The Poetics of Transgression: Schizophrenia, Paranoia, Narcissism, and Hyperreality in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49

[Werner Presber]

The Poetics of Transgression: Schizophrenia, Paranoia,  Narcissism,  
and Hyperreality in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49

Abstract
This thesis aims to excavate and accentuate the poetics of  
transgression manifested in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 in  
the light of psychoanalytical theory.  The psychoanalytical reading  
of this novel is indispensable since it provides
an illuminating comprehension of the concept of transgression.  The  
idea of transgression refers emphatically to the act of crossing,  
traversing, or violating boundaries and, more significantly, to the  
subversion and undermining power latent in
the act of transgression.  Chapter one offers a general introduction  
of the historical and cultural context of the novel, the theoretical  
framework and thesis structure. Chapter two resorts mainly to Gilles  
Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s understanding of the unconscious  
syntheses in Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia to delineate  
the textual structure, which refers to San Narciso.  The city is  
simultaneously the projection of Pierce Inverarity’s unconscious  
topography and the projection of
capitalist society.  The psychic and social registrations are  
similarly founded on the model of the unconscious syntheses, or, in  
Deleuze and Guattari’s words, the desiring-machines, manifesting  
their assertion that there is no boundary between the
psychic and the social and the two are both invested by the desire.   
The underground network of the Tristero otherwise projects an  
alternative force in contrast to the capitalist dictatorship of  
Pierce.  The Tristero represents the schizophrenia that is produced  
yet renounced by capitalism and it also stands for the aggressive  
force that pushes the capitalist machine to its limits.  Chapter  
three analyzes the relation between Oedipa Maas and the city San  
Narciso.  Oedipa represents a bourgeoisie
housewife whose ego centrism is cultivated by the narcissistic  
enclosure of the capitalist society in San Narciso.  The permeating  
aura of narcissism precipitates her paranoia, depriving her of the  
alternative sight to see the real Tristero.    Oedipa’s paranoiac  
obsession makes her see the Tristero as a simple conspiracy, ignoring  
its schizophrenic nature.  Opposite to such an arbitrary  
misconception, this thesis attempt to recover the proper character of  
the Tristero as a hyperreality in the light of Jean Baudrillard’s  
notion of simulation. 
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