"totality of facts, not of things."1 This idea can be combined with a physicist's view of the world as a closed system that tends towards chaos. Pynchon asserts that the measure of the world is its entropy.2 He extends this metaphor to his fictional world. He envelops the reader, through various means, within the system of The Crying of Lot 49. Pynchon designed The Crying of Lot 49 so that there would be two levels of observation: that of the characters such as our own Oedipa Maas, whose world
In our society today one of the most difficult problems we are facing is the large numbers of obesity in our children. One of the major factors in that is this; our children have become less physically active. At an early age children start watching TV, learn how to operate a computer, and play video games. Having technological skills is now a necessity in all of our lives because everything has turned “computerized,” but the fact is that our children are relying on these types of entertainment rather
self, of others, of the world around us) are circuitous. Thomas Pynchon, in his novel The Crying of Lot 49, seems to attempt to lead the reader down several of these paths simultaneously in order to illustrate this point. Our reliance on symbols as efficient translators of complex notions is called into question. Beginning with the choice of symbolic or pseudo-symbolic name, Oedipa Maas, for the central character of his novel, Pynchon expands his own investigation of symbol as Oedipa also attempts
deliberate replication . . . one by one, pinch by precision pinch, they were immobilizing her" (Pynchon 124). Like the characters in V, Oedipa Maas runs from the responsibilities of love and finds herself in a maze. Pynchon mocks these situations "devoid of love" with "Byzantine complications of plot" (Poirier 1). Concerning Pynchon's characters, Poirier also notes their desperate efforts of communication. Pynchon has an extraordinary metaphoric skill illustrating his reverence for the human endeavor to
sort of consciousness. Oedipa through Pynchon's scientific/literary metaphors, has a personal awakening that is not quite resolved with the end of the novel. The reader and the protagonist are both left to question what is real and what is fantasy. Pynchon offers clues to the puzzle, but the truth in question is not the Trystero, but Oedipa's sanity. Oedipa Mass is forced to involve herself in what seems to be a conspiracy. Her job can be compared to that of Maxwell's Demon. "As the Demon sat and
whose memories are increasingly banished to the realm of the nostalgic or, even worse, obsolete. Thomas Pynchon and William Faulkner, in wildly contrasting ways, explore the means by which we, as individuals and communities, remember, recycle, and renovate the past. Retrospection is an inevitability in their works, for the past is inescapable and defines, if not dominates, the present. Pynchon maintains an optimistic, Ovidian view of the past - we recycle our cultural memories into another, perhaps
The Disdainful Use of Names in Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 While reading Pynchon’s, The Crying of Lot 49, I found myself fascinated with the names of the characters. I tried to analyze them and make them mean something, but it seems that Pynchon did not mean for the names to have a specific meaning. This deduction made me think about the satirical nature of the naming of the characters. Which led me to muse on the chaotic nature of the naming. The apparent disdain for the characters by their
Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow Thomas Ruggles Pynchon was born in 1937 in Glen's Cove, New York. He is the author of V., The Crying of Lot 49, Gravity's Rainbow, Slow Learner, Vineland, and Mason & Dixon. Nothing else is known of this author (not exactly true, but close enough to the truth to make that last blanket statement passable). He has attempted to veil himself in total obscurity and anonymity. For the most part, he has succeeded in this, save for a rare interview or two. In 1974 he
The Identity of Thomas Pynchon The identity of Thomas Pynchon is as elusive as the sticky, complex webs of meaning woven into his prose. As America's most "famous" hidden author, Pynchon produces works which simultaneously deal with issues of disappearance and meaning, of identity and nothingness in a fashion that befuddles some and delights others. He speaks to the world from his invisible pulpit, hiding behind a curtain of anonymity that safely disguises his personality from the prying
Thomas Pynchon in TV Land: The Televisual Culture in Vineland Mark Robberds’ 1995 Article "The New Historicist Creepers of Vineland" is an insightful look into how Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel fits the new historicist criteria of Michel Foucault, Stephen Greenblatt, and other new historicists. He convincingly argues for the "vinelike" characteristics of the novel, and shows how it is "genealogical in structure and archeological in content" (Robberds 238). What Robberds means is that Vineland
have flown their Arcs..." These words begin the wondrous passage that introduces us to the world of Thomas Pynchon's latest masterpiece, Mason & Dixon. In an obvious parody of "A screaming comes across the sky," the opening of Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon sets the mood and pace for the rest of the novel. In contrast to the mindless pleasures, hopeless desperation, and ubiquitous death that dominate virtually every page of his apocalyptic earlier work, this novel begins with a joyful snowball fight
considered the protagonist. After her ex-boyfriend, Pierce, leaves a complex estate to her, she begins to discover a harmful scheme taking place in Southern California. Like the reader, she is forced to involve herself in the discovery of clues. Pynchon asserts that the measure of the world is its entropy. He extends this metaphor to his fictional world. He keeps the reader involved by attempting to lead the reader down several of these paths in order to make this point. As a reader, we look for
A Comparison of Crying of Lot 49 and White Noise Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49 has much in common with Don DeLillo's book White Noise. Both novels uncannily share certain types of characters, parts of plot structure and themes. The similarities of these two works clearly indicates a cultural conception shared by two influential and respected contemporary authors. Character similarities in the two novels are found in both the main characters and in some that are tangential to the plots
Narrative Technique in DeLillo’s White Noise American literature has evolved extensively over the course of the history of the republic, from the Puritan sermons which emphasized the importance of a solid individual relationship between the individual self and the omnipotent God to the parody of relativism we find in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22. One of the recurring concerns of American fiction, though by no means restricted to American writing, is the position of the self with regard to the other
The rolling hills and untouched prairies of the Old West were, by and large, replaced with modern infrastructures and communities by the time Raymond Chandler and Thomas Pynchon got around to writing The Big Sleep and Crying of Lot 49. As the “New West” became the “Noir West” liberality transformed into something more along the lines of uniformity. The now more urban landscapes of the Noir West began to call for a different kind of toughness, one based on mental rather than physical strength. It
In the midst of many themes, one of the things Don DeLillo seems completely preoccupied with is the constant reminder of death in his novel "White Noise". The inability to accept one's finite existence in a vast, incomprehensible universe is unquestionably an experience familiar to countless individuals. However, rather than discussing in broad strokes the inescapable mortality that ties together all of mankind, in a passage describing an exchange between Jack Gladney and a SIMUVAC technician, DeLillo
Is there such a thing as free will, what is the relationship between mind and body, and the true difference between right and wrong are a few questions about human existence that have plagued philosophers and average men alike since the days of Socrates and Aristotle. While not everyone may pay these questions much attention, there is one philosophical thought that has probably crossed the mind of every human at some point in time, and that is the concept of death and what happens after. There are
Don Delillo’s White Noise covers many post modern subjects such as consumerism, death, and even religion, but through many of these subjects it is somewhat difficult trying to decipher the “white noise” Delillo is referring to in the title of the novel. Karen Weekes of LIT stated: “This title emphasizes our culture’s saturation in sound, but encompasses other definitions as well, some of which focus on the physical properties of sound waves or the random nature of noise” (287). One of the connections
Don DeLillo’s ‘Videotape’ is a short story of man who is absolutely captivated by some footage on the news that can be described as both, raw and shocking. The footage is being repeatedly played over and over. It depicts a young girl with a camcorder travelling in the backseat of her family’s car who happens to be filming a man driving a Dodge behind them. She continues aiming the camera at the man and filming until, suddenly, he is shot and murdered. The man watching the tape at home is clearly
the paradigm of literature and borrows its material from different fields of study like science, geography, history, astronomy and so on to make a collage of different theories and citations for shaping a literary text in a new dimension. Thomas Pynchon was a student of Engineering Physics at Cornell University. It is therefore not surprising that he uses science as a background for the interpretation of literature. His main aim is to interpret the postmodern condition where life has taken a new