03.07: The Crying of Lot 49
In which we wrap up chapter five of The Crying of Lot 49.
After a night spent wandering the streets of San Narciso and seeing the post-horn at nearly every turn, Oedipa encounters an old sailor who asks her to drop a letter into W.A.S.T.E. for him. She tails a deliveryman for a while, and then heads back to Kinneret…where things are certainly in a much different state than when she left.
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2 thoughts on “Twenty-Four: Reverse Detective”
Someone noted in this episode that there is a conspicuous gap in Pynchon’s alternate history, between Against the Day and Gravity’s Rainbow. I speculate there is one more “door-stopper” novel forthcoming from Pynchon, here is my reasoning:
“[in 1964] he told his agent that he was writing four novels simultaneously, and ‘if they come out on paper anything like they are inside my head, then it will be the literary event of the millennium.'” He wrote Crying of Lot 49 for money and to break his contract with his publisher Lippincott, so this is unlikely to be one of the four. Vineland, Inherent Vice, and Bleeding Edge take place after the 60s, so none of them could be one of the four unless he changed his timeline for the novel.
So we have Gravity’s Rainbow, Mason & Dixon, and Against the Day left, which could easily be seen as parts of one “project,” leaving one more historical picaresque brick to come!
That would be really cool. Plus, the more books he publishes the longer the podcast goes!
Wait…