CoL 49 Pynchonwiki

[robinlandseadel at comcast.net]

          "Dave Monroe": 
          Mendelson, Edward.  "The Sacred, the Profane,
          and The Crying of Lot 49." Individual and Community:
          Variations on a Theme in American Literature.
          Ed. Kenneth H. Baldwin and David K. Kirby.
          Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1975.  182-222.

As I recall, read that one back at University Press Books in Berkeley.

But Donald Tyson's 'The Enocian Apocalypse:

http://tinyurl.com/2skpkd

. . . . is what got me real worked up over the number 49 and its occult 
implications. Note the extremes Pynchon is willing to go with gematria 
and numerology in his work, in particular in Against the Day:

"Of course not, it's in code, isn't it, said Bevis. 
"Fiendish code, I might add. Right off I noticed it 
uses both Old and New Style alphabets---quite pleased 
with myself until twigging that each letter in this alphabet 
also has it's own numerical value, what was known among 
ancient Jewish students of the Torah as 'gematria.' So, as if 
there wasn't quite enough threat to the old mental balance already, 
the message must now be taken also as a series of digits, wherewith 
readers may discover in the text at hand certain hidden messages by adding 
together the number-values of the letters in a group, substituting other groups 
of the same value, so generatting another, covert message. Furthermore this 
particular gematria doesn't stop at simple addition."
     "Oh, dear. What else?"
     "Raising to powers, calculating logarithms, converting strings of 
characters to terms of a series and finding the limits they 
converge to, and---I say Latewood, if you could see 
the look on your face. . .  ."
     "Feel free, please. As there's little enough 
hysterical giggling out here, why we must 
snatch it wheree'er find it, mustn't we."
     "Not to mention field-coefficients, 
eigen values, metric tensors----"

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0701&msg=114836&keywords=gematria%20