TP number three for me, and the one that made the least sense, hence the three stars.
A thundersome, scorching, paranoid, strange, rollicking novel, one of a kind. A constant circling in on reflections that may be reality, or a simulacrum of reality, or just a dead end where you will bang your head against the nearest wall muttering WTF!. Don't want to bring on a headache writing a detailed review, so briefly - the novel centres on Oedipa Maas, and an estate to settle in the wake of her former partner's death. She distrusts those around her, and fears that something weird, and possibly dangerous, may be lurking behind the scenes. (There is a shadowy group known as the Tristero). It sort of reads like a conspiracy mystery with TV and film metaphors, which began actually really well, but then it started to expand with character upon character, and seemingly runs around clueless like a headless chicken on Tequila and coke (That's the white powered stuff, not the fizzy drink). It's messy, but it's the sort of mess you may come to love. Not me, at least yet, maybe a second read would be beneficial some time.

Once upon a time I won this book from Stephen M. Apparently, Mr. M. had purchased this book used. The previous owner being a young scholar filled the inside cover pages with erudite observations gleaned from the text. I present them for you here in their entirety (along with my parenthetical comments):

1. Immoral in beginning; mostly about how we think (deep)
2. Mucho takes drugs to escape problems (ya don't say)
3. She's searching for answers because she thinks there's a conspiracy in the male (sic).
4. Dr. Halarius (sic) a doctor (sic) running away from Israelites but there's no Israelites; running after him because he was a jew nazi (umm... scratches head...)
5. Looking for truth but always falls apart. All the people she knows have non-realistic things going on. (I told you this chick was deep)
6. She's searching for truth alone.
7. All characters are in there to show "loss of truth." (hmmmm)
8. She see's (sic) WASTE, loss & horny fiancé throughout the group. (what the hell?)(this is underlined btw, apparently very important)
9. People always try to silence of truth. (perhaps English is a second language?)
10. Mute horn: the muting of everything & no one is supposed to know.
11. Unlike the character Oedpa, we are pushed into quietism. (oh are we?)
12 People that complain never gets anywhere (sic). (what that has to do with this book is anyone's guess)
13. Tries to prove gov't wrong but she finds out that the gov't was right & she finds herself lonely & she doesn't know if she really knows the truth. (uh huh)
14. The band is called Paranoids because they smoke pot. (no, she really wrote that, I'm not kidding).

*****
Makes total sense, right? My goodness, I can't imagine reading whatever brainchild was spawned from this nonsense, but I'm going to bet it got a C+ at best.

So, wanna know what I think about this book? I think it could be the love child of David Lynch & Carol Burnett -- it needs a whole new genre: slapstick surrealism. I think it's Gravity's Rainbow minus the sexy time. I think it's the embodiment of what it might be like to be a mouse forever trapped in a maze. I think it's a conspiracy, man, and I think you're all in on it!

Y’all like paranoia?

"So, what do you think it's about?" she asked, as she took a preliminary sip from her cocktail. "Entropy, to start with," he replied. "If only he'd known the Holographic Principle. It follows from thermodynamic calculations that the information content of a black hole is proportional to the square of its radius, not the cube, and the Universe can reasonably be thought of as a black hole. Hence all its information is really on its surface, and the interior is a low-energy illusion. Wouldn't you say that the book is rather like that too?"

"Mm-hm," she said, wondering if she should make a pun about quantum gravity and rainbows, but thinking better of it. "And then the deficiencies of the Container Metaphor of Communication," he continued. "On the naïve view, information is put into a container, namely the words, delivered to the addressee by the US mailman, and opened to obtain the meaning. But real communication is more informal. It's pieces of courier post from an unknown sender that arrive in turn, in taxis."

"Thurn and Taxis?" she interrupted. He looked at her for a moment.

"We could have sex," he added, in a tone midway between an afterthought, a question and a declaration of religious belief. She sighed, and undid the top two buttons of her blouse; he noticed they had a hard-edged quality different from the lower ones. A gold pendant, surprised by the sudden daylight and unsuccessfully attempting to hide between her breasts, spelled out the W.A.S.T.E. symbol. He examined it carefully, then hoisted the focus of his attention back towards her face. She made a complicated gesture, simultaneously expressing her agreement with the essential reasonableness of his request and the impossibility of acquiescing, then did up her blouse again.

"I think another martini would be useful," she said. "But this time, I want to see how you pit the olives. How you extract the kernel, as it were." She followed his hands as they cooperated in this task, which she had always felt beyond her. The left hand steadied the olive between thumb and forefinger, while the right one held the knife, exerting a steady downward pressure. The agate-coloured flesh split neatly apart, revealing the unwanted stone, which the right hand then discarded.

"Now let me try," she said, but she knew that, as usual, it would not work. Somehow, she was holding it in the wrong way; she only managed to inflict a flesh wound, rather than his clean kill. She relinquished the knife, and allowed him to do the remaining olives.

At least she had her martini, even if its secret still eluded her.

¡Una locura!¡Una tomadura de pelo! Estas, y otras, son las expresiones que se te pasan por la cabeza mientras lees esta delirante novela de Pynchon. Mientras vas leyéndola, no puedes dar crédito a lo que te está contando ni a los personajes que ta va presentando. Pero, como si de un sumidero se tratase, o de un maelström, no puedes evitar quedar atrapado en su brillante e inteligente historia.

De inicio los nombres son curiosos, Edipa, su marido Wendel "Mucho" Maas, el doctor Hilarius, la empresa Yoyodine, Gengis Cohen, el abogado Metzger... Pero vayamos al principio de todo, cuando Edipa Maas recibe una carta en la que se le notifica su nombramiento como albacea de la herencia del difunto Pierce Inverarity, un ricachón con el que estuvo liada hace un tiempo. Ni corta ni perezosa, Edipa se irá camino de San Narciso para encontrarse con el consejero Metzger, coadjutor junto a ella del testamento de Inverarity. Tras el encuentro en un bar con un tipo llamado Mike Falopio, miembro de la Sociedad Peter el Grasiento, Edipa descubrirá en los servicios un curioso mensaje junto a un no menos curioso dibujo. Y como si de una bola de nieve que baja por la ladera de una montaña se tratase que se va haciendo más y más grande, todo se le irá complicando a la buena de Edipa, que, por cierto, está bajo un tratamiento de pastillas recomendado por su psiquiatra, el doctor Hilarius. El viaje hilarante de Edipa no ha hecho más que comenzar, y en él se encontrará con todo tipo de historias, donde la casualidad no existe, porque éstas parecen venir a su encuentro por sí solas. Por esto mismo, Edipa entrará en una suerte de estado paranoico, donde parece que todos quieren jugársela.

La inteligencia y erudición de Pynchon es obvia. Es capaz de crear una película de aventuras y submarinos, una obra de teatro jacobita, un máquina capaz de modificar la física termodinámica jugando con la entropía, una conspiración secreta contra el correo convencional, etcétera, etcétera, y todo ello en menos de doscientas páginas. Algunas escenas son un delirio absoluto, pero hay que tener en cuenta que la novela se escribió en los años 60, cuando la psicodelia estaba de moda. No quiero pensar lo que es capaz (lo que ya ha hecho) en más de mil páginas.

'La subasta del lote 49' es mi primer acercamiento al mundo de Thomas Pynchon, y he quedado fascinado.

A couple of weeks ago, I happened to be searching my shelves for a particular book when I came on this one, squashed between two other books on a high shelf so that its slim spine was scarcely visible. And even though I have a lot of other books to read, I got a surge of pleasure out of finding one I'd completely forgotten about. I bought 'Lot 49' soon after joining Goodreads because everyone seemed to be talking about Thomas Pynchon at that time though I hadn't heard of him before. But the burst of Pynchon enthusiasm I experienced must have been short lived because the book never got opened and moved from one lot of unread books to another over the following ten years until somehow it ended up lost on that high shelf. When I found it again, I decided it was a sign: it was time for 'The Reading of Lot 49'.

Well, reader, I started it that very day and was intrigued enough to read several chapters—though it was all quite mysterious and I was a little confused as to what was going on. Then we had some visitors, and one of them had gone to the trouble of finding a book for me he was certain I wouldn't have read. He was so interested in getting my reaction to the new genre he was introducing me to that I set 'Lot 49' aside and began reading Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle instead. A couple of chapters in, I was finding it mysteriously confusing. And I had a déjà vu lu moment. Hadn't I been reading something quite like this very recently? Still, I was intrigued enough to continue reading but the more of it I read the more confused I became until I picked up 'Lot 49' again, when it all became clear. Or rather the two books remained confusing but I had a revelation about the déja lu feeling: both books are set in the 1960s with much of the action happening in California. Both reference WWII a lot, especially the Germans. Both present a kind of alternative history. Both feature fake memorabilia. And both have a befuddled woman character, prone to believing in signs, who is intrigued and confused by a mysterious book.
I really identified with those two women characters!

I really enjoyed both Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon, but this effort felt flat to me, all joke and no seriousness of purpose. Whereas both GR and MD had their share of satire and often strained attempts at humor, they also had a deadly serious side, a sense that they were "about something" larger, that I confess I couldn't glean from this slimmer work. Really, there are only so many puns and crazy character names and odd paranoid acronyms I can take. I'm sure much of the fault lies with me, for not seeing beyond all this, and maybe someday I'll revisit the novel and slap myself on the head as I realize all I'd missed. Then I'll come back and amend this review and point out how silly I feel to have ever written it! Until then, the silliness rules. Or doesn't. Or something. I don't know.

so imagine you're browsing through a bookstore on a lazy saturday afternoon.

you stop in the pynchon section, and there, out of the corner of your eye, you see this *guy* and he's checking you out. you think, wow! this is one for the movies! does this actually happen? (this is a sexually oriented biased review, sorry)

you proceed to chat, laughing at the length of gravity's rainbow. and you go next door with your new books to grab a cup of coffee, which turns into dinner, whuch turns in to crepes at this great little shop, which turns into a long walk, which turns into a bottle of syrah in your living room over twelve hours later.

and you're so compelled. the conversation is amazing, he's SO dynamic, he tells good stories even though it has the tendency to be stream of consciousness, he's convoluted and mysterious and you never want this night to end. he makes random allusions that you always pretend to recognize but don't really understand. he draws random doodles on scraps of paper, napkins, bathroom walls, foreheads of strangers, anywhere he can get his point across. you can't get out of your mind how brilliant this guy must be and how lucky you are to have him, in all his overeducated and hypnotic glory, sitting on your couch.

and with all the wine in your head, the evening takes a turn for the intimate. it gets a much heavier that you would ever expect for a first encounter like this, especially because you just met this guy (scandalous!!!) but you feel so wrapped up in his world that you just go along with it and enjoy. and trust me, you do enjoy it. and right as your about to come to the full, uh, realization of your enjoyment, he says, "oh god!" and stops and looks at you awkwardly. and you recognize at that moment that the enjoyment is um, bust, and you will never have that full realization.

that's what reading this book is like. but trust me, the encounter is well worth it.

Ecco un libro in cui il massimo divertimento mi è stato possibile con la minima pretesa di capire qualcosa. La protagonista (Oedipa) segue le tracce disseminate per la California di un misterioso secolare complotto (il Trystero), domandandosi a volte se per caso non si stia immaginando tutto.

Purtroppo ho letto prima la prefazione (di Guido Almansi) con sovrabbondanza di sovrainterpretazioni di cui secondo me Pynchon riderebbe di gusto. E comunque tra tutti gli spiegoni non chiarisce il significato dell'evidente assonanza Trystero/Pippero, che sicuramente non è casuale e pregna di significati.

Detto questo sento il bisogno di una trama lineare e personaggi sobri ed equilibrati, mi guardo Il Grande Lebowsky.

Ιδιαίτερο.
Για Ιδιαίτερους.

Meta or not meta, me not getta.
Seriously.
I've read this book about 10 years ago, when I was at the phase of finishing my books no matter what, but the enraging feeling of my holiday time being wasted and the author taking a piss is still very fresh.

Πολύ ενδιαφέρον βιβλίο... ο άνθρωπος πατάει ��λλού, πραγματικά!
Αξίζει οπωσδήποτε για τον καθένα να μπει λίγο στην τρελή/λογική αυτού του συγγραφέα.

Αναγνωστικά είναι ''γονάτισμα'', εγώ πήγαινα σαν χελώνα όσο το διάβαζα. Αλλά είναι εμπειρία που δεν τη μετάνιωσα... Το τριάρι είναι περισσότερο εκδίκηση, αφού, αντί να διαβάσω 3 βιβλία διάβασα ένα!