Crying Reread

[Paul Mackin]

Reread _The Crying of Lot 49_ over the last couple days (after all these years) trying to figure out why Pynch himself put it down in _Slow Learner_, notwithstanding the fact LitCriters love to play with it so. Agree with John (I think) that it serves as an introduction to _GR_, though paradoxically a danger may lie here. Does _Crying_ tend to spell out P's rather ideosyncratic use of certain ideas TOO specifically at times--like the two kinds of entropy, metaphor-making and the like? Didn't he later learn  to fuzz things up to better effect? Also _Crying_ seems to mix the elegant/poetic with the demotic/colloquial a bit awkwardly. GR separates the voices more gracefully. Hope this doesn't sound too dumb. I ain't no literary critic. Will read again in another 30 years.

			P.