Amid the exhaust, sweat, glare and ill-humor of a summer evening on an American freeway, Oedipa Maas pondered her Trystero problem.

What the heck is Lot 49 and why should I feel like crying over it? Oedipa Maas, a young California housewife, is named executor in the will of a former boyfriend, an elusive billionaire named Pierce Inverarity. Her work takes her along unexpected paths where she meets many oddball characters acting increasingly suspicious. Many events appear related to the performance of a Jacobean revenge play by an amateur troupe, alluding to a secret organization named Trystero , also known under the acronym WASTE and using for self-identification the symbol of a muted post horn. Decorating each alienation, each species of withdrawal, as cufflink, decal, aimless doodling, there was somehow always the post horn.

Oedipa wondered whether, at the end of this (if it were supposed to end), she too might not be left with only compiled memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but never the central truth itself, which must somehow each time be too bright for her memory to hold; which must always blaze out, destroying its own message irreversibly, leaving an overexposed blank when the ordinary world came back.

Oedipa Maas is not the only one wondering what is the purpose of this whole circus.
Let me make it easier to potential new divers into the Pynchon literary universe: relax, let it happen and enjoy the ride! Making sense is not all it’s cracked to be. “The Crying of Lot 49” is an anti-novel, a post-modernist experimental piece of literature that aims to unsettle the readership expectations in order to make them more open to active participation in the project. Coming soon on the footsteps of Julio Cortazar in this year’s personal journey, I find it very easy to draw parallels between the two stories, especially in view of the way Pynchon ‘hopscotches’ from one wild scene to the next, from one metaphor to another, without the slightest regard for plot progression or character arcs. Yet, in both cases, a clear image, a sort of final message, can be deduced from the maze-like journey.

The act of metaphor then was a thrust at truth and a lie, depending where you were: inside, safe, or outside, lost. Oedipa did not know where she was.

Oedipa Maas starts the journey safe in her home, with a DJ husband and weekly visits to her psycho-therapist, dr. Hilarius. Each step she takes following the Inverarity legacy takes her further and further away from her comfort zone and into what Pynchon alternately refers to as: a salad of despair, a conspiracy theory extravaganza, the entropic death of communication, experimental-induced insanity (‘an experiment on effects of LSD-25, mescaline, psilocybin, and related drugs on a large sample of suburban housewives’), a whole underworld of suicides who failed, a clandestine Mexican outfit known as the Conjuration de los Insurgentes Anarquistas (the CIA), music made purely of Antarctic loneliness and fright ... an avalanche of metaphor that becomes increasingly clear is meant to represent the growing alienation of modern life.

... clipped coupons promising savings of 5c or 10c, trading stamps, pink fliers advertising specials at the markets, butts, tooth-shy combs, help-wanted ads, Yellow Pages torn from the phone book, rags of old underwear or dresses that already were period costumes, for wiping your own breath off the inside of a windshield with so you could see whatever it was, a movie, a woman or a car you coveted, a cop who might pull you over just for drill, all the bits and pieces coated uniformly, like a salad of despair, in a gray dressing of ash, condensed exhaust, dust, body wastes ...

With a panoply of wild characters such as Peter Pinguid, Mike Fallopian, Mucho Maas, dr. Hilarius, Randy Driblette, Thomas Wharfinger, Genghis Cohen, Inigo Barfstable, John Nefastis, Jesus Arrabal, Emory Bortz, Winthrop Tremayne, Diocletian Blobb and many others, Oedipa’s journey is often funny/ ridiculous, prompting speculation that Pynchon is actually sabotaging his own post-modernist credentials. His own commentary on the novel points more towards a searching for a personal voice in this debut novel, of experimentation with style and content. It is in my view a sort of ‘Sturm und Drang’ campaign to make a splash and get noticed, and it succeeds in a rather spectacular way.

In one of the latrines was an advertisement by ACDC, standing for Alameda County Death Cult, along with a box number and a post horn. Once a month they were to choose some victim from among the innocent, the virtuous, the socially integrated and well-adjusted, using him sexually, then sacrificing him.

The leitmotif of insider/outsider positioning becomes more evident with each iteration of the post horn symbol, with each revelation about yet another secret organization, functioning in parallel with official post service or government services. Insiders are the people who accept things as they are and don’t bother with existentialist anguish. Outsiders are those failed suicides who use the WASTE system to communicate or those who join clubs like ACDC or IA.

“The pin I’m wearing means I’m a member of the IA. That’s Innamorati Anonymous. An innamorato is somebody in love. That’s the worst addiction of all.”

Oedipa starts on the inside, but she is increasingly worried about her identity and about her future in this world of rampant secrets and wild acronym societies.

They are stripping away from me, she said subvocally – feeling like a fluttering curtain in a very high window, moving up to then out over the abyss – they are stripping away, one by one, my men.

For all his apparent disdain for classic forms of the novel, Pynchon hides all his clues, all his keys to locked rooms, in plain view and delivers them with a poetic flair that can take your breath away when you least expect it.

“I came hoping you could talk me out of a fantasy.”
“Cherish it!” cried Hilarius, fiercely. “What else do you have? Hold it tightly by its little tentacle, don’t let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.”

So maybe Trystero and all that jazz is just a fantasy, a by-product of drug experimentation and frustration with a boring life, but I would rather be outside in the cold with the crazies and the suicidal poets than inside with the bingo-night or TV dinner crowd. Which takes us back to the question of the significance of Lot 49  a batch of counterfeit stamps left by Inverarity, to be sold at auction or ‘cried’ by the end of the novel . The answer is one of those clues hidden in plain sight, taken from another conversation between Oedipa and her fading away men : a real alternative to the exitlessness, to the absence of surprise in life, that harrows the head of everybody American you know, and you too, sweetie. , the answer is in one of those haunting images of walkers along the roads at night, zooming in and out of your headlights without looking up, too far away from any town to have a real destination.

I don’t consider these final revelations spoilers since they make following the journey of Oedipa Maas easier on an eventual re-read. They are also explaining why I kept humming a Simon & Garfunkel tune as I turned the final pages (the one with the line "I'm empty and aching and I don't know why") :

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

Highly recommended!

>>><<<>>><<<

I’ve left out a striking episode in a strip mall, where Oedipa confronts Winthrop Tremayne, an opportunist who sells ‘government surplus swastikas’ . The episode might sound at first glance like a funny throwaway scene, but as I am writing my review on Election Day 2020, the reference seems ominously predictive of current affairs. Yikes!

Imagine taking lots of LSD and waking up in an episode of the Monkees. Then imagine how banal this is. 

A woman named Oedipa (everyone has a wacky name) is informed that she is the executor of the estate of a past lover (Pierce Invararity... see, wacky) and so she travels to L.A and meets a lawyer called Metzger (a former child star) and they watch a movie that happens to be on TV which starred the young Metzger. Then they have sex. I don't know why. She's married but hey, it's the sixties. Oh, and there's a band called The Paranoids who constantly turn up (hey, hey, we're the Paranoids, and people say we Paranoid around). Have I mentioned that it's the sixties? You'd never guess from reading this book that it's the sixties. Wanna smoke some dope and take some LSD and watch a documentary about Timothy Leary?

Sadly, after a while, I completely lost interest in all of this cartoonish nonsense. I was suddenly reminded of A Confederacy of Dunces and had that awful feeling that I was supposed to find this book immensely funny (certainly funnier than it actually is). To be fair, I enjoyed the first two chapters and thought the writing was inventive and fluid. But the story is just so dull and gradually becomes more (deliberately) obscure and incoherent. We start to delve into secret societies and perpetual motion devices and insane, screeching therapists. None of this was entertaining to me. It was just zany, psychedelic paranoia... of a very 1960s brand. You'd be better off just listening to Lucy in the sky with Diamonds. Or sniffing glue and staring at a picture of Mickey Dolenz.

All the way through, you get the impression that Pynchon himself is deliriously paranoid and drowning in the (heavily dated, my groovy cat) conspiracy theories of the day. Some of this is interesting, the investigation of whether your life is in you hands or influenced, even controlled, by outside forces, this particular anxiety ridden notion very much present in the idea of the secret mail service that works in opposition to the actual mail service. But honestly, no philosophical debate can be adequately explored in such a disposable form of art. Not for me, anyway. And the biggest issue I had, as always, is that it just isn't very fun to read (the story more so than the prose). There's something interesting at the heart of the piece but it feels exaggerated, malformed, and extremely dated. I can imagine hippies and counter culture liberals loving this (oh God, is that why Pynchon is such a hipster's wet dream?). But I found most of it overwrought and contrived, almost like an inadvertent parody of postmodern literature. It's just not that good, kids. I don't care how groovy this cat is. It's well-written gibberish, like that acid infused episode of the Monkees. Reading this has convinced me to put Gravity's Rainbow on the back burner indefinitely. I don't care how groovy you dig on this guy, I ain't no square and this just ain't outta sight

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.

Διαβάζοντας και την τελευταία λέξη της Συλλογής των 49 στο Σφυρί, άφησα το βιβλίο πάνω στο τραπέζι κι έμεινα να το κοιτάζω κάπως αμήχανη για κανένα 10λεπτο. Σε αυτά τα 10 λεπτά, άρχισα έναν φανταστικό διάλογο με τον εαυτό μου (ας μου συγχωρεθεί αυτή η ελαφριά παράνοια) για το αν θα έπρεπε να το ξαναδιαβάσω ή όχι. Καλύτερα όμως να βάλουμε μία άνω τελεία ξεκινώντας, όπως πρέπει, με την υπόθεση του βιβλίου. Και κάπου εδώ σχεδόν ακούω το ειρωνικό γελάκι του Pynchon-καλή του ώρα όπου κι αν βρίσκεται- να μου λέει: Για να σε δω κοπελιά τι έχεις να πεις.
Η Συλλογή των 49 στο σφυρί ξεκινάει με μία διαθήκη που φτάνει στην Οιδίπα, μία τυπική νοικοκυρά της Αμερικής, βάσει της οποίας ο αποθανών πρώην σύντροφός της την καθιστά εκτελεστή της περιουσίας του. Το ταξίδι της κάπου στο Λος Άντζελες, προκειμένου να τακτοποιήσει όλες τις λεπτομέρειες γύρω από την διαθήκη, αποτελεί την αρχή της πιο αλλόκοτης περιπέτειας που έχω διαβάσει ποτέ στην ζωή μου. Η Οιδίπα αρχίζει σταδιακά να βυθίζεται σε έναν κόσμο γεμάτο συμβολισμούς και παράξενες συμπτώσεις από αυτές που σε κάνουν να αναρωτιέσαι αν πραγματικά βρίσκεσαι κοντά σε μία σπουδαία ανακάλυψη ή αν απλά τρελαίνεσαι. Ακόμα και το όνομά της άλλωστε είναι ένα σύμβολο: « Όπως ο Οιδίπους μπροστά στην Σφίγγα, έτσι και η Οιδίπα μπροστά τον κόσμο του αμερικάνικου ονείρου έχει να απαντήσει σε μία σειρά από αινίγματα και γρίφους, προκαλώντας την μοίρα της.»
Δεν θα είχε κανένα απολύτως νόημα να σας αναφέρω περισσότερα πράγματα για την εξέλιξη του έργου αφενός γιατί θα σας μπερδέψω χειρότερα και αφ’ εταίρου γιατί, ας είμαστε ειλικρινείς, δεν τα κατάλαβα όλα απόλυτα. Αυτός άλλωστε είναι κι ένας από τους λόγους που με έκαναν να αναρωτηθώ εάν θα έπρεπε να το ξαναπιάσω από την αρχή. Και θα σας εξηγήσω γιατί αποφάσισα να μην το κάνω.
Ο Pynchon είναι αδιαμφισβήτητα από τους πιο έξυπνους συγγραφείς που έχω συναντήσει με απίστευτη ικανότητα να πλάθει ιστορίες και χαρακτήρες. Ένας τόσο έξυπνος άνθρωπος λοιπόν υπάρχει περίπτωση να μην έχει σκεφτεί πόσο εξωφρενικά μπερδεμένο είναι το βιβλίο του; Να μην του έχει περάσει δηλαδή από το μυαλό πως, όταν σε μία αφήγηση μπλέκεις, αριστοτεχνικά φυσικά, την ιστορία, την φυσική, την θρησκεία, το μεταφυσικό και όλα αυτά μέσα από μία άκρως σημειολογική γραφή, ο μέσος αναγνώστης θα χάσει την μπάλα και τα μυαλά του μαζί;
Προσωπικά πιστεύω ότι είχε απόλυτη συναίσθηση του λαβύρινθου που σχεδίασε και στόχος του δεν ήταν να βγούμε από αυτόν κατανοώντας στο έπακρον όλα όσα συνέβησαν στην διαδρομή , αλλά απλά να χαλαρώσουμε και να απολαύσουμε το «χάσιμο» κάτι που μοιραία κάνουν και οι ήρωες του . Η σκέψη αυτή, δυστυχώς, μου πέρασε κάπως αργά από το μυαλό, ήμουν ήδη μετά την μέση του βιβλίου, αλλά μόλις την υιοθέτησα απόλαυσα πολύ περισσότερο την ανάγνωση και το Πιντσονικό σύμπαν. Το ίδιο το μυθιστόρημα άλλωστε δεν κλείνει με κάποιο συγκεκριμένο συμπέρασμα ή σαφή απάντηση γιατί πολύ απλά δεν είναι αυτός ο στόχος.
«Γιατί ήταν τότε σαν να περπατούσε στην μήτρα ενός μεγάλου κομπιούτερ, τα μηδέν και τα ένα ζευγαρωμένα στο πάνω μέρος, κρεμασμένα σαν ισορροπούντα κινητά τεμάχια δεξιά κι αριστερά, μπροστά, πυκνά, ίσως χωρίς τέλος. Πίσω από τις ιερογλυφικές οδούς υπάρχει ή ένα υπερβατικό νόημα ή μόνον γη…Το ένα και το μηδέν. Έτσι ήταν διευθετημένα τα ζεύγη.»
Ολοκληρώνοντας την ανάγνωση είχα την αίσθηση ότι μόλις έκανα έναν τρελό γύρο με τρενάκι στο μυαλό του συγγραφέα, από το οποίο δεν βγήκα αλώβητη, όπως άλλωστε μας προειδοποιεί και το εισαγωγικό σημείωμα, αλλά βγήκα σίγουρα καλύτερη. Γιατί όσο και να με μπέρδεψε/ παίδεψε, αυτό που κατάλαβα, ως ένα σημείο σχεδόν ενστικτωδώς, είναι ότι πρόκειται για ένα κυριολεκτικά μοναδικό βιβλίο.

The start was really promising. Although the rest wasn’t bad I felt like the beginning was the best part. Or maybe I got tired of the quirkiness?

Maybe 3.5 stars

It was weird! It was unique!

Hey, Thomas Pynchon - could you write us a book where a woman goes to oversee the estate of a real estate mogul and along the way deals with her DJ husband on LSD, an adulterous pedophilic lover, a Nazi psychiatrist on a shooting spree - all in search of information about a secret society who's only anti-government movement is to run their own postal system (which she becomes intrigued about because of a play she sees with one word that seems out of place).

Thomas Pynchon: Sure - no problem! As long as I can make it jump haphazardly to a different part of the story every few paragraphs and leave everyone hanging in the end . . .

I read this wonderful book (a very slim little book), over the weekend and because of it I am sure to add Thomas Pynchon to the ranks of my favorite stylists and storytellers - and look forward to adding his books to the station of my "read" shelf. For some reason when I sat down to write this review, the words of Rilke (of all people!) echoed in my head: "I live my life in ever widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not ever complete the last one, but I give myself to it." In The Crying of Lot 49, that too is the experience of Oedipa Maas: that she is an infinitesimally small cog in the scheme of things, that she is alone and unimportant and abandoned in her own ever-expanding world and consciousness, but in the end she gives herself over to that growing and accepted expansion, whether it is truth or not. And isn't that the sort of self-sacrifice and apotheosis we all submit ourselves to as readers? What strikes me after reading this short novel is how well it serves as a metaphor for reading, or learning in an overall way - and much learning is to be had in the deceptively few (150) pages of this novel/la.

Perhaps a trademark of Pynchon is the obvious and visible wires of fiction: the absurd names, the ridiculous situations. The Crying of Lot 49 is both clearly a work of fiction, and also as clearly something else: an amusing miscellany. Philately, physics, the history of the postal service, the clandestine subcultures of the west, LSD therapy, etc. are all touched upon in the mere 150 pages of this book. Upon every little hint at something historical, something which seemed to be as possibly fact as fiction, the reader is sent almost automatically to some resource (thank god for the Internet) to discover its veracity or verisimilitude. And isn't this the same mania which acts upon Oedipa Maas? For every tiny clue she is compelled to discover a thousand more hints, a million more mysteries which all seem spiraling haphazardly around her: and how has she never known them? How have I never heard of Maxwell's demon? (it is a real theory in thermodynamics! It even has a thorough wiki page! and dates back to 1872!) How have I never even heard of Thurn and Taxis? I've studied European history, I was even at one time very interested in the validity of publicly-owned and operated mail systems! (nerd that I am!) And Oedipa experiences the same shock at her own gaps of knowledge, her ignorance at something which she feels she could never have missed. Whenever we open a book of any genre we open a mystery which is yet to be solved: we are sure to learn something new, even if (or especially if) we are re-reading. In Pynchon that is a bit more obvious, learning facts of history, theories of physics or mathematics, is a much more tangible kind of learning: those are things we can share and teach, but they are not all we can learn. When reading literature we are examining a conspiracy from both the top-down and from the bottom-up. What we learn is not merely the edges and corners which hold the labyrinth in place, but also the motivations and drives which move the mice along the paths which lead to their destruction or deliverance. A wedge of cheese does not move them all, no two mice navigate the same route. And in these details which we are scarcely likely to integrate in our dinner conversation we learn something much more important to our lives than Maxwell's demon or LSD therapy or the mating habits of childstars turned attorneys: we learn what it is to be human. Oedipa learns more about herself along the way than she does about the historical postal empires of the West. She discovers her own insecurities and dependencies, what makes her unhappy and what is truly important to her, she discovers what she does not know and what she may never know, she embraces uncertainty. At the close of the novel, she is no longer the simple woman returning home from the plastic superficiality of a Tupperware party, she is a gladiator girding herself as a martyr for what is perhaps only a fiction, a cruel joke from an abandoned and dead ex-lover.

i read this because of the song San Narciso by Faded Paper Figures and wow. i have never been this disappointed

i took notes for the bae while reading and i’m too lazy to write a review so i’ll just post those. some of them are in german - tough luck. also some of them are irrelevant to the plot because it’s complaints about a political tv show that was on while i was listening to this at the gym but i will keep those in cause once again - tough luck


• very sexually charged - not in a good way

• rape??? it’s 7am???

• also isn’t that dude a lawyer?? when will he do lawyer things??? is raping your client a lawyer thing???

• it’s been an hour and i can’t get over the child acting scene

• incest theatre play. once again i’m asking when he will start doing lawyer things

• war kurz abgelenkt von einem zdf beitrag zur vier tage woche und boom surprise orgie (im buch nicht im zdf…imagine)

• der typ im zdf von der fdp meint bei der vier tage woche debatte dass leute sollen selbst entscheiden wie viel sie arbeiten, teilzeit zum beispiel, which is not the same?????

• she’s married!!! i keep forgetting

• he’s (idk random dude) watching children dancing and is like “i like watching young stuff, there’s something about chicks that age” ?????

• same dude likes having sex while watching news about china (but vietnam is also fine)

• is every wife in this cheating on their husband

• “despair came over her as it will when noone around you has any sexual relevance to you”

• natürlich ist der psychotherapeut nazi und hat in einem kz gearbeitet “if i had been aa real nazi i would have chosen jung but i chose freud” the fuck does that mean

• “i had a date last night with an 8 year old and she’s a swinger just like me”

• ach die sind alle auf lsd! das erklärts

رواية مجنونة وغامضة لكاتب مختلف وأكثر غموضاً
الترجمة الأولى إلى العربية لتوماس بينشون والقراءة الأولى له والتي تستفز القارئ ليقرأ له مجدداً
لا بد من شكر دار التنوير والمترجم المتميز إيهاب عبدالحميد على تقديم الجديد الأدبي للقراء العرب

The description of this book is: "The highly original satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy, meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not-inconsiderable amount of self-knowledge." A better description would be: "The highly incomprehensible satire about Oedipa Maas, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy the reader will never have a chance of understanding, meets some extremely dull characters whose behavior makes no sense, and supposedly attains a not-inconsiderable amount of self-knowledge, though the reader will never be able to know what this self-knowledge is, because the reader won't understand why she ever behaves the way she does."

Imagine a book in which you can't understand what the hell any of the characters are thinking. You don't know who the characters are, they are rarely developed (or, if so, the developments are so sudden that it's almost nonsensical), you don't know why they are going to the places they're going to, you don't know why this character is fucking that character--none of it makes any sense. The narrator never tells you anything that'll give you an idea of why he's telling his story the way he is. Further imagine that, adding to the confusion, there are no line breaks between completely different scenes; so suddenly they'll be in a completely different time and place and unless you're paying the closest of attention, you won't notice it. It's filled with unfunny, uncreative puns, the "plot" (if there is one) makes little sense--rarely is it clear if the scene you're reading has any significance. Usually, the significance is symbolic at best. Characters are introduced, then dropped, and you'll never know why their behavior was so nonsensical. It's like reading a book in which every character is on drugs.

After trying to read Virginia Woolf's awful "Mrs. Dalloway" (for the same class), I never thought I'd be more confused by a book. This book proved me wrong. If you're a fan of that, you may enjoy this. Myself, I find modernism unbearable.

I'll admit that there are some mildly funny parts, and I'm sure that a fan of this book will simply tell me that I'm "not getting it," or that I'm not reading carefully enough. That may be true, but I shouldn't have to reread every fucking page of this book five or six times to understand what the fuck is going on or why any characters are behaving the way they do. If I could just understand the characters, it would make all the difference. But none of the characters in this book make any freaking sense!

I couldn't believe it when I read, in another review, that this is one of Pynchon's more "approachable" books.

Maybe I'll edit/update this when I'm done reading the book, if my views change. I doubt they will.

Update: I finished re-reading this, about a week ago. I wanted to let my thoughts percolate before committing to an opinion here. My verdict: Nope, still didn't like it much, but I didn't hate it so much this time. I took it slowly, going back to re-read passages to make sure I had the characters straight. There are a LOT of characters, all with weird names that seem to have significance, but don't. Ha ha. Fun.

Okay, fine, Pynchon fans. I'll give you that it's an interesting plot - the idea of a secret, underground mail service, with its symbol hidden in plain sight for those in "the know". Oedipa Maas, our heroine, while executing the will of an old boyfriend, stumbles onto this underground postal service, but can't quite believe in its existence. She goes in search of the truth, and learns that nothing is for sure. She is cut loose from all her old ties, free from the mental tower of self-imprisonment and disconnect she had been in at the beginning of the book.

I liked the portrayal of southern California in the 60's, and all the little sub-cultures. I liked the creative mish-mash of history and crazy theories and wordplay, up to a point. I didn't like the oddly structured sentences and the obfuscatory word choices. See, you probably didn't like that I used the word obfuscatory. Or maybe you're contrary, and you did. If so, this is the book for you.

I can see this as being a book that grows on you with re-readings. Once you know the characters, and know where the story is going, it's possible that you can appreciate the vignettes, the wordplay, the arcane mysteries of Tristero. I'm not quite there yet.

***
Okay, everyone. Hold onto your hats! I'm voluntarily re-reading this frustrating morass of a book. I'm 38 pages in, and so far it seems more penetrable than the first time. I'm crossing my fingers...

Old review from my previous reading: I read this my senior year of college, and it was so beyond me I could not forgive it. There were so many obscure references crammed into this book, it reminded me of a fruit cake, dense and filled with unpleasant bits that you weren't sure what they were. Maybe if I'd read it for class, with an English professor helping decrypt it for me? But I just felt like an idiot, and totally lost. Weird names, murky motivations, and who the hell knows what was going on?
However, my college roommate loved it, and recommended it to me. He is my dear friend, and we are both big readers, and librarians, but oh boy, our book tastes do not overlap very much!
Maybe I read it too soon, but I can't say I'm all that excited about trying it again.

Where do you start with a novel like this. There are so many trails and plays with words and their meaning that it is dizzying. There is a central character called Oedipa who becomes co-executor of an ex flames estate and inadvertantly steps into what may or may not be a global conspiracy stretching back through the ages.
Lots of interesting characters turn up and may (or may not) be part of the conspiracy. Oedipa's therapist turns out to be an ex-Nazi who worked in Buchenwald and there is an ongoing Beatles theme in the form of an American group who sing with English accents called the Paranoids. I am not sure if Pynchon knew that that the Beatles called themselves Los Para Noias. There is a nod to Nabakov and contained within the novel is a fictional Jacobean revenge play. There is also a lot about the postal system and stamps. As I am a reformed (I may even say ex) philatelist, all this was interesting and I recognised some of the symbols as watermarks I have known! (Sad, I know).
There are lots of other themes; entropy to name but one; and the conspiracy races away in a pleasing and slightly sinister manner. I enjoy a good conspiracy theory (having been slightly embroiled in a couple in the 80s (a whole other story)).
On the whole it was pleasingly entertaining; if it has an equivalent for children it would keep them quiet in the back of the car for hours.What exactly Pynchon meant by it all I am not entirley sure; possibly like some of its protagonists, a little too much LSD amy have been taken!