AtD - well, whadda ya know ...

[Chris Broderick]

I know what you mean about Lot 49.  I think part of it
has to do with the fact that it's such a short novel,
and the only one of his that has a single, central
protagonist.  In a way, I feel that what TRP was
trying to do to Oedipa Maas in Lot 49 is what he tries
to do with the reader in Gravity's Rainbow, to
gradually strip away all certainties about connections
between things, people, ideas, etc.  Maybe I'm just
overly enchanted with the line (I'm madly
paraphrasing, because my copy of lot 49 has been lent,
never to be seen again...) where Oedipa is walking
under the indifferent stars.  It's a good & healthy
point for an atheist like myself to begin.  Isn't it?

I certainly agree that that same sense of metaphysical
awe is missing in Vineland, to be replaced by more
silliness & more Politics with a capital P.  I felt
that it was largely (though not entirely) missing from
M&D, too, though I will be the first to admit that I
didn't give that novel the reading it deserves.  I've
been enjoying the 3 page synopses, if only to keep
thinking, that really happened in the book?  Really?

I will have to go back to the Transbay Terminal with
Oedipa Maas in mind.  I guess we don't have too much
longer to do that.  Aren't they turning it into a
Quiznos, or a hockey arena, or something?  

I always think of the famous line about San Narciso
looking like a printed circuit, as I grew up in San
Jose, and watched my neighborhood turn from a suburb
near an apricot orchard to a suburb near a suburb near
another suburb...

-Chris
--- robinlandseadel at comcast.net wrote:

> "The Crying of
> Lot 49" has (ultimately) the greatest metaphysical
> "Shock & Awe" of any of his books.

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