надцяте перечитування, тепер - перед читацьким клубом.
щоразу помічаєш щось нове, цю неймовірну гру лейтмотивів, жодного випадкового слова чи епізода, усе працює на загальну ідею.
сюжетно-композиційний принцип - з європейського кінематографа, хто бачив "Пригоду" Антоніоні чи "Вікенд" Ґодара - краще зрозуміють Пінчона.
німецька тема - найсильніша, купа алюзій для тих, хто читав "Веселку тяжіння".
ключ же загалом - операція Paperclip та програма MKUltra.

Τελικά η πρώτη επαφή με τον κο. Πίντσον ήταν αρκετά περίεργη.

Το συγκεκριμένο βιβλίο είναι ένας δαιδαλώδης και χαοτικός λαβύρινθος και ο συγγραφέας ουσιαστικά σου κλείνει το μάτι πονηρά, προκαλώντας σε να μπεις μέσα και αν έχεις κουράγιο και αντοχή να βγεις...
Η υπόθεση δεν είναι κάτι το συνταρακτικό. Μια μικροαστή γυναίκα με το συμβολικό όνομα Οιδίπα, λαμβάνει μια εντολή από ένα δικηγορικό γραφείο για να εκτελέσει την διαθήκη ενός πρώην εραστή της, Προσπαθώντας λοιπόν να εκτελέσει την μεταθανάτια επιθυμία του πρώην φίλου της, θα πέσει πάνω στο Τρύστερο / Τρίστερο, ένα παράνομο ταχυδρομικό δίκτυο που λειτουργούσε αθέατο για πάνω από 4 αιώνες. Κάπου εκεί η Οιδίπα θα αρχίσει να αμφιβάλει για το τι είναι πραγματικό ενώ παράλληλα θα αρχίσει να μεταμορφώνεται από μικροαστή νοικοκυρά σε δαιμόνια ντετέκτιβ!
Μέχρι εδώ όλα καλά.
Μυστήριο, ίντριγκες, συνωμοσίες, κινηματογράφος, μουσική και αλληγορίες.
Όμως ο Πίντσον το παρακάνει στο θέμα της πληροφορίας. Βομβαρδίζει τον αναγνώστη συνεχώς και από παντού, με μια σχεδόν επιδειξιομανία η οποία για μένα ήταν κουραστική και αντί να δώσει βάθος στους χαρακτήρες του, τους μετέτρεπε σε χάρτινους ήρωες που περιμένουν την εντολή του μεγάλου ενορχηστρωτή για να κάνουν έστω και ένα βήμα. Όλο αυτό μοιάζει τόσο επιτηδευμένο που ειδικά όταν μπλέκει μέσα και η φυσικοχημεία εκεί πλέον από λογοτεχνικό κείμενο μοιάζει με διατριβή μέτριου φοιτητή.
Επίσης ο συγγραφέας είναι εγκλωβισμένος στον αμερικάνικο τρόπο ζωής και θεωρώ πως εκεί το, κατά τα άλλα αξιόλογο έργο του, χάνει την οικουμενικότητα ενός αριστουργήματος.

Παρόλα αυτά δεν μπορώ να αγνοήσω πόσο πολύ σταθερός είναι στα πιστεύω του. Είναι ενάντια στον καταναλωτισμό, είναι αντικομφορμιστής και πάντα με τον αδύναμο και τον κατατρεγμένο. Όλα αυτά φαίνονται σε κάθε του λέξη ( από όσες κατάλαβα δλδ) και σε κάθε χαρακτήρα του.

Ο μεταμοντέρνος τρόπος γραφής του δεν ήταν ενοχλητικός. Δύσκολος ναι, όχι όμως ενοχλητικός. Το αντίθετο θα έλεγα. Μάλλον διασκεδαστικός.
Εν τέλει δεν ήταν ένα κακό βιβλίο.
Όμως θα αργήσω (πολυυυυ) να ξαναπιάσω κάτι από τον συγκεκριμένο συγγραφέα.

Κάπου στο 3/5 και ίσως κάποια στιγμή να υπάρξει και μια εκθετική αύξηση στα αστεράκια σε μια πιθανή συνάρτηση όπου στον άξονα των Χ θα βρίσκεται ο χρόνος και στον άξονα του Υ η αναγνωστική μου αντοχή (έτσι για να είμαι και κοντά στο πνεύμα του συγγραφέα :)))

ΥΓ1: Ευτυχώς που ξεκίνησα με αυτό και δεν πήρα κανένα από τα τούβλα του να κλαίω τα χρήματά μου.
ΥΓ2: Το δυσνόητο δεν είναι απαραίτητα ποιοτικό ούτε καλό. Καιρός να ξεπεράσουμε τέτοιες γενικεύσεις.
ΥΓ3: Χιούμορ δεν βρήκα μέσα στο βιβλίο. Πιο πολύ γελούσα σκεπτόμενος τον κο. Πίντσον να παρακολουθεί από κάπου αόρατος εμάς τους αναγνώστες του και να γελάει ή να απορεί με τις διαστάσεις που πήραν τα έργα του.

The kind of book that makes people hate books. Literally one of, if not, the worst story I've ever read. A classic English majors only book, aka people like talking about this book and that they "get it" make you feel like their intellectual inferior. This book is the literary equivalent of some hipster noise band that everyone knows sucks but people will say they are good just to be in the "know."

I must say this before I get a bunch of messages from people looking down their nose at me. I do "get it" I got an A on the paper I wrote on this book but what I "get" more is that there is nothing to "get." It's the act of "getting it" and being part of that special little crew that does that makes people enjoy this book. They enjoy more looking down upon those simpletons who don't "get" it than they enjoy the story. Get what I'm saying?

If you enjoy art that makes a statement, try this book. If you enjoy books for the story they tell and the messages you can extract from that story, avoid this book. It's up to you.

Am înțeles cam tîrziu că e vorba de un roman parodic, de o luare în rîs a cititorului foarte grav, foarte serios, care vrea povești „adevărate”, nu fantezii haotice. Pînă am înțeles acest lucru simplu, lectura a mers destul de lent. După ce am întrezărit, dincolo de text, chipul ironic al prozatorului, m-am destins și m-am putut bucura de lectură.

Lipsită de însemnătate, neverosimilă, amuzantă uneori (scena cu doctorul psihanalist Hilarius e mortală), intriga este numai pretextul unui tur de forță stilistic.

Citez această enumerare:

„S-a mai întîlnit cu un sudor cu o deformație facială, pe care urîțenia sa îl bucura; un copil ce cutreiera în noapte, căruia îi era dor de moartea dinaintea nașterii, așa cum le este dor unor proscriși de vacuitatea adormitoare a comunității; o negresă cu o cicatrice marmorată în chip complicat pe moalele obrazului...; un paznic de noapte în vîrstă, ronțăind dintr-un săpun Ivory...” (p.144).

Și răspunsul nimicitor al protagonistei la întrebarea unui reporter:

„- Cum vi s-a părut acest incident cumplit?
- Cumplit, spuse Oedipa” (p.164).

Un roman instructiv pentru cei care gustă ironia și umorul...

Objavu broja 49 sam nedavno pročitao po drugi put i moram priznati da mi se roman još više svideo nego nakon prvog čitanja - on je pravo remek-delo postmodernizma! Pri prvom čitanju jednostavno iskliznu neki elementi, teme ili već neke sitnice, ali drugo čitanje uvek bude poput male apokalipse - čitalac doživi neki vid otkrovenja...
Edipa koliko je čudna, učmala i na momente neženstvena živi u lažnoj sigurnosti nekog prividnog američkog sna. Ona na prvi pogled ima sve i ide po zabavama, ali ona je, ustvari, zatočena u kuli poput Rapunzel (koju vidi na jednom triptihu i kada prepozna sebe u toj sceni, počinje da plače). Iz te učmalosti u kojoj živi budi je preminuli bivši ljubavnik koji ju je imenovao izvršiteljem oporuke. Put na koji se upušta Edipa postaje potraga za identitetom, gde ona ponekad menja svoje ime, ali zasigurno menja samu sebe, na momente nestajući u ogledalu i gubeći se u svojoj glavi, pitajući se da li je to u šta se upustila stvarnost ili privid, simulacija ili čak halucinacija.
Cela priča o Tristeru, Turnu i Taksisu i poštanskom sistemu čini se kao da naglašava bizarnost u koju je zapala komunikacija. Mi prividno komuniciramo sa ljudima oko sebe, ali - da li to stvarno radimo? Da li ih stvarno slušamo ili slušamo samo sebe? Pinčon nam poručuje da je komunikacija u krizi i da se svet utapa u masovnost i osrednjost. Treba da slušamo Reč i da pratimo Simbole koji su tu ali ih mi od gomile prosečnosti i osrednjosti ne primećujemo.

This book made me laugh a lot, which I wasn't really expecting. It's so brief but I marked at least 20 spots. This is the book Pynchon wrote before his great masterpiece, Gravity's Rainbow, and there are some hints of elements that end up in that book in here.

Let's see, maybe I'll start with what made me laugh. Oedipa Maas, the main character, has a lot to giggle about. Her strategy for strip movie watching and the hairspray disaster was only the first time. Her husband, Mucho Maas, no matter how many times he was mentioned, I laughed every time. Pynchon had a lot of fun with names in this book.

I also loved his ongoing depiction of the California of the 1960s, drugs and all, but also the urban landscape.

n  "Barbed wire again gave way to the familiar parade of more beige, prefab, cinderblock office machine distributors, sealant makers, bottled gas works, fastener factories, warehouses, and whatever. ... What the road really was, she fancied, was this hypodermic needle, inserted somewhere ahead into the vein of a freeway, a vein nourishing the mainliner L.A., keeping it happy, coherent, protected from pain, or whatever passes, with a city, for pain."

(later)"Somewhere beyond the battening, urged sweep of three-bedroom houses rushing by their thousands across all the dark beige hills, somehow implicit in an arrogance or bite to the smog the more inland somnolence of San Narciso did lack, lurked the sea, the unimaginable Pacific, the one to which all surfers, beach pads, sewage disposal schemes, tourist incursions, sunned homosexuality, chartered fishing are irrelevant..."

(later)"...some unvoiced idea that no matter what you did to its edges the true Pacific stayed inviolate and integrated or assumed the ugliness at any edge into some more general truth."n

I also loved the endless music references, from made up lyrics to the bar playing Stockhausen. Well that's probably only funny if you know music from that era, but here's a taste. Yeah. It also has a Saturday night midnight Sinewave session, haHA!

My only frustration, and I should have known, is that the book ends with a cliff-hanger. Or does he tell us along the way? If so, I missed it. I guess we also never know if the story about the underground mail delivery service is an elaborate hoax or something that actually still exists. We do know that Oedipa was meant to remember.

And why do people take drugs, particularly LSD? Oedipa's husband has been, and by the end of the novel, she can only seem him as a stranger.

n  "...You take it because it's good. Because you hear and see things, even smell them, taste like you never could. Because the world is so abundant. No end to it, baby. You're an antenna, sending your pattern across a million lives a night, and they're your lives too."n

I listened to Stockhausen the entire time I wrote this review and now I'm laughing... this really is my kind of book.

"This is America, you live in it, you let it happen. Let it unfurl."

UPDATE: This author interprets the Beatles' famous song, "She Loves You," in a way I had never thought about. Whether it is a new interpretation or not, I don't know. But in summary, "she" is every woman who has ever lived, and "you" is all of us. And given further thoughts supplied by other goodread readers, I'm gonna add a star to my original two-star rating. "Change my mind, please," I always say! The ending might indeed be the perfect ending for this book after all, as my goodreads friend Tobias says in comments about my review. (Thanks Tobias)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:
Definitely style over substance. While unusual and sometimes comical, stumbled through it, and didn't understand the end: an auction of 'Lot 49" at which our heroine attends and perhaps is to find some key to the story during the auction? This book feels like a distant cousin to Umberto Eco's 'Foucaults Pendulum', as Pynchon throws in a lot of ancient worldwide conspiracies, as does Eco. And here, Pynchon renames P.D. Wodehouse's 'Bachelor Anonymous' as ' Inamorati Anonymous' in which people who are bout to fall in love reach out to another member for support. Pynchon pulls in Joyce's 'Ulysses' in an odd way, mentions Shakespeare, and talks about rock bands with I imagine fictional names. The dead appear as wine, as ink, and who knows what else, but the overally theme, I think, is that throughout history, people have been leaving marks, postage stamp mistakes, graffiti all over the world to tell some kind of story , perhaps a delivery system of mail outside of the goverment's control. And today, as we have the 'dark net' and 'bitcoin', it's odd that, in a way, Pynchon predicts both of these way back in 1965. At 150 pages, this is a fast read, but the ideas are extremely dense. I wonder if Pynchon goes into greater detail and resolves this one in another book. I'm definitely going to try another by this author, hoping for greater insight into this novel, or into the author's mind.

I really want to like Thomas Pynchon. I love the whole brilliant but reclusive author act, and all the cool kids at the library seem to think he’s the cat’s ass. But I’m starting to think that he and I are never going to be friends.

I tried to read Gravity’s Rainbow twice and wound up curled up in the fetal position , crying while sucking my thumb. Supposedly, this is his most accessible book. It was easier to read than GR, but easier to understand? Well…….

Oedipa Maas unexpectedly finds herself as the executor to a wealthy former lover’s estate. While trying to deal with that, she begins meeting odd people and seeing symbols that lead her to a bizarre conspiracy theory about a centuries old society called the Trystero that is mostly known for running an underground postal system. But the more evidence she finds about the Trystero existing makes Oedipa increasingly paranoid about whether she’s the victim of an elaborate hoax or if she’s losing her own sanity.

This is one of those books that I enjoyed while reading, but knew that I was missing a whole layer of meaning. I loved the idea of a rogue postal service and how Pynchon played with it as the idea of an urban myth or conspiracy theory. It’s probably the kind of book that I’ll really only get on a second reading so I’ll try it again someday.

Appetite for Deconstruction

Most readers approach a complex novel, like a scientist approaches the world or a detective approaches a crime - with an appetite for knowledge and understanding, and a methodology designed to satiate their appetite.

“The Crying of Lot 49” (“TCL49”) presents a challenge to this type of quest for two reasons.

One, it suggests that not everything is knowable and we should get used to it.

Second, the novel itself fictionalizes a quest which potentially fails to allow the female protagonist, Oedipa Maas, to understand the situation confronting her.

Arguably, Pynchon serves up a work that reveals more about method than it does about the subject matter of the quest, the world around us.

Who Dunnit?

If this were a who-dunnit, we don’t end up learning who dunnit.

It is all hunt and no catch.

If we are seeking the metaphysical truth, we do not find it.

The truth might even have escaped or got away.

It might never have been there in the first place.

Or there might not be something as simple as the truth.

To this extent, “TCL49” might be a novel about futility, rather than success.

Get It?

Inevitably, this affects the way any review approaches the novel.

It is not simply a matter of whether the reviewer “got it” and conveys this to their readers.

Even if you think you got it, there is no guarantee that your understanding reflects what Pynchon intended (behind the scenes).

You could be wrong. You might even be making the very mistake that “TCL49” might be trying to caution us against.

Pierce Inverarity’s Will

The novel commences with Oedipa learning that she has been appointed Co-Executor of the Estate of California real estate mogul and ex-lover, Pierce Inverarity.

An Executor is a person who inherits the assets and liabilities of a person (the Testator) on their death and has to distribute the net assets of their Estate (their "Legacy") to the Beneficiaries identified in the Testator’s Will (their “Last Will and Testament”).

Often, people only find out that they have been appointed an Executor when the Testator has died and their Will has been located.

However, it is a good idea to let somebody know during your lifetime that you wish to appoint them as your Executor, because they might not wish to accept the burden after your death.

It is implied in “TCL49” that Pierce has actually died (the legal letter says that he died “back in the spring”), but it does not automatically follow from learning about your appointment that the Testator has died.

This is My Last Will and Testament

A Will is literally an expression of your intentions (your will) with respect to your property. You give instructions or directions to your Executor.

It is often called a Testament, the etymology of which is related to the Ten Commandments or Testimony issued by God.

In a very loose metaphorical way, the novel sets up Pierce’s Will as the Will of God, something which Oedipa is and feels compelled to obey.

There is a potential clue in her reaction to the legal letter:

"Oedipa stood in the living room, stared at by the greenish dead eye of the TV tube, spoke the name of God, tried to feel as drunk as possible."

Whether or not Pierce might be symbolic of God, Oedipa’s actions in the novel are dictated and driven by his Will.

Pierce Inverarity’s Name

Pierce’s name is also pregnant with implication, if not necessarily definitive meaning.

The noun “arity” means the number of arguments a function or operation can take; in logic, it determines the number of inferences that may be deduced from a particular fact.

“Verarity” is not a word in its own right, but it is quite close to “veracity”, which has lead some commentators to infer that it suggests a concern with the truth.

When you add the prefix “in-“ (as a negative) to it, the word could be concerned with the absence of truth.

When you add the first name, Pierce, to the equation, some have suggested that it implies the piercing of the truth (or untruths).

Alternatively, the prefix “in-” might mean “into” which might imply the piercing or penetration of the truth.

There are also suggestions that “Inver” might be a pun on the word ”infer” or the process of inference.

Sign of the Times

I haven’t seen any references to the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce (different spelling) who made an enormous contribution to the field of semiotics (the study of signs and sign processes).

If there is any link, then Pierce’s full name might imply “unreliable or untruthful signs”.

Charles S. Peirce also recognised that logical operations could be carried out by electrical switching circuits (as long ago as 1886).

This concept is the foundation of “logic gates” and digital computers (of which, more later):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_gate

”All Manner of Revelations”

When Oedipa discovers her obligations as Executor, she is initially skeptical:

" ‘…aren't you even interested?’

‘In what?’

‘In what you might find out.’

As things developed, she was to have all manner of revelations.

Hardly about Pierce Inverarity, or herself; but about what remained yet had somehow, before this, stayed away."

Originally Oedipa saw herself as a pensive Rapunzel-like figure, waiting for someone to ask her, in the sixties, to “let down her hair”.

Pierce arrives, but is not quite what she is looking for. Despite a romantic holiday in Mexico, she remains in her tower:

"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.

“Having no apparatus except gut fear and female cunning to examine this formless magic, to understand how it works, how to measure its field strength, count its lines of force, she may fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disk jockey.

“If the tower is everywhere and the knight of deliverance no proof against its magic, what else?"

The Tristero System

Oedipa’s appointment as Executor is the beginning of a series of revelations (or, in the Biblical sense, Revelations) that “end her encapsulation in her tower”.

The trigger for these revelations is Pierce’s stamp collection:

"… his substitute often for her - thousands of little colored windows into deep vistas of space and time… She had never seen the fascination."

The stamps turn out to be “forgeries”, postage stamps used not by the official postal service, but by an underground rival or illegitimate shadow called “Tristero”.

No sooner does Oedipa learn of the existence of Tristero, then she starts to find evidence that it still exists on the streets of California: its symbol is a muted post horn, adding a mute to the horn of its traditional private enterprise rival in nineteenth century Europe, Thurn and Taxis.

Her quest is to learn the significance of Tristero and how much Pierce knew about it.

“W.A.S.T.E.”

Tristero’s modern American manifestation is “W.A.S.T.E.”, which we eventually learn stands for “We Await Silent Tristero's Empire”.

It delivers correspondence between various disaffected underground, alternative and countercultural groups, bohemians, hippies, anarchists, revolutionaries, non-conformists, protesters, students, geeks, artists, technologists and inventors, all of whom wish to communicate with each other without government knowledge or interference.

The postal system confers privacy, confidentiality on their plots and plans.

Its couriers wear black, the colour of anarchy.

Yet, from the point of view of Tristero, it is not the content of the correspondence that matters, it is its delivery.

It’s almost as if these companies are early proof that the medium is more important than the message.

All postal systems grew from early attempts to guarantee safe passage of diplomatic correspondence between different States and Rulers in Europe.

Indeed, Tristero’s rival, Thurn and Taxis, was an actual postal service and is still an extremely wealthy family in Germany.

A World of Silence

Silence is important to any non-conformist or underground movement, not only from the point of secrecy, but in the sense that Dr. Winston O'Boogie (A.K.A. John Lennon) subsequently maintained that, “A conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words”.

It is the desire for silence that unites the underground in opposition to the Government and the mainstream political culture:

"For here were God knew how many citizens, deliberately choosing not to communicate by U. S. Mail.

"It was not an act of treason, nor possibly even of defiance. But it was a calculated withdrawal, from the life of the Republic, from its machinery.

"Whatever else was being denied them out of hate, indifference to the power of their vote, loopholes, simple ignorance, this withdrawal was their own, un-publicized, private.

"Since they could not have withdrawn into a vacuum (could they?), there had to exist the separate, silent, unsuspected world."

[Note the idiomatic but ambiguous use of the expression “God knows how many”, as if God or Tristero or Pierce did actually know how many.]

From Aloof Tower to Underground

Oedipa is a relatively middle class, middle aged woman, who married a used car salesman and DJ for a radio station called KCUF, after her affair with Pierce.

Her quest drags her from her tower and exposes her to another side of life, just as life in America (well, Berkeley, San Francisco) was starting to get interesting (1966).

She is a stranger in a strange land, having grown up and been educated during the conservative, Cold War 50’s:

"...she had undergone her own educating at a time of nerves, blandness and retreat among not only her fellow students but also most of the visible structure around and ahead of them, this having been a national reflex to certain pathologies in high places only death had had the power to cure, and this Berkeley was like no somnolent Siwash out of her own past at all, but more akin to those Far Eastern or Latin American universities you read about, those autonomous culture media where the most beloved of folklores may be brought into doubt, cataclysmic of dissents voiced, suicidal of commitments chosen, the sort that bring governments down."

While Oedipa is ostensibly trying to get to the bottom of Tristero, she is actually going on a journey of self-discovery.

The narrative forces her down from her tower of withdrawal to street-level engagement and then ultimately into the underground.

Bit by bit, she ceases to define herself in terms of her husband or Pierce, but in terms of her own identity.

Like the symbol of Tristero, she has been silenced, her horn has been muted, she has had to stand by her man and be secondary.

Her adventure frees her from the chains of middle class conformity.

It is a preparation for a new life of autonomy.

Scientific Method

Oedipa’s methodology is that of a flawed scientist or detective.

She uses logic to make sense of what she perceives.

She constantly asks the question “why?”

She builds and applies logical systems where she processes information in a simplistic binary "either-or", "zero or one" fashion (pre-empting computers), according to whether it proves a point or disproves it.

She applies the “Law of the Excluded Middle”: "Everything must either be or not be." (Or the Law of Noncontradiction: "Nothing can both be and not be.")

She learns things and processes them as best she can.

But she misses opportunities and fails to investigate clues she ought to. She is human. She is fallible.

She reads old books with different typesetting and sees “y’s where i’s should’ve been”.

“I can’t read this,” she says.

So she learns the limits of logic. And she learns the appeal of nonconformity and freedom and communication.

Despite the masculine nature of the metaphor, she removes the mute from her horn.

The Crying of Lot 49

The eponymous Crying of Lot 49 is the auction of the forged Tristero stamps that takes place in the last pages of the novel.

Oedipa discovers that a major bidder (possibly associated with Tristero) has decided to attend the auction personally, rather than bid remotely “by the book”.

The novel ends with the anticipation of Oedipa and the reader discovering the identity of the bidder for the stamps.

Is it Tristero? Is it even Pierce?

Pynchon deprives us of this revelation.

This has frustrated many readers. However, it suggests that this was not the most important revelation that was happening in the novel.

The real revelation is Oedipa’s discovery of herself.

She sees “I” where previously she has seen only “why”.

At the same time, she discovers America and its diversity, which is far greater than the white bread community who are content with the U.S. Mail:

"She had dedicated herself, weeks ago, to making sense of what Inverarity had left behind, never suspecting that the legacy was America."

Ultimately, it is Pierce’s and Pynchon’s will that the novel and her journey end this way.

I’ve no idea what Pynchon took while he was writing but I ask for the same.

But seriously, I really don’t know what to think about that book. Great conspiracy or great baloney? Have to admit that I’m in a dither. It’s useless to describe the plot but in short: Oedipa Maas has been made executrix of her former lover Pierce Inverarity‘s estate. Fulfilling her duties she discovers the existence of mystery postal service called Tristero. Mafia, freemasons, secret signs? Is someone manipulate Oedipa? Is this really happening?

Pynchon has a reputation for a difficult author but The crying of lot 49 is regarded as one of the most readable. Agreed. No great shakes but personally found it quite easy to follow and very funny at moments. There were some things I really liked: Oedipa’s husband Mucho. Thin - skinned one. Mimosa if you want to know. Like this plant when touched it's curling its leaves. And so Mucho is. Or Oedipa’s odyssey, oneiric and unreal. Or that game with rules of strip poker and Oedipa putting on herself all her clothes. Not to mention the ending. I like open endings, they’re like invitation from the author, they're like: come on, use your imaginatio, it's your story now. So, that moment with Oedipa. We are sitting and waiting, the door are opening and ...

Η Οιδίπα Μάας είναι μια παντρεμένη, μικροαστή νοικοκυρά. Η καθημερινότητα της ανατρέπεται όταν λαμβάνει εντολή εκτέλεσης διαθήκης ενός πρώην εραστή της.
Προχωρώντας την ανάγνωση εισερχόμαστε σε έναν κόσμο μυστηρίου,  αποκωδικοποίησης γρίφων, αναζήτησης στοιχείων.
Η Οιδίπα εντελώς, ή ίσως και όχι, τυχαία ανακαλύπτει την ύπαρξη ενός παράλληλου, παράνομου,  ταχυδρομικού δικτύου.
Στο ταξίδι αυτό της ανεύρεσης αποδείξεων και επίλυσης αινιγμάτων, ταξιδεύουμε στο παρελθόν, ενώ ο συγγραφέας με χιούμορ και σαρκαστικό λόγο  μας δίνει το παρόν της αμερικανικής κοινωνίας και κουλτούρας.
Πέραν από τις πολιτικές αιχμές στο βάθος της ιστορίας,  με την αέναη πάλη μεταξύ επίσημου κράτους και παρακράτους, με τις ίντριγκες και τους δόλιους τρόπους ανόδου στην εξουσία,  ο Pynchon  γράφει ένα μανιφέστο για την επιστήμη και τη λογική μέσα σε έναν κόσμο παραισθησιογόνων και φροϋδικών αναλύσεων. Εκεί που ο Δαίμων του Μάξγουελ συναντά το LSD. Η δύναμη της πληροφορίας και η άρρηκτη σχέση της με την εξουσία.  Από τις σφραγισμένες με βουλοκέρι επιστολές του μεσαίωνα στα σύγχρονα μέσα επικοινωνίας. Η γλώσσα,  η ερμηνεία, του ουσιώδες, το εφικτό και το ανέφικτο της επικοινωνίας.
Μουσική,  φασματικές αναλύσεις,  χρονικές γραμμές που συμπίπτουν.
Η γραφή του Pynchon βρίθει συμβολισμών, όπως η επιλογή των ονομάτων των χαρακτήρων ή των τόπων που αναφέρει.
Η Οιδίπα για χρόνια εγκλωβισμένη στο κάστρο της, σ' έναν κόσμο που της έχει επιβληθεί από τις κρατούσες κοινωνικές συμβάσεις, μια άλλη ιψενική Νόρα της σύγχρονης καταναλωτικής κοινωνίας, απελευθερώνεται και επιδιώκει να φέρει συνοχή σε έναν χαώδη κόσμο. Από τη χρήση των αστερισμών για καθορισμό του χρόνου και της οργάνωσης της ζωής μέχρι τα ηλεκτρονικά κυκλώματα. Μια αναβίωση της Βαβέλ.
Πολύπλευρο,  πολυεπίπεδο,  στοχαστικό μυθιστόρημα, ενδεικτικό της γραφής του Pynchon και, κατά τη γνώμη του μεταφραστή, το κατάλληλο για να εισέλθουμε στον κόσμο του.

I read this last year as my first Pynchon, and maybe he is a genius, but it didn't work for me. Though I appreciated elements of it: the paranoia, the humour, too, I found Pynchon to be on the wrong end of postmodernism for me, the icy, character-less, almost arrogant side. Compared to something like Slaughterhouse-Five, which I think is the epitome of what good postmodern novels can achieve, being both wacky, sensitive and brilliant, this fell short for me. Not only was it difficult to grasp, it also felt slightly aimless, and I didn't care as much as I wanted to. I've read the first 100 pages of Gravity's Rainbow twice now and still not sure on Pynchon. One day, maybe next year, I'll read it all the way through. The idea of Pynchon, so far, is far better and more enjoyable than actually reading Pynchon. A shame, because I want to love him. Maybe when I'm older.