COL49: lots of lots

[Paul Mackin]

The sense of crying Rob notes is oddly heard by me as an ANIMATE crying--the
lot being a burial lot--a tearful plea from across the grave as it were,
although  I can't think right off  why Pierce's Last Will and Testament should
any more tearful than most.


                      P.

jbor wrote:

> The other word that jumps out from the book's title, and which perhaps
> doesn't get as much attention as the multiple and ultimately indeterminate
> numerological significations of that "49", is "crying". The auctioneer
> "crying" the item to be auctioned is the literal meaning, but there is also
> an ambiguity in the way that this idiomatic phrase is structured which makes
> it sound as if the inanimate object (the "lot") is doing the "crying". The
> word carries with it connotations of weeping (across any emotion, ranging
> from sadness and distress to nostalgia to total euphoria -- thinking of
> Oedipa's bubble shades here too) as well as calling out, and both of these
> relate to the way the whole mystery calls out to Oedipa, its revelatory
> force and persistence, and the soul-searching and self-doubt and depths of
> despair into which she is ultimately plunged. There are quite a few examples
> of personification of the inanimate in the novel, and it's an important
> theme throughout Pynchon's work, and I suspect it is one reason why he was
> attracted to this phrase for his title.
>
> best