The primary connection between The Crying of Lot 49 (TCL 49) and our course topic would seem to be one of historical context. The events of the story take place in Southern California in the mid-1960’s- a time during which American involvement in the Vietnam war had begun to escalate precipitously, particularly regarding the mass deployment of American military units to South Vietnam. As such, any contemporary portrayal of American society from this period will inevitably bear at least some relation to the Vietnam War; for it is in this precise context which arose such a great part of the Vietnam War, and so much of the surrounding phenomena which are placed under its heading. Southern California, as TCL 49's local setting, may also be seen to bear specific significance. Although the breadth of the Vietnam War’s impact certainly spans the entire United States, and for that matter, several continents, the particular political, military, and social movements which comprise the conflict’s salient history can be traced back to a more limited sphere of influence (such being the case with all wars). I do not believe it would be controversial to state that the hotbed of culture which is Southern California, and particularly its social and academic (and perhaps, quasi-academic) aspects, has long exerted a greatly disproportionate influence upon the ever-shifting tides of American culture as a whole. So we might do well to receive Pynchon’s depiction of 1960’s Southern California, in which college professors drunkenly lob around beer bottles in the front yard with their students and LSD-prescribing psychiatrists go on shooting sprees, with this familiar quotation in mind: “What starts here changes the world.”
If I were to examine TCL 49 as an argument, I would personally have to conclude that it is most ineffective in this regard. The main reason for my conclusion is that any view, or set of views, the rightness or value of which Mr. Pynchon may have wished to persuade his readers, is never clearly presented in the work. Although the book’s style is of a postmodern, highly psychological nature, in light of which we may understand it as being almost categorically inclined toward the inclusion of flourishing, cryptic tangents, at no point does the narrative seem to transcend such tangents to take on a more holistic character- to really come together and make a point. Ambiguity, both regarding morality and the human capacity for judgment more broadly, may be seen as a defining characteristic of postmodern thought. To the best of my knowledge, however, it is not a defining characteristic of effective rhetoric.
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wow, that looks incredibly long now that it is posted up there. i was a total blogging virgin until just now and lacked any sense of relativity...it was just a little over 1/2 page in Word, which didn't seem long...please forgive the novella, all :)
ReplyDeleteThis text was by far a challenge to say the least. Not only were the paragraphs wordy but the content was by far confusing and near impossible to keep up with for the entire reading of this novel. After reading the first page I was thinking to myself, "I can do this, not too bad," but upon turning page after page I soon learn that this will be no ordinary novel. My first glimpse of this sudden reality was the peculiar naming of the characters. For one, the name Oedipa seemed to sound vaguely familiar, and I soon realized it was familiar because of the strong relation that the name has to the famous Shakespeare character Oedipus. Then we go on in the novel to encounter such characters as Mucho, Dr. Hilarious, and Mike Fallopian. Therefore, as reading this novel I was hoping to come across some type of correlation and analogy between the names and an underlined theme or message throughout the story but found no connection, only adding to the novel's satirical value. However, aside from the obvious allusions to the wars mentioned here and there in the chapters, it could be concluded that this novel was picked for this class because in rhetoric we all tell stories, argue opinions, pose suggestions and offer literary analysis of many of the texts that we encounter, and this novel was no exception. It forces us to think (rather deeply, i must say) and attempt to decipher and come to conclusions about the imposed meaning of the texts that we analyze. In this case, not only was the story difficult and frustrating, not to mention drawn out, the way that the information is presented is a journey all in itself. I found this text difficult to keep up with and often times got so lost in the words that I completely forgot what it was that those difficult words were describing. In this text, I believe that as the reader maneuvers through the text just as Oedipa did, with confusion and by paying as much attention to detail as possible. Then just as the story ends and Oedipa is about to get her final ending with the solving of the mysterious informed bidder,we are left with the uncertainty of a solved mystery as the story ends. This could certainly be compared to the feeling that Oedipa might have felt as she sat awaiting the crying of lot 49, a hope for a resolution that may not come. However, upon realizing this, we also can not ignore that the audiences suspense is cut short by the resolution that certainly does not come. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but notice that the way that we as students have been trained to analyze text is very structured, and that was exactly what I found myself attempting to do throughout the entire novel. Trying to find allusions and correlations between the novel and my sense of reality but found not much more than big pile of confusion and wordy sentences, and few conclusions along the way...although that's more than I can say for this novel.
ReplyDeleteGabrielle,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment. I would have to agree that it is easy for students to get drawn into a rather unfortunate pattern of reading literature, in which the whole experience is dominated by an attempt to 'meaningfully analyze' whatever text they are reading.
Personally, I have been out of school, and quite removed from academia in general, for over four years, so my mindset is somewhat the opposite- I have to remind myself to impose a classroom-appropriate analytical filter over that which I read. Also, I simply love reading- it is how I spend my evenings nowadays. So my own reading of TCL 49 was initially conducted simply as a 'reader', with the hope (which is present anytime I open up a new book I have chosen to read) of finding something beautiful and relatable in the creations of another mind.
On this first level, I found Pynchon's style to be pretentious, and deliberately hard-to-follow, right off the bat, although I absolutely loved the end of Ch. 2 ('That you wouldn't be easy.'). When authors write in such a manner, it seems that they often do so to create an illusion of meaning, to be interpreted by readers as a largely elusive meaning (this elusiveness owing to deficiencies in their own powers of comprehension as a reader, that is). As if all the answers to life's great questions might somehow be within reach if we could only make sense of this guy's elegantly woven maze of sentences...
So I did enjoy the novel for its qualities as a 'suspense thriller', and for its visual aspect much in the same way I can dig the occasional David Lynch movie. However, ultimately I found it to be highly masturbatory; and I do not believe that it holds any great hidden meaning.