The Crying of Lot 49



The Crying of Lot 49 is a 1966 novel by Thomas Pynchon. It is about a woman named Oedipa Maas who unravels the rivalry between two mail distribution companies, Trystero and Thurn und Taxis.

Though it is significantly shorter than the rest of Pynchon's novels (especially Against the Day and Mason & Dixon), it has become one of Pynchon's most popular books, after Gravity's Rainbow and possibly V.


 * Awesome McCoolname: Oedipa Maas, Dr. Hilarius, Genghis Cohen, Mike Fallopian, and a radio station called KCUF.
 * Bloody Hilarious: The Courier's Tragedy, a (fictional) Jacobean revenge play that features in Chapter 3.
 * Expy: Despite being from Southern California, the four members of the band The Paranoids are very similar to The Beatles. A nickname for The Beatles was "Los Paranoias."
 * Herr Doktor: Oedipa's psychiatrist reveals himself to be a former Nazi doctor who experimented on Jews.
 * No Ending: Because it's a Pynchon novel.
 * Post Modernism
 * Shout-Out: When Serge of The Paranoids loses his eight-year old girlfriend to a middle-aged man, he writes a song that namechecks Humbert Humbert. As you would expect from a Pynchon novel, there are dozens of others.