Pynchon's reply

[Tore Rye Andersen]

Robin: 
 
> even more to the
> point is just how isolated Oedipa's tower in Kinneret in the Pines is
> from the sights you can see late at night from an AC transit bus
> tooling about in San Francisco. It is easy for anyone reading the
> Crying of Lot 49 to lose track of the human story, much as Oedipa
> loses track of the human element while she pursues these puzzles of
> symbology. 
 
This, to me, is as good a description as any of what Lot 49 is *really*
about, and a quick peek at the two Pynchon texts bracketing Lot 49 - The
Secret Integration and A Journey Into the Mind of Watts - would seem to 
affirm that such matters were indeed on Pynchon's mind as he wrote the novel.
 
I just reread Michael Harrington's The Other America about the invisible
margin of American society, and many of Harrington's points (and even 
metaphors) are recycled in Lot 49. Looking too intently for hidden conspiracies
does indeed prevent Oedipa from really noticing the human waste at the margins 
of society, under the freeway, just as chasing Kennedy's assassins and CIA may 
obscure this crucial theme of the novel. If only she'd looked....
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