Returning to the table, she discusses the mail service with Mike. He informs her that the Peter Pinguid Society opposes the U.S. mail monopoly and uses its own private system. Fallopian is, in fact, writing a book on the history of the U.S. Postal Service from the time of the Civil War, which saw enormous postal reform. Patterson, Troy (August 6, 2018). " Lodge 49, Reviewed: Channelling Pynchon to Capture California's High Hopes and Deep Loss". The New Yorker. Verarity” is not a word in its own right, but it is quite close to “veracity”, which has lead some commentators to infer that it suggests a concern with the truth. For John Nefastis (to take a recent example) two kinds of entropy, thermodynamic and informational, happened, say by coincidence, to look alike, when you wrote them down as equations. Yet he had made his mere coincidence respectable, with the help of Maxwell’s Demon. Even if you think you got it, there is no guarantee that your understanding reflects what Pynchon intended (behind the scenes).

Silence is important to any non-conformist or underground movement, not only from the point of secrecy, but in the sense that Dr. Winston O'Boogie (A.K.A. John Lennon) subsequently maintained that, “A conspiracy of silence speaks louder than words”. Pierce Inverarity's lawyer, Metzger has a brief affair with Oedipa while sorting through Pierce's estate. Metzger is involved with other shady lawyers and spent his youth as a child actor. He disappears from the novel about halfway through. Dr. Hilarius – Oedipa's psychiatrist, who tries to prescribe LSD to Oedipa as well as to other housewives. Toward the end of the book, he goes crazy and admits to being a former Nazi medical intern at Buchenwald concentration camp, where he worked in a program on experimentally-induced insanity, which he supposed was a more "humane" way of dealing with Jewish prisoners than killing. Note the idiomatic but ambiguous use of the expression “God knows how many”, as if God or Tristero or Pierce did actually know how many.]The song "Looking for Lot 49" by The Jazz Butcher alludes to the novel in its title and theme of postal services. [11] I heard that," Pierce said. "I think it's time Wendell Maas had a little visit from The Shadow. " Silence, positive and thorough, fell. So it was the last of his voices she ever heard. Lamont Cranston. That phone line could have pointed any direction, been any length. It’s quiet ambiguity shifted over, in the months after the call, to what had been revived: memories of his face, body, things he'd given her, things she had now and then pretended not to have heard him say. It took him over, and to the verge of being forgotten. The shadow waited a year before visiting. But now there was Metzger's letter. Had Pierce called last year then to tell her about this codicil? Or had he decided on it later, somehow because of her annoyance and Mucho's indifference? She felt exposed, finessed, put down. She had never executed a will in her life, didn't know where to begin, didn't know how to tell the law firm in L. A. that she didn't know where to begin. Royster, Paul (June 23, 2005). Thomas Pynchon: A Brief Chronology (Report). University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Metzger takes Oedipa to a bar, where she meets Mike Fallopian, a right-wing engineer who is part of an anti-government group called The Peter Pinguid Society. Fallopian claims he is developing an underground postal system to rival the government's monopolized postal service. A scientist, Nefastis is obsessed with the idea of perpetual motion. He claims to have a machine that defies the laws of thermodynamics and has psychic abilities. The machine doesn't work for Oedipa.

Every question the reader asks of Lot 49 is also asked by our avatar, the – as she puts it – executrix of Pierce Inverarity’s will, Mrs Oedipa Mass. From the off it is made clear that our lead is a novice, someone who “didn’t know how to tell the law firm in LA that she didn’t know where to begin.” To list the number of occasions in which Oedipa Mass is confused, perplexed, baffled or otherwise thrown by the plot and the world around her would come close to repeating the novel verbatim in a citation which would not so much plagiarise the text as pirate it.Pynchon, Thomas (December 1965). "The World (This One), The Flesh (Mrs. Oedipa Maas), And The Testament Of Pierce Inverarity". Esquire. pp.170–173, 296–303. (excerpt) Oedipa becomes even more intrigued when she sees the symbol on an old man's ring that was once stolen from a mail carrier. Genghis Cohen, a stamp expert reviewing Pierce's extensive collection, informs Oedipa that the watermarks on Pierce's stamps also feature the horn. Later, when Oedipa visits the publisher of The Courier's Tragedy, she is surprised to learn the original play did not include the word "Tristero." Mucho pressed his cough button a moment, but only smiled. It seemed odd. How could they hear a smile? Oedipa got in, trying not to make noise. Mucho thrust the mike in front of her, mumbling, “You’re on, just be yourself.” Then in his earnest broadcasting voice, “How do you feel about this terrible thing?” Appel, Alfred Jr. Interview, published in Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature 8, No. 2 (spring 1967). Reprinted in Strong Opinions (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973).

Fearing for her sanity, Oedipa makes an impromptu visit to Dr. Hilarius, only to find him having lost his own mind, firing a gun randomly and raving madly about his days as a Nazi medical intern at Buchenwald. She helps the police subdue him, only to return home to find that her husband Mucho has lost his mind in his own way, having become addicted to LSD. Oedipa consults an English professor about The Courier's Tragedy, learns that Randolph Driblette has mysteriously committed suicide, and is left pondering whether Trystero is simply a prolonged hallucination, a historical plot, or an elaborate practical joke that Inverarity arranged for her before his death. Oedipa goes to an auction of Inverarity's possessions and waits on the bidding of lot 49, which contains the stamps which are thought to refer to Trystero. Having learned that a particular bidder is interested in the stamps, she hopes to discover if this person is a representative of the Trystero secret society. Pynchon devotes a significant part of the book to a play-within-a-book, a detailed description of a performance of an imaginary Jacobean revenge play, involving intrigues between Thurn und Taxis and Trystero. Like "The Mousetrap", based on "The Murder of Gonzago" that William Shakespeare placed within Hamlet, the events and atmosphere of The Courier's Tragedy (by the fictional Richard Wharfinger) mirror those transpiring around them. In many aspects it resembles a typical revenge play, such as The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd, Hamlet by Shakespeare and plays by John Webster and Cyril Tourneur. The text as a whole should be read as a purposefully absurd, hyperbolized satire, critiquing everything from society's conformity and superficiality to literary tropes. The absurd Nature of the postmodernist text reminds readers not to take everything literally at face value but to dig deeper into the text and consider what it might reveal about the real world. The Crying of Lot 49 Themes

Oedipa Maas, the young wife of a man named Mucho, lives in Kinneret, California. One day, she receives a letter from a law firm telling her that her ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity, has died and named her the executor of his estate. Oedipa resolves to faithfully execute her duty, and she travels to San Narciso (Pierce's hometown) where she meets the lawyer, Metzger, assigned to help her, with whom she spontaneously begins an affair. Radiohead alludes to the novel in the name of their online merchandise shop and mailing list, W.A.S.T.E. [12] Oedipa Mass's ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity built a business empire in San Narciso. A real estate tycoon, Pierce left his estate to Oedipa after his death. It is unclear if he is playing an elaborate prank on Oedipa with the Tristero conspiracy or if he was involved in the secret organization.

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. Intrigued by the coincidence, Oedipa and Metzger attend a performance of the play, which briefly mentions the name "Tristero". After the show, Oedipa approaches the play's director and star, Randolph Driblette, who deflects her questions about the mention of the unusual name. After seeing a man scribbling the post horn symbol, Oedipa seeks out Mike Fallopian, who tells her he suspects a conspiracy. This is supported when watermarks of the muted horn symbol are discovered hidden on Inverarity's private stamp collection. The symbol appears to be a muted variant of the coat of arms of Thurn and Taxis, an 18th-century European postal monopoly that suppressed all opposition, including Trystero (or Tristero), a competing postal service that was defeated but possibly driven underground. Based on the symbolism of the mute, Oedipa thinks that Trystero exists as a countercultural secret society with unknown goals.A global postal conspiracy. Post horns graffitied across southern California. LSD prescribed as treatment for anxiety. Obscene radio station hosts. Beatles cover bands. Widespread paranoia. The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon’s second novel, is quirky and eccentric even by Pynchon’s standards. Now 50 years old, the slim novel is truly a snapshot of mid-1960s culture. Soon, Oedipa met a man who wore a muted post horn. Oedipa mentioned Thurn and Taxis but got no response. Oedipa told him everything. He explained that he was a member of Inamorati Anonymous. The symbol originated with a fired member of Yoyodyne who recognized that love was his weakness. Oedipa wandered the streets, locating the Tristero symbol everywhere. She wandered into a Mexican diner and found Jesús Arrabal, an anarchist she and Pierce had met in Mazatlán. Lying near him was an old anarchist paper with an image of the horn but Jesús knew nothing. On a bus, Oedipa found the image and at the airport she overheard it. She would later wonder when she had dreamt it. Near morning, Oedipa spied a crumpled old man, with the horn tattooed. He wanted Oedipa to drop a letter for his disenchanted wife in a WASTE box under the freeway. Oedipa felt helpless when a rooming house collected the old man. An hour later, she found the WASTE can. She followed the WASTE carrier until he ironically led her to the home of Nefastis. The protagonist, Oedipa Maas spends most of the novel searching for the truth, although she doesn't discover many definitive answers. Oedipa's obsessive investigation begins when her ex-lover leaves her as the co-executor of his massive estate. His apparent involvement in a secret organization drives her all over California as she searches for answers in what is either a massive conspiracy or the modern world's best-kept secret. Set in 1960s California, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 follows the unassuming housewife Oedipa Maas after she discovers that her ex-boyfriend, the wealthy real estate mogul Pierce Inverarity, has recently died under mysterious circumstances and named her as the executor (or “executrix”) of his last will and testament. As she sorts through the assets that Inverarity has left behind, Oedipa gradually uncovers clues that point her to a centuries-long, anti-government conspiracy of mail carriers called Tristero (or Trystero). Although Oedipa dedicates all her time to figuring out these clues, she never figures out precisely what Tristero is, if it has anything to do with Inverarity, or if it even exists at all. Eventually, she realizes that she might have just become a paranoid conspiracy theorist, pursuing a fantasy with no basis in reality. However, Pynchon uses Oedipa’s fruitless investigation to show how everyone interprets the world just like Oedipa investigates Tristero and readers analyze literature. Namely, people select clues, extract significance from them, and weave meanings together into a narrative that forms their sense of reality. But Pynchon ultimately argues that these narratives are only ever subjective and tentative—while interpretation is an essential part of both living and reading, there can be no singular, authoritative truths about the meaning of life or art. A stamp expert, Genghis Cohen helps Oedipa work through the mystery while examining Pierce's stamp collection.