Richard. Embattled Underground. New York Times on the Web 1 May 1966. 22 September 2000. Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. New York Har