re:mote voices

Title: The Crying Of Lot 49
Author: Thomas Pynchon
Publisher:Vintage

Thomas Pynchon is another in the long list of authors who are bandied about as someone who should be read. Having started to read an extract from one of his larger novels, I wasn't entirely convinced, yet curiosity and conviction remains. So to that end I decided to tackle The Crying Of Lot 49, which is the slimmest volume in his catalogue at under 200 pages.

The Crying Of Lot 49 really wasn't what I expected, which is probably just as well, as it is all the stuff that comes from that which I enjoyed about it. Oedipa Mass had a relationship with the eccentric and rich Pierce Inverarity, though that was in the past and she is now happily married. However with Inverarity's death she is surprised to find that he named her as executrix of his will. This sends her on a trip to San Narcisco, where it isn't long before things get weird.

Checking into a motel run by a weird rock group called the Paranoids, being seduced via an elaborate drinking game by her co-executor is how she spends her first night in town. From there she learns just how rich Inveriarity was, he seemed to own everything in town. But at the same time she discovers a strange anti-mail conspiracy in a bar across from one of Inveriarty's factories - the only all electronic joint in town, filled with surly intellectuals listening to Stockhausen. Having discovered this place, she starts to find all sorts of symbols, references, clues to some conspiracy. As she progresses she is drawn in deeper and deeper into a dizzying investigation - which leaves her torn between the idea that either there is a huge world wide conspiracy that can be traced back hundreds of years, or she is caught in the midst of the most incredible hoax of all time.

Despite the list of comparisons that are given on the back of the book, The Crying Of Lot 49 most reminds me of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Of course Lot 49 is a considerably slighter volume, which is probably to its credit, given how much of the same kind of material that Pynchon crams into these pages. There is also the same kind of underlying paranoia that comes across, shadowy figures that may or may not be significant, rambling and bizarre characters forcing parts of a jigsaw on Oedipa at every turn.

One of the key scenes, and the section which really makes The Crying Of Lot 49 for me is the night Oedipa decides that it is all coincidence and decides to prove it by just drifting through the city for a night. Instead her plan back fires, and she ends up on this truly hallucinogenic journey, at the end of which leaves her entirely sure what was real and what wasn't. With this the city comes alive, the endless encounters with characters, little snap shots, the links that bring a palpable living city together and give it a life. For all that the reader finds the ideas of conspiracy and the dark humour compelling, it is the writing which can hit you with such a vivid night within the story that really makes it alive.