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Concept
The Crying of Lot 49
Summary
The Crying of Lot 49 is a 1966 novella by the American author Thomas Pynchon. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, the plot follows Oedipa Maas, a young Californian woman who begins to embrace a conspiracy theory as she possibly unearths a centuries-old feud between two mail distribution companies. One of these companies, Thurn and Taxis, actually existed, operating from 1806 to 1867, and was the first private firm to distribute postal mail. Like most of Pynchon's writing, The Crying of Lot 49 is often described as postmodernist literature. Time included the novel in its "TIME 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005".
In the mid-1960s, Oedipa Maas lives a fairly comfortable life in the (fictional) northern Californian village of Kinneret, despite her lackluster marriage with Mucho Maas, a rudderless radio jockey and ephebophile and her sessions with Dr. Hilarius, an unhinged German psychotherapist who tries to medicate his patients with LSD. One day, Oedipa learns of the death of an ex-lover, Pierce Inverarity, an incredibly wealthy real-estate mogul, who has left her as the executor of his estate. Inverarity appears to have owned or financed nearly all the goings-on in San Narciso, a (fictional) southern Californian city near Los Angeles. Oedipa goes to San Narciso to meet Inverarity's lawyer, a former child actor named Metzger and they begin an affair, which fascinates a local teenage rock band, The Paranoids, who begin following them voyeuristically. At a bar, Oedipa notices the graffiti symbol of a muted post horn with the label "W.A.S.T.E." and she chats with Mike Fallopian, a right-wing historian and critic of the postal system, who claims to use a secret postal service.
It emerges that Inverarity had Mafia connections, illicitly attempting to sell the bones of forgotten U.S. World War II soldiers for use as charcoal to a cigarette company. One of The Paranoids' friends mentions that this strongly reminds her of a Jacobean revenge play she recently saw called The Courier's Tragedy.
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