By far the shortest of Pynchons great, dazzling novels - and one of the best. Summary Full Book Summary Oedipa Maas, the young wife of a man named Mucho, lives in Kinneret, California.

But then, how else should one imagine a tryst with America? And that is what this novel is. A witty, chaotic and brilliant novel from the incomparable Thomas Pynchon. That image, to suggest but one of the puns in the word Tristero, is typically full of sadness, terror, love, and flamboyance. The narrator sounds like a survivor looking through the massed wreckage of his civilization, 'a salad of despair'. The Crying of Lot 49 contains some of the most elegiac writing about America since Fitzgerald, as well as packing an intense metaphorical punch about revelation, hierophany, meaning and connection that is far too complex to reduce to precis Observer Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. an appropriate fiantly, purposefully outrageous Spectator Publisher’s Note This is a work of fiction.

The best American novel I have read since the war Frank Kermodeįor the reader who has yet to make acquaintance with this important comic talent.

The crying of lot 49 full book