The Crying of Lot 49

Entropy and Meaning in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 In modernity, the narrative of scientific progress operates under the assumption of order and linear progress. But with the rise of postmodern theory, these assumptions begin to be called into question to provoke new scientific discourses based on indeterminacies and discontinuities. The Crying of Lot 49 poses the same questions of the possibility of scientific knowledge and the search for intrinsic meaning. Pynchon follows the…

What are stories? This question is difficult to answer because there are many different directions that one could go with it. People are involved in stories, they make them up, shape them, and have the potential to be shaped by them. Stories are accounts of fictional or real individuals and events told for informational purposes or just as entertainment, often giving one a glimpse into a different world and leading the imagination down infinite paths. People everywhere are constantly telling…

problematic perception of heteronormativity, the belief that humans are normally heterosexual and distinctly male or female. In The Crying of Lot 49, Thomas Pynchon challenges the traditional perception of a gender binary through the protagonist, Oedipa Maas, who represents the fluidity and choice of gender identity as asserted by Queer Theorists. Throughout The Crying of Lot 49, it is made apparent that the novel has feminist undertones by the manner in which the plot dramatizes perception.…

3. Bleeding Edge: waiting to be reassembled The ‘Word’ is definitely an interesting concept in The Crying of Lot 49, simply because of the myriad of analyses and meanings it received (cf. Grant 2008; Schaub 2013). What perhaps then is even more intriguing is its reappearance in Pynchon’s latest novel, Bleeding Edge, almost half a century later: ‘[Maxine is talking in DeepArcher to an enigmatic woman, after September 11. The woman says:] “Only here to have a look. Find out how long I can stay…

Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 follows Oedipa Maas on her journey as she tries to execute her ex-boyfriend’s, Pierce Inverarity, will and discover the conspiracy of the secret society, Tristero. Oedipa communicates and interacts with many characters in hopes of gaining information that will help her solve the conspiracy, but her efforts are ineffective and she is left distraught and without answers to the existence of Tristero or Pierce’s legacy. Pynchon tries to express in his novel that…

Thomas Foster, an English professor, desired to write a book that delivered explanations for what the professor thinks when he or she reads versus that which a student brings to mind in regards to connections made when reading a work of literature. From this desire Foster wrote “How to Read Like A Professor.” In each chapter, Foster describes specific tools and strategies authors have used in the past and continue to put into practice. These strategies are employed by writers as a means to…

Infants have to go through many painful procedures such as immunization, blood collecting, circumcision and etc. Back in the day, people believed that infants can’t feel pain like adults but many recent studies found that infants can actually feel pain like adults. An fMRI study found that the infants and the adults’ brain light up very similarly when they were being poked in the foot with Pinprick Stimulators. The research also found that infants have lower threshold than adults (Harley,…

“Every Trip’s a Quest (Except When It’s Not)” In How to Read Literature Like a Professor’s, “Every Trip is a Quest (Except When it’s Not),” by Thomas C. Foster, Foster acknowledges that in literature, a character may commence a rather boring trip with no symbolic direction, but he or she is most likely on their way to embark a quest. This quest usually proceeds with the character performing a general task, unaware of the real purpose of the journey. The bottom line is, the stated endeavor is…

Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope, trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1986), 1059. Subsequent references are given in parenthesis within the text. Rob Sheffield, Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time (New York: Broadway, 2007), 17. See Sheffield, 17–-23. Subsequent references are given in parentheses within the text. Geoffrey O’Brien, Sonata for Jukebox: Pop Music, Memory, and the Imagined Life (New York: Counterpoint, 2004), 108.…

The author’s purpose of writing was to explain that all literature can follow similar plots. This talks about how all quest plots have similar structure since they all feature 5 characteristics, which are a questers, a place to go, a stated reason to go to the place, challenges along the way, and a real reason to go to the place. Readers can benefit from Thomas Foster’s helpful perspective by having a more thorough understanding of quest literature, due to the author showing readers how quest…