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A Companion to the Crying of Lot 49

j. kerry grant

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This new expanded and updated edition contains more than 500 notes keyed to the 2006 Harper Perennial Modern Classics, the 1986 Harper Perennial Library, and the 1967 Bantam editions. The majority of notes are interpretive, although some are designed to provide a historical context or to recover the meaning of a reference that, over time, has proved to be ephemeral. This new edition adds quotations and paraphrases drawn from criticism published since 1994. The result is more than seventy new entries in the list of works cited. More than fifty annotations have been added and approximately eighty annotations have been expanded.

176 pages, Paperback

First published November 1,1994

This edition

Format
176 pages, Paperback
Published
January 1, 1994 by Univ of Georgia Pr
ISBN
9780820316369
ASIN
0820316369
Language
English

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j. kerry grant

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Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 16 votes)
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eratous
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Pynchon frequently employs references from pop culture, science and history with which the general reader may not be familiar. In this book Grant supplies background on such things like Maxwell's Demon, Mikhail Bakunin, and Porky Pig cartoons. There is a particularly good detailed discussion on how the concept of entropy in both thermodynamics and communications theory functions with regard to the dominant themes in Pynchon's narrative.

Acquired 1997
Barnes and Noble, Rochester NY
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jayjavelyn
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Check out the Pynchon centered podcast I cohost, Mapping the Zone. We just finished Lot 49 and are moving on to Mason & Dixon next.

Found this book to mostly be pretty damn relevant when discussing Lot 49. Some of the entries weren’t amazing and I do wish there was more stuff defined, kinda like how the Pynchon wiki operates, but whatever. This definitely helped expand my reading of the novel.
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hendrickx
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Surely it's the Freudian interpretations that come closest to emulating the master's own parodies? Say, Couturier, quoted here: '...that Pierce, feeling himself diminished by Oedipa's inaccessibility, may have sought revenge "by burdening her with an ego-destructive task"'. Or Plater: '...the feminization of Oedipus [into 'Oedipa] is intended to "suggest the hermaphroditic unity of opposites..."'.
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VerballyStunted
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I feel everyone needs to know: this guide provides possible interpretations of the name "Mucho" Maas without once noting that "mucho más" means "much more" in Spanish. This is a gross oversight that really gets my goat, because I identified totally with Mucho on my first reading.

3 stars. It's fun to see someone else's obsessive thought process put down on paper. If you are looking for an extremely close read of Lot 49 to jumpstart discussion, this'll work.
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VicRattlehead
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Useful for tracking some of the allusions but Pynchonian in its collation of theorists each with their own bizarre takes and po-faced commitment to missing the forest for the bugs in the bark.
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josichigo
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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The best of the Pynchon Companions (next to the Gravity’s Rainbow one). Both are equally compelling reading for readers familiar with the novel already—explaining allusions, obscure jokes, and integrating snippets of critical readings that help a reader puzzle out the complexities and ambiguities (or often, relevant here, just appreciate and learn to live with them). I’ve taught this novel several times and read it countless, honestly—Lot 49 is my Desert Island read if I could only have one.
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