Temat: The Crying of Lot 49 as the novel of conspiracy.

The aim of my work is to prove that The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon is the novel of conspiracy. The novel was published for the first time in the 1960s. At the beginning of my work I will try to mention the situation in the United States during that decade. Then, I am going to define the term: conspiracy, and I will give some examples of the events which took place in the life at that time. People said that the things that happened were probably done by mysterious organizations. In the further part of my work I would like to present the situations connected with the conspiracy in Pynchon’s novel. Finally, I am going to write about the meaning of the conspiracy in that masterpiece and the relation between the conspiracy and communication in the novel. In order to make my work successful I am going to use The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon, and articles such as: The sacred, the profane, and the Crying of Lot 49 by Edward Mendelson, The Demon of Images by Jean Baudrillard and the essays by Dan Gaddes and Ben Wheeler.
The 1960s were one of the most characteristic decades, both politically and socially, in the U.S. history after WW II. First of all, it was the era of gloomy political events: John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Martin Luther King’s assassination or the Vietnam War. The death of those leaders was shocking to the public opinion and it has not been explained completely since that time. Those circumstances produced various theories of conspiracy. We can state that conspiracy was a very characteristic feature of that time. We are able to see it speaking about Kennedy’s death.
We can read that the president Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, in 1963. The House Select Committee on Assassinations deduced that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin. Moreover, it added that the assassination was part of a conspiracy to kill the American president. Historians had a few assassination theories which were different from the theories proposed by the American government’s reports. Oswald claimed that he did not murder anyone and the photograph of him holding a gun was a fabrication. A court has never found out precisely if Oswald was guilty or not. During New Orleans District Attorney’s investigation some conspiracy theories were announced to the public. Among the allesed conspirators were: the mafia, the KGB, Fidel Castro or the military industrial complex.
Social changes took place as well: youth’s rebellion – at first, against the anachronistic curriculums which offered students only lectures, no discussions. During the 1960s revolutionary phenomena were observed and widely discussed: Civil Rights Movements and women’s rights. At that time political correctness was born and women started to be treated as a minority. It was the era of “sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. Sex was no taboo any more.
Conspiracy is one of the main motifs of The Crying of Lot 49. The protagonist is Oedipa Maas, a young woman. She returns to her house from a party and finds a letter which says that she became the executor of the estate of Pierce Inverarity, her ex - boyfriend who was very rich. “[…] a Californian real estate mogul who had once lost two million dollars in his spare time […]”. The message seems to be very clear but not for her as she did not have qualifications for that task. However, she is ready to take the challenge and execute the estate. We can say that the conspiracy has begun from that moment. Protagonist’s name is not random. Edward Mendelson says: “The name refers to Sophoclean Oedipus who begins his search for the solution of a problem (a problem, like Oedipa’s, involving a dead man) as an almost detached observer, only to discover how deeply implicated he is in what he finds”.
Oedipa leaves Kenneret and goes to San Narciso. There, She meets Miles Metzger, who helps her to execute Pierce’s estate. In the hotel, Miles wants to play Strip Botticelli game. Oedipa agrees but puts on a lot of clothes and she never gets naked because of the layers. This scene can mean that Oedipa will never discover the mystery. Throughout the book the plot develops and protagonist starts to notice more and more signs which should help her to discover the truth, although she will not. It is a kind of paradox. The more signs she discovers and understands the more situation complicates. The number of signs is probably infinite. In real life we also see a lot of images. Jean Baudrillard writes about them: “We have arrived at a paradox regarding the image, our images, those which unfurl upon and invade our daily life – images whose proliferation, it should be noted, is potentially infinite, whereas the extension of meaning: is always limited precisely by its end, by its finality; from the fact that images ultimately have no finality and proceed by total contiguity, infinitely multiplying themselves according to an irresistible epidemic process which no one today control, our world is has become truly infinite, or rather exponential by means of images.” Numerous signs left for Oedipa can have several meanings in Pynchon’s plot.
First place where Oedipa can see the special sign is a bar, The Scope. She and Metzger meet Mike Fallopian there, the member of the Peter Pinguid Society a right - wing group. In the latrine she sees the symbol of muted- post horn.”[…] a symbol she’d never seen before, a loop, triangle and trapezoid […]” Under the picture is written: “Get in touch with Kirby, through WASTE […].” She neither knows who does it nor what it presents. Then, Mike tells Oedipa that his organization uses its own mail system and not the National American one. Moreover, Fallopian writes a book about a history of Postal System in the U.S. including Civil War period. Dan Geddes says that the symbol of the muted horn is the central mystery in The Crying of Lot 49. It is connected with a mail system- W.A.S.T.E and it is associated with a mysterious group called Trystero. The mystery in Pynchon’s book is different from other detective stories. The author created a lot of clues but they did not lead to the solution to the conspiracy. Another clue to uncover the mystery appears in the theater during The Courier’s Tragedy, a Jacobean revenge drama of Richard Wharfinger and directed by Randolph Driblette. The play is a mixture of communication, jealousy and murder. One of characters says the characteristic words:
“No hallowed skein of stars can ward, I throw,
Who’s once been set his tryst with Trystero.”
After the performance Oedipa wants to talk to Driblette, the producer of The Courier’s Tragedy, about the bones but their conversation ended about Trystero. Later she gets to know what or who Trystero is and why he is important. He was an European noble and opposed the Thurn and Taxis postal system that controlled all European mail delivery during the medieval period. Wharfinger knew about Trystero and put a line about him in his play. Those few words became Oedipa’s obsession and led her into more complicated elements. According to Edward Mendelson, that novel includes mechanisms of the detective story but produces the opposite results. The aim of the detective story is to reduce a complex situation to a simple and clear one. Pynchon’s novel starts with quite simple situation, and then heroine does not control the circumstances: the simple issues become complex, “responsibility becomes not isolated but universal, the guilty locus turns out to be everywhere, and individual clues are unimportant because neither clues nor deduction can lead to the solution.” In further chapters we can observe proliferation of signs and Oedipa’s attempts to solve the mystery. In Yoyodyne company the protagonist meets Stanley Koteks who is sitting at the desk and drawing the Trystero symbol. When she sees “Box 573” in Koteks’ notebook she realizes that it is a new address of W.A.S.T.E. Next, Oedipa learns from Fallopian that Koteks may be a member of a huge conspiracy. Then, Koteks tells her about John Nefastis, a scientist from Berkeley, the inventor of the perpetual motion machine called Nefastis Machine. That machine can be operated by only the “sensitive” people, people who have special mental skills in order to communicate with the machine. Oedipa believes that she is a sensitive person. She visits John Nefastis to check her abilities. Nefastis wants Oedipa to communicate with Maxwell’s Demon. He explains it to her: “”Watch the picture […] and concentrate on a cylinder. Do not worry. If you’re sensitive you’ll know which one. Leave your mind open, receptive to the Demon’s message.”” It turns up that Oedipa is not a “sensitive”. We can observe that Trystero is as important for her as Maxwell’s Demon for Nefastis. Heroine is always thinking about it. She is obsessed with the symbol. Before visiting Nefastis, on the way to Berkeley, she meets an old man, Mr. Thoth whose grandfather was an “Indian Killer”. Once, Thoth’s grandfather cut a ring off an Indian he killed. Oedipa notices that in the ring is inscribed the muted post horn symbol. She wants to put the piece things together. After that, she goes to the philatelist, Genghis, who has seen Pierce’s stamp collection. The woman finds out that there are some strange stamps. All of them have got a muted post horn as a watermark, exactly the same like the stamps from the Thurn and Taxis period. She realized that she is in the centre of conspiracy that refers to an old group. Geddes says that Oedipa believes that her investigation of the stamps, and often discovery of the muted symbol in different places, leads her to find out a huge underground conspiracy. However, her search leads her to question her own sanity, and to wonder if Pierce is playing a prank on her. In order to find out where Wharfinger had got information about Trystero Oedipa decides to go to meet professor Bortz, in Berkeley, who can help her to understand some of the secrets associated with Wharfinger play’s mention of Trystero. Before the travel, Oedipa notices that the copies of the play do not contain a line about Trystero:
“She skimmed through to find the line that had brought her all the way up here. And in the leaf-fractured sunlight, froze. No hallowed skein of stars can ward, I trow, ran the couplet,
Who once has crossed the lusts of Angelo.” There is not a mention of Trystero.
Oedipa expects that Emory Bortz can explain the differences between the versions Wharfinger’s play.
The heroine wants to talk to Driblette to answer the question who or what the Trystero is but her crucial question was why Wharfinger included the line about Trystero in the play. Unfortunately, she was late because the director of the performance of The Courier’s Tragedy had committed suicide some days earlier. Under those circumstances the protagonist becomes aware of the fact that the secret cannot be solved easily. In the bar called The Greek Way Bar for gays one of the men had the Trystero symbol in the label of his coat. The man informed her that the Kirby is a code, not a real person. He added that the pin he is wearing means that he belongs to IA – Inamorati Anonymous the organization which helps people emotionally wounded. The man says: “An inamorato is somebody in love. That’s the worst addiction of all.” Oedipa is convinced that the symbol stands for two organizations. She is not sometimes persuaded if the symbols, which may or may not be connected with Trystero are real or her dream. She begins to mix reality with her imaginings. The example can be the scene when she meets some children who know about the muted post horns, they drew Trystero symbol on the sidewalk in chalk and played hopscotch. She sees the symbol at a laundromat and in the bathroom at the airport. She is wandering all night and sees a lot of other clues. She does not know what is in her imagination and what happens in reality. During that night, she receives a letter from an old man who asks her to deliver it to “horn” people because he cannot do it himself. Oedipa agrees and finds a garbage can with the well-known symbol and the acronym: W.A.S.T.E. She hides close and sees a young boy put letters in the can and then he takes all the letters. She starts to follow him. He goes to Nefastis’ house. It confuses our heroine. The secret becomes more and more incomprehensible. Although, Oedipa is able to learn some issues she and the reader do not know the whole secret. Moreover, Pynchon wants the reader and Oedipa to believe that all mystery will be finally discovered. Throughout the plot the reader is also confused by the author on purpose.
The moment when everything in the mystery might be uncovered the author ends the novel. Ben Wheeler, in the essay Crying Over the Finish of The Crying of Lot 49 draws attention to the special meaning of the final scene in the novel. Oedipa tries to discover the truth about a secret organization called “Trystero.” She is determined to find out if it exists, because all that conspiracy might be Oedipa’s hallucinations or the cruel prank of her ex – boyfriend. The author of the essay writes that the story is not truly ended because there is no answer if the Trystero is real or who it is or what it is. The readers and the heroine do not know who left her the clues. If the Oedipa has been the subject of a joke, a lot of elements in the plot can be meaningless. During the final scene we can see Oedipa at the public auction. The consequences of the auction would show “Either Oedipa in the orbiting ecstasy of a true paranoia, or a real Tristero.” The last sentence is: “Oedipa settled back, to await the crying of lot 49.” We do not know who the bidder is. The conspiracy is not uncovered.
Oedipa wants to solve the secret beyond any doubt. Comparing conspiracy in Pynchon’s novel to conspiracy in real life, we can observe certain extend of the similarity. The protagonist has got some circumstantial evidence, and some theories. However, she is not able to discover the truth like in the 1960s it was not possible to capture the murderer of John F. Kennedy.
All in all, conspiracy and communication are strictly associated with each other in the novel. Thomas Pynchon shows the idea of communication in the past and present using the central symbol of conspiracy, the post – muted horn and Pierce’s stamps collection, which are auctioned as Lot 49 at the end of masterpiece. Searching for the truth, Oedipa finds out lots of symbols and people who can help her. Although, she gets a lot of information it is not exhaustive enough to give the answers to her questions. Communication is broken up several times in the novel. The most obvious example is the death of Driblette when protagonist cannot get any useful information about Wharfinger and his mention of the Trystero in his play. We can claim that the lack of communication may be one of the reasons that Oedipa cannot discover the truth about conspiracy. I think that Pynchon’s masterpiece is a novel of conspiracy because Oedipa on her way to finding out the mystery encounters a lot of various signs. Some of them help her to solve the problem but some are real distracters. As a result, she does not succeed. If she did succeed, the novel would be more like a detective story. As long as she is not successful, this is a novel of conspiracy.













Bibliography

Books:
Pynchon, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. London: Vintage, 2000.
Articles:
Baudrillard, Jean. The Evil Demon of Images (from The Evil Demon of Images, 1987).
Postmodernism: A Reader. Thomas Docherty, ed. New York: Columbia UP, 1993.

Mendelson, Edward. The Sacred, the Profane, and The Crying of Lot 49. Individual and
Community. Baldwin and Kirby, eds. Durham, N.C.: Duke UP, 1979.

The Internet:

Geddes, Dan. Distorted Communication in Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49. http://thesatirist.com/book/the Crying of Lot 49/html.

Wheeler, Ben. Crying Over the Finish of The Crying of Lot 49. http://uweb.ucsb.edu~ben_jamin/index. htm.


author: Bartosz M. Kraszewski

American Studies Center, Warsaw University