The Crying of Lot 49
by Thomas Pynchon
She's executing an estate. She may have found a secret. Or lost her mind.
For you if
you are ready for a novel that refuses to resolve and wants you to understand that the refusing is the meaning
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Oedipa Maas is appointed executor of her ex-boyfriend's estate and discovers what may be a centuries-old underground postal system called Tristero — or may be an elaborate hoax — or may be a symptom of her own unraveling. Pynchon wrote this in 1966 and it remains the most compact introduction to his work and to postmodern fiction generally. Nothing is confirmed. Everything is a system. The reader, like Oedipa, must decide whether the pattern is real or projected. The most intellectually demanding novel on this shelf and the one that most completely rewards the reader who is willing to sit with uncertainty as the point rather than the problem.
Where This Book Lives
- Setting
- North America
- Voice
- Written by a North America author
For the grown-up bookshelf
Same idea, written for a grown-up. Good for the adult in the room, too.
