"exhausted by Mark Z Danielewski's dense and overly-complicated tome"

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

See, I’ve really read this particular book altogether too many times, quite some time ago. For me, the mystery at the novella’s core bifurcates into a series of forking paths: The “Trystero” points in the general direction of John Dee. There’s a glyph designed by John Dee that is visually similar enough to the muted posthorn as to suggest some sort of family resemblance. Although there are other possible obscure occult figures with political clout that would fit into Pynchon’s matrix, I’m opting for our illustrious librarian on account of Pierce’s real “estate” being “America”, and the fact that Dee’s navigational skills were crucial in England’s domination in what was to become the USA. In addition, there is also a quality of malignant magic (like some weird spell for self-protection) whenever the name of this anti-magical system is invoked, and the harder Oedipa pushes, the harder it (T------o?) pushes back. Oedipa sees at least three paths—“I’m witness to the most secret of soci
eties” or: “I’ve gone bonkers” or: “it’s always been like this and always present in society and I guess I’ll just have to live with and ignore it”. There are probably more options she would of considered, but when she gets on the bus for a late night tour of the posthorn’s shadow world I sense a familiar quality in the particular neck of the woods Oed’s found herself in, a place that doesn’t jibe with consensus reality but I’ll bet all sorts of folks on p-list have spent more than their fair share of time in. So, in spite of the quasi-mechanical structure of “The Crying Of Lot 49”, the very human struggle of Oedipa to maintain some vestige of sanity becomes gripping almost in spite of itself. Though there’s really not all that much to grab a hold of—kirsch-in-the-fondue, Young Republican, a suburbanite housewife living somewhere near Carmel-by-the-Sea—there’s still enough of a human being to leave you with a real sense of a person going mad, and at the end of the book you’re left 
hanging, and you’re left wondering: “whatever happened to that nice lady?” So you go back to the beginning of the book and start looking for clues . . . 
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Chris Broderick <elsuperfantastico at yahoo.com>
> Robin sez:
> 
> "The Crying of Lot 49" initially seemed a transparent
> tale that headed 
> south and then bailed on the plot, but now seems the
> most perfectly 
> cryptical of all of his tales.
> 
> So I say:
> 
> Yup.  It's all balanced on that signifier that doesn't
> signify, the Tristero (whose muted post-horn is my
> only tattoo, on my left arm.  The artist who did it
> was a bit disappointed that it was so simple.  I think
> it cost 30 bucks.)  Oedipa is, brilliantly IMHO,
> stripped of primal plots, and left with signifiers
> that don't signify and an abscence that is telegraphed
> by the novel's teasing last line.  Pynchon is right in
> complaining that it's a story based less on character
> than on some structural approach, but like the best
> experiments of Georges Perec, it is an excersize in
> style that becomes, in its telling, a humane tale.
> 
> -Chris
> 
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