Very challenging read

useful, but not so much as for example PynchonWiki and Wiki for "The Crying of Lot 49" itself.
The book is just companion to interpretations of "The Lot". And in these places where J. Kerry Grant makes its own statements he sounds very... hm... frivolous.
As it goes for instance in P.50 about Irish folklore and milk: "I have been unable to find any specific reference to the leaving of milk for that purpose". It sounds like - sorry I'm a litlle ignorant in this episode.
Or about Nicholas II instead of Alexander II (P. 60): "An uncharacteristic lapse on Pynchon's part". So what? Maybe it's not a mistake and just the part of the plan:)
Waiting for the Third edition :)

It's no Weisburger.

As I wrote in my brief review of the novel itself (The Crying of Lot 49), it's a difficult read with more allusions and metaphors jammed into its pages than one normally expects. Hence my reading of this companion work, written by a Lit professor who has been teaching Pynchon to undergraduates for at least twenty years.

But because Pynchon is so cryptic about the intent and meaning of his writing, the author of this critical work admits up front in the preface that some of his annotations are - at best - a guess of what the novel intended. And that's probably the way Pynchon likes it.