¡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.

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!

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.

Pynchon je lud! Tko god bio, lud je do genijalnosti.
Vrlo teška knjiga za čitanje - pogotovo ako ju čitate prije spavanja. Oni koji žele bezbrižnu literarnu avanturu, neka ne uzimaju Pynchona u ruke. Taj momak nije za zajebanciju i misli vrlo ozbiljno. Jedan sam od onih romantika koji za književnost misle da je umjetnost i da dobar tekst nije "dobar materijal" ili "semantička preciznost", po meni dobar pisac mora uvijati, izvijati i emociju i rečenicu i cijeli roman mora imati putanju te iste emocije i poruke. Ovo je umjetnost u pravom smislu te riječi i dobar roman za sve one koji pisanje gledaju kroz prizmu dva trokuta, ravnala i šublera i nekih okvira iz kojih se "ne smije iskakati".
Vidi se da je Thomas nabrijan na SF, ako ne na SF onda na fantastiku sigurno jer atmosfera se mijenja kroz roman, od najnormalnije pristojne čovječne atmosfere, svojstvene za neki krimić, do mistične, mučne, tajanstvene atmosfere jeze koja prožima zadnji dio romana.
Možda me pogodilo i to što sam godinama djeci puno tumačio o Maxwellovom demonu i objašnjavao prekrasne principe "kršenja fizikalnih zakona" i drugog zakona termodinamike; pa je baš u ovoj knjizi glavna junakinja prikazana kao "demon" koji svjesno razbacuje molekule unutar sustava i "grije toplije tijelo na račun hladnijeg". Što nas dovodi do entropije kao temeljne ideje ovog romana; ali nije spomenuta niti jednom ali je majstorski opisana. Pa kako entropija informacija zaista izgleda možete vidjeti u samom tekstu jer kako odmičemo prema kraju informacije su sve teže i teže dostupne nama kao čitateljima i mozak gori u paklu neuronske buktinje.
Da ne kvarim čitanje...
Ideja „predmeta 49“ je kolosalna i zadire u najtajnije kutke magijskog realizma, ali i okultizma jer cijeli je roman duboko zamotan u religiju, ili barem kvazi-religijsko okruženje, tajna društva , a sve je pobuđeno i zvjerski napumpano LSD-om kao pokretačem svemira, gorivom za inspiraciju i utjelovljenje bitka. Edipa, glavna junakinja, napravljena je toliko površno da nam je bude zapravo žao, ali smisao njezine površnosti krije se u entropiji, jer kako roman odmiče, sam lik se pretvara u heroinu koja uopće ne zna što joj se sprema i, ono najvažnije, zašto joj se sprema.
Još jednom, oprez s ovom knjigom, peče mozak!

Sign me in for more Thomas Pynchon, please. This was my first reading of him, and I was honestly blown away. How is it possible that I haven't read him sooner? Well, it's never too late to discover a good writer. I'm actually happy that I dived into this novel blissful unaware of anything regrading the author, the time period it was written in or the novel itself. That made the reading all the more fun. The Crying of Lot 49 has proved to be such an exquisite literary surprise! If this novel is anything to go by, Thomas Pynchon has a really peculiar writing style. The narrative in this novel often felt chaotic, but I absolutely enjoyed its potent mix of wild humour, entertaining characters, delicious sarcasm, social commenting and alternative history! I didn't find it hard to follow at all. Maybe it was because of my mood at the time, but I found myself immersed in the novel.

But first things first. I read this book in the course of one day and night, under circumstances that were a bit strange. My personal state of being went well with the mood of this one. By the end of this novel, I was nearly hallucinating myself, not for the reasons the characters themselves but still it felt appropriate. Recently I have had an operation that went wrong and my recovering was slower that excepted. Yesterday I had 'the bride of Frankenstein' look down, my neck was terribly swollen and I was pale as death. I was able to get a wink of sleep, so I entertained myself with reading this novel and some other works. Around 3 am, my surgical wound has started to bleed. There I was drying to drain my wound, opting not to go to ER, applying the medical alcohol and figuring it is best to wait until the morning and try to catch a decent surgeon (which I did managed to do, I got my wound fully treated and am currently on antibiotics). Still, it was a pretty wild night, no sleep and blood everywhere.


Let's talk a bit more about the novel. The Crying of Lot 49 features a female protagonist, Oedipa Maas. Her name, filled with Freudian and other references, is as symbolic as everything she notices around herself. As Oedipa's story opens, she is a married housewife who, all of the sudden, becomes the executor of will of her ex (dirty rich) lover. Her husband Mucho, the disk jockey, is having an identity crisis of some sort. Mucho is beaten by years of selling cars, of seeing dirty vehicles of failed individuals and/or families being sold to other equally dysfunctional individuals and/or families. That 'incest car circle', as Mucho likes to call it, has driven him mad. It seems that his previous job as a car seller has mucho traumatized Mucho. He wakes in terror at night, and Oedipa struggles to comfort him.

“Yet at least he had believed in the cars, maybe to excess: how could he not, seeing people poorer than him come in, Negro, Mexican, cracker, a parade seven days a week, bring with them the most godawful of trade-ins: motorized, metal extensions of themselves, of their families and what their whole lives must be like, out there so naked for anybody, a stranger like himself, to look at, frame cockeyed, rusty underneath, fender repainted in a shade just off enough to depress the value, if not Mucho himself, inside smelling hopeless of children, of supermarket booze, or two, sometimes three generations of cigarette smokers, or only of dust--and when the cars were swept out you had to look at the actual residue of these lives, and there was no way of telling what things had been truly refused (when so little he supposed came by that out of fear most of it had to be taken and kept) and what had simply (perhaps tragically) been lost: clipped coupons promising savings of 5 or 10¢, trading stamps, pink flyers advertising specials at the market, 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 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 grey dressing of ash, condensed exhaust, dust, body wastes--it nauseated him to look, but he had to look.”



Anyhow, when Oedipa shows her husband the letter, he seems indifferent. Perhaps that is why Oedipa accepts the job. There is a catch naturally. Almost immediately, Oedipa realized that she is in over her head. She gets involves with the lawyer who is to help her execute the will. The lawyer, once a child movie star know as Baby Ivan, is working on a series where an ex lawyer turn a movie star is supposed to play him, but that 'pilot' will probably live in some drawer internally. Oedipa and lawyer get drunk watching some old film of his. Oedipa tries to get as much information of him as she can, and when they agree to play strip poker she excuses herself and puts as many of items of clothing as possible. When Oedipa sees herself in the mirror, she laughs so hard she knows down a hair spray and causes an explosion, which draws in the attention of a young band that will soon accompany them in their 'search'. The description of Oedipa's and Baby Ivan's 'hooking up' is comical, but still strangely erotic. Oddly enough, this is how I would describe much of the novel's prose. There is nothing juicy about it except its humour, in other words, there are no erotic descriptions but there is a fair share of erotic references & jokes.


The novel progresses rapidly from that point. Once Oedipa learns of a secret sign and copies it into her notebook, she becomes obsessed with it. What does this have to do with the will? It is uncertain. The will is full of mysteries but so it life. Maybe her ex is playing tricks on her? Oedipa sees a brilliantly morbid play dating back to Puritan times, and she is haunted by it. She storms into the wardrobe of the direct and the principal actor, who refuses her the original version of the play, but treats her to a strong mystical passage. Through this play, and some other occurrences, Oedipa find out about Renaissance postal system. It seems that a similar, underground postal system still exists in USA! As Oedipa becomes increasingly obsessed with it, learning about various underground groups, the term Triestero keeps to haunt her. At times it seems that Oedipa sets to explore, not just her soul, or the USA social mysteries, but the human condition itself.


“In Mexico City they somehow wandered into an exhibition of paintings by the beautiful Spanish exile Remedios Varo: in the central painting of a triptych, titled “Bordando el Manto Terrestre,” were a number of frail girls with heart-shaped faces, huge eyes, spun-gold hair, prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void: for all the other buildings and creatures, all the waves, ships and forests of the earth were contained in the tapestry, and the tapestry was the world. Oedipa, perverse, had stood in front of the painting and cried. No one had noticed; she wore dark green bubble shades. For a moment she’d wondered if the seal around her sockets were tight enough to allow the tears simply to go on and fill up the entire lens space and never dry. She could carry the sadness of the moment with her that way forever, see the world refracted through those tears, those specific tears, as if indices as yet unfound varied in important ways from cry to cry. She had looked down at her feet and known, then, because of a painting, that what she stood on had only been woven together a couple thousand miles away in her own tower, was only by accident known as Mexico, and so Pierce had take her away from nothing, there’d been no escape. What did she so desire escape from? 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?”

As Oedipa encounters marginal groups that use the alternative postal service, things move from strange to stranger. There are engineers that believe in demons, AA society that is about stopping people from falling in love or forming meaningful relationships and all sorts of groups unknown to a common men. Oedipa goes to meet a man who will believes in a demon. When she arrives at his home, he is watching some kind of dance, saying there is something about girls that age. Oedipa says she understand, because her husband, shares a passion for underage girl. The novel is full of disturbing sentences like that, sentences that are just thrown at the reader. Deeply ironic, this novel is soaked with social satire. The characters are not free from paradox. Sometimes they seem to act as symbols, but despite all of the insanity or perhaps because of it, they seem human enough. Not long into novel, some readers might feel like the are almost hallucinating. Everything seems to be happening so fast- most of the time. There is a lot of information thrown around. Alternative history plays a big part of this novel. For some people, it might be hard to follow, but for me it was an absolute delight.

The Crying of Lot 49: This 60s post-modernist novel doesn't feel relevant today

I’ve always wanted to try Thomas Pynchon’s work. Back in high school I heard that his novel Gravity’s Rainbow (1973) is either one of the greatest American novels ever written, or a completely unreadable and pretentious mess. It won the National Book Award in 1974, and was surprisingly nominated for the Nebula Award in 1973. I have a paperback copy (all gold cover, looks very nice) but it’s a door-stopper, and I suspect like most readers, it’s a book I aspire to read someday but will never get to, like James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) and Finnegan’s Wake (1939), David Foster Wallace’s The Infinite Jest (1966), and Roberto Bolano's 2666 (2008).

I am first and foremost a fan of science fiction and fantasy, and not particularly keen on what is generally categorized as ‘literature’ or ‘modernist fiction’. I don’t disparage those books, I just generally derive no pleasure from reading them.
So it is only from a sense of duty that I decided to try The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), since it is very short and was chosen by David Pringle among his Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels.

It is the story of Oedipa Mass, a woman who is tasked with handling the massive and complex estate of her deceased ex-boyfriend Pierce Inverarity. She encounters a bizzare conspiracy of a secret alternate mail service called The Trystero, that has been battling the real Thurn und Taxis mail service for centuries. She continually encounters signs of the Trystero, specifically its muted post horn symbol and hidden mailboxes labeled W.A.S.T.E ("We Await Silent Tristero's Empire"). There are a host of eccentric and weird characters, dozens of allusions to 1960s pop culture, and a bunch of conspiracy-type elements. The story is very “post-modernist” based on it’s knowing self-references, and could be read as a parody of the need to bury symbolism and meaning in stories which amount to very little but an elaborate game for literary critics and coffeehouse pundits to argue over.

In general I found the characters names quite amusing (Mucho Mass, Dr. Hilarius, Mike Fallopian, Genghis Cohen, Randolf Driblette), and the events of the story were sometimes entertaining, but the references are buried so deeply in the world of the 1960s that it felt completely irrelevant to today’s world (speaking for myself, of course). The entire ‘play within a play’, the Jacobean revenge “The Courier’s Tragedy”, felt like an overlong assignment from college, and overall the story just seemed fairly pointless unless you are literature major who takes pleasure from identifying the various literary and cultural references he sprinkles throughout the text. If this is what Pynchon is about, then I'm pretty comfortable not reading anything further, and sticking to what I can appreciate.

Zaista je bilo tesko citati ovu knjigu. Preporuciti je nekome bio bi mac sa dve ostrice ali kao i svaki put ja biram onu ostriju. Iz tog razloga ovu knjigu preporucujem svakome ko voli dela koja imaju slojeve ispod slojeva. Tema oko koje Pincon gradi ovo delo je totalno luda, nacin na koji je realizuje je jos ludji! Podseca malo na Hantera S. Tompsona, samo malo ali dovoljno da ga se setim. Pincon je neverovatno inteligentan i kompleksan pisac.

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.

“What did she so desire escape from? 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?”
Oedipa Maas was named an executor of the estate of Pierce Inverarity, her ex-lover. She travels to San Narciso, California, meets the other executor and Inverarity’s lawyer, Metzger, and they begin an affair. In the process of reviewing Inverarity’s assets, Oedipa uncovers an alternative mailing system, working tangentially to or in opposition to the official US postal network, known as Tristero. With each additional clue verifying the existence of Tristero, Oedipa’s paranoia grows and she begins to question the motives of the people around her and her own sanity. She starts to feel that there was not only misinformation concerning this other postal system but comes to understand the existence of a deceit at the core of American society. By the end of the novel Oedipa loses her husband, Wendell Maas, to LSD; her psychiatrist, Dr. Hillarius, to psychosis; her lover, Metzger, to a teenage girl; and the playwright who informed her of Tristero, Randy Driblette, to suicide. The novel ends with Oedipa attending an auction of Inverarity’s stamps, designated lot 49, hoping to discover the Tristero agent that was there to bid on them. She waits for the auction to begin, for the auctioneer to cry out the bids.

"’Look, you have to help me. Because I really think I am going out of my head.’
‘You have the wrong outfit, Arnold. Talk to your clergyman.’
‘I use the U. S. Mail because I was never taught any different,’ she pleaded. ‘But I'm not your enemy. I don't want to be.’”
The revelation Oedipa Maas has was not about the Tristero postal system but about the existence of a class of forgotten people that she met along the way. They were the poor and disabled, the unwanted and unloved or simply the outsiders. And she was able to feel affection and sympathy for their plight. This was the deceit at the core of the system. For at times of her greatest distress, one of these lost individuals intervened. They may not have always been helpful or courteous but they saw her and finally Oedipa Maas saw them back.
“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, unpublicized, private. Since they could not have withdrawn into a vacuum (could they?), there had to exist the separate, silent, unsuspected world.”

n  Mutedn – I am in an alien way,
n  Postn – reading this weird novel about a
n  Hornn – that despite many mouths, remains

n  Mutedn – across the
n  Postn – offices of circuitous US lands although the blare of this
n  Hornn – is audible to a secretive group that moves in

n  Mutedn – shadows and sews in its hem, high
n  Postn – bearers and zany professors who insist to
n  Hornn – out any intruders who, in public or

n  Mutedn – way, attempt to
n  Postn – any letters sent with this
n  Hornn – bearing stamp to any

n  Mutedn – or alive estate holder, even if
n  Postn – delivery, the estate holder might
n  Hornn – away in their favour but

n  Mutedn – and inquisitive, our heroine, Oedipa Maas,
n  Postn - receipt of the news of her ex-boyfriends’ death without any
n  Hornn – and trumpet, finds that a seemingly

n  Mutedn – journey of co-executor of his estate, shall
n  Postn – her in the midst of a raging war of
n  Hornn – ,one representing an established postal network and another, a

n  Mutedn – yet bizarrely active clandestine network that
n  Postn – marks its parcels with watermarks of
n  Hornn – with a bold acronym, W.A.S.T.E which may be

n  Mutedn – on an ordinary street but read its
n  Postn – and you know your deliveries are
n  Hornn – washed to conspirators in hiding whose

n  Mutedn – voice can be heard before, during and
n  Postn – a play and in the motel’s loo, the
n  Hornn – can be spotted with an eerie hue which isn’t lost in

n  Mutedn – acquaintances who slowly desert Oedipa
n  Postn – her unrestrained quest to reveal the
n  Hornn – secret which she finally witnesses as a

n  Mutedn – picture which appears to have been
n  Postn – scripted into lots of stamps that bear the
n  Hornn – and the auctioneer grins cries at Oedipa’s gut, torn.

I am not apologetic for churning out this insanely dust-worthy review, Mr. Pynchon. You go on blowing that muted post horn and throw at me concepts like entropy, teasing verses with Humbert Humbert, dandelion wine, Russian tanks, outdated cartoons and what was that: 'perhaps to arouse fractions of brain current your most gossamer microelectrode is yet too gross for funding.'(???) and expect me to be sane?! I mean just to tell a little story about a woman who goes to execute an estate and gets confused after stumbling onto a few secret letters flying through a postal network, you had to bring LSD drug into picture?? Heck, yes! Actually, this a story about this:

Quite fittingly, I'm sitting down to write this review after having just checked the mail. Nothing today but junk and bills. Save for my paltry royalty checks and the occasional bit of fan mail here and there (fans, you know who you are), that's about all I get most days, but this still doesn't stop me from checking the box two, three, or even four times until something shows up. On the odd day there's no mail before suppertime, I'm usually left somewhat disconcerted. What, no catalogs? No supermarket flyers? Not even anything for that chick who lived here three tenants ago? I start to worry that the postman fell ill, or had an accident somewhere along the way.

That's how reliable the mail is.

Sure, we've all had mail arrive late, if ever at all. Things get lost from time to time, but whatever our complaints against the various couriers, what we forget in those moments of frustration is that 99.99% of the mail addressed to us in our lifetime does eventually make its way into our hands, and usually right on time!

It's simply astounding. Sometimes I wonder whether UPS, FedEx, and the United States Postal Service have all colluded to pioneer some new teleportation technology, warping pallets of packages and correspondence from coast to coast, leisurely loading their bags and trucks for their local rounds while the rest of us dupes check their phony tracking numbers.

That's probably even further fetched than the conspiracy postulated by this book, but not by much. Either way, the mail remains quite astonishing nonetheless.

Think about it. If people couldn't send things by mail, they'd have to make every delivery in person. Only the very well connected could ever succeed in harnessing a vast network of others in such a grand endeavor, and I guess that explains why our national/international delivery systems can trace their roots back to the messengers employed by empires of old. Royal European delivery services eventually came to be rivaled by private outfits, subsequently squashed by postal reform in this country, only to return sub rosa in a campaign of guerilla mailings in 1966. Here in 2013, the government service is presently taking its turn on the ropes, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms.

This isn't a morality play between big business and big government couriers, people. This is the very heart and soul of communication -- ugly, futile, and absolutely necessary.