The Crying of Lot 49 – the Mystery of Trystero

doubting doubting doubting Thomas Pynchons new The scream of Lot 49 is his second fiction, and its his shortest t come show up ensembleegory, and many tied(p) consider it more of an experimantal fabrication. This novel is ab step to the fore a woman named Oedipa Maas and her bespeak for the enigmatical laya tear a conceal and a shadowy organization kn declargon as Trystero ( it is in any case sometimes spelled as Tristero ). This novel was written in mid-sixties which was a very(prenominal) turbulent time in the record of the united States. Many intimacys happened during this period, many of them had a dramatic influencce on the lives of the ordinary deal. During this period, the human organisms witnessed the assassination of J.F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, at that place was as well the rise in the rights women and Civil Rights movement. This was excessively a time of the so c eached drug culture, for the abuse of drugs was very unwashed. The novel shows us this reality as a world that is etern whollyy high, constantly on drugs and inebriated, fill up with secrets, teaching from questionable sources and secret identites. The subject of this writing is the secret society and an organization k this instantn as Trystero and their secret tube war against United States government and the ordained state stick onal system. onward we move on to the tale of the novel, we must first re forefront ourselves of the post innovative novel and what constitutes a post moderne literary works. Postmodern literature, as postmodernism as a whole, is very hard to define for in that respect ar no standards for it nor atomic number 18 on that point any founding fathers, writers who set the standards for it. We could say that postmodern literature is a continuation of the experimantation started by the modernist writers and authors and their usage of fragmentation, paradox, questionable authors, etc and it is withal a reaction against th e enlighment ideas set by modernist literature.As it was reference worked, postmodern literature is very hard to define and many even so say that is no eight-day exists, as well hard to determine. However, many authors and literary critics agree on common authorships that occur in postmodern literature, themese that are almost always redeem in these works and that are always assemblageed together in order to create irony, humour or to parody something.These themes are barely non always used all the postmodern authors, so they squirt not be called standard postmodern themes, scarcely they occcur most comm alone. Thomas Pynchon and his novel The hollo of Lot 49 are an simulation of postmodern writing, for Pynchon always uses parody, paranoia, capriolefulness and black humour in his works, and this work is also filled with these themes. Postmodern authors, Pynchon among them, usually treat serious themes and subjects in a humorous and manoeuvreny manner. Pynchon does tha t in this novel.In The Crying of Lot 49, Pynchon deals with a serious topic ab surface lives of people in a modern consumer America, virtually secrets and mysterious organizations, secret identities and also how discipline can wreak our thoughts and even dishearten and disturb us, and he approached all of that in a humorous and a funny way. This novel is a form of a parody of a tec novel. This is because in real detective novels, the hero starts to solve the mystery starting from discordant and numerous clues, from a, we could say, cuckoos nest of information and hales a conclusion which leads to the truth behind the mystery and reveals the severeness guy.In this novel however, we switch Oedipa who opens a mailbox to get the letter and relegates that she has a job to do, pretty simple unfeignedly, but as the novel progresses, her life and task become more complicated and complicated, she learns about the Trystero and her ex-boyfri eradicates job and business undertakin gs but instead of making things clear, instead of solution the mystery of the Trystero, she became even more confused than she was when she first found out about them, so much confused that she almost lost her mind and started to think if it all was nothing more than a joke, created by her dead soul ex-boyfri break or even whitethornbe this was all and the work of her own imagination.This novel also has paranoia present in itself, Oedipa becomes paranoiac about the world and the people around herself, but she is not the only one rattling. intimately all characters are paranoid, and the existence of the Trystero is more than enough to create a paranoid world. What also makes this novel postmodern is the usage of paronomasia. Pynchon free reins with words, names of the people, care perforate Inverarity, Mike Fallopian, Stanley koteks, Oedipa Maas, with the names of the towns like San Narciso and we also have the wordplay with words like waste which is turned here in this nov el into an acronym W. A. S. T. E. and KCUF radio station. What also makes this novel postmodern is that we have unreliable narrator.Oedipa Maas is the master(prenominal) protagonist of this story, but we catch up with the action of the novel only as she does and we know what we know, no more no less, and she is almost always drunk or on drugs, just like all other characters that pop out in the novel. We can say that this novel also combines elements of both modern and postmodern novels, because the relation between these two genres is often connected because they lot both similarities and differences. Oedipa Maas is the heroine, a modernist heroine who is trapped in a postmodern world. Her quest is not only to go against the death of Mr Inverarity and of the Tristero, but also to discover her inner self and her inner soul.She meets people who can be considered as lost causes, but Pynchon follow outs them as someone really worth battle for as they have shown the real self-dis covery. We could say that this is the novel of the character development, a bildungs roman, for Oedipa develops her character, no matter how confused she is in the end, she becomes stronger and more determined to discover the real truth, no matter how weird and confusing that truth really is. She continues and carries on even though her quest is a lost cause. However, Pynchon also uses his postmodern novel in order to criticize the modernist vision of the world by showing us a society that filled with cast aside objects and discarded people.The most obvious example of this is the acronym tempestuous, which becomes a central theme in the novel, but lead talk about it later in the paper. There are also discarded people who formed secret immunity groups and societies as a response to various forms of rejection by their society. For example we have IA group, created by a man who swore off jazz subsequently his wife cheated on him, The Alameda County Death Club and the Peter Pingui ds, a group of people who are against industrial capitalism etc. As it was state in the beginning, the subject of this paper is the mysterious Trystero organization. This novel is a bout a world, a world that seems to be constantly on drugs or drunk.We could think that this is the world that many people try to get forth from, trying to vanish from it, for in this novel Oedipa meets various people who just want to be left alone, forgotten perhaps. We see people who have not rebelled against the government and they are not the deserters, they have just chose to leave, to obnubilate and stay hidden. Oedipa sees this as their first real independent quality, a choice they have all make away from the press, the government and its institutions. They dont use official state institutions, in this case the official postal system of the United States. This is the world of secrets and hidden identities, and of course secret societies, tubing organizations, like Trystero is. What is this Tr ystero? Who are they? What is their goal? Their mission and agendum?Oedipa wants to find out just that, who they are and what they want, but unfortunately all she accomplishes is to end up completely baffled by everything and everyone she meets. As it was mentioned in the previous paragraph, she does not give up and is determined to continue with her search. Trystero represents this main aspect of underground and of hiding away from the government and the world. We as aimers of this novel know about Trystero as much as Oedipa does and we also in the end, as she does, end up confused and baffled if all of this was rattling real or was it all just her imagination or a bad joke. The peck of the book is spent following Oedipa as she tries to track have what merely the Trystero is.She stumbles upon this one night when she and Metzger are at The Scope, a club frequented by Yoyodyne employees, a huge defense contractor for the military in the area. season in the ladies room Oedipa n otices the following written near a sketch of a deadening schnoz Interested in sophisticated fun? You, hubby, girl friends. The more the merrier. Get in touch with Kirby, through WASTE only, Box 7391, L. A. 1 The book then follows a play-within-a-play format when Oedipa watches a play called The couriers Tragedy which throw aways into some context the record between Tristero and Thurn And Taxis, the latter universe a real mail diffusion company throughout Europe for many centuries. It is from this play that Oedipa learns about the history of Trystero. tally to the story, Trystero was defeated by Thurn and Taxis in the 1700. and since then it has been hiding and went underground. This Trystero now exists, or at least it appears to exist, or maybe not, as a secret society that is completely separated from the United States government and the official postal service. Oedipa even believes that Trystero battled with Pony Express and United States Postal inspection and repair over the control of information flow. However, this battle seems to go on, between Tristero and US Postal Service. Tristero is the emblem of the underground here in the novel and they are present as an invisible force with a hidden agenda and goals.Their symbolisation is a restrained post detusk which is the first thing Oedipa sees of the Tristero in a club mentioned early and their way of communicating and transfering of information is through the WASTE system which uses clever disguises their way of transferring information, a benevolent of parody to the official postal service, is by using waste-bins as their post-boxes. Thomas Pynchon does a very good job in making us believe that this society indeed really exists, but he also confuses by putting various names, most of them of people who are actually not so important for the story of the novel, but he does make do to create and illusion of a federation. The most important fail of the novel is the reproduction of the fiction al Jacobean Drama known as The couriers Tragedy.This play is where Oedipa first hear the name Tristero and of their struggle with Thurn and Taxis. This play provides us with the first account of the Tristero, but it is their symbol that really draws our attention. We leave alone now discuss the symbols of Tristero, for they are the key to understanding it, or at least trying ot understand the story behind them. These include the muted post horn and WASTE system. We will begin with the first symbol that Oedipa comes in contact with and tha th is the muted post horn. Oedipa first sees this symbol in the bathroom of a club The Scope, as a part of a small message, more like an add. Fro mthat moment she will see this symbol everywhere she goes.Genghis Cohen will show her the post horn tha ris hidden in a certain stamp collection that was I nthe monomania of her late ex-boyfriend, mr Inverarity. later(prenominal) she will see the same symbol being scribbled on paper by a technician in Yoyodine building, Stanley Koteks. Oedipa even sees it when children draw it in the park and play a game in which they mention Tristero. This post horn, as Oedipa finds out from Cohen, was a symbol of Thurn and Taxis. Their symbol is a post horn, while Tristero uses a muted post horn, probably as a way to mock them. Tristero, as it is given, fought against Thurn and Taxis and lost the battle. Tristero went into the hiding and managed t oreach United States somewhere arund 1853. nd fought the Pony Express and Wells, Fargo, and their agents were always all dressed as outlaws in black or as indians, Oedipa manages to see a ring fro man old man, Mr. Thoth, who lives in a hideaway home bulit by Pierce Inverarity. He tells her that this ring, which has the muted post horn engraved on it, was given to him by his grandfather who got it from an indian he killed. However, at one time, Oedipa met a man who wore a pin with the muted post horn What if I told you, she adressed the owner of th e pin, that I was an agent of Thurn and Taxis? What, he answered, some theatrical agency? 2 Here we have a different story about the origin of the muted post horn.According to his story, this is a symbol of Inamorati Anonymus, a group of people who forsook love, which they see as the worst addiction of all. The creator of the organziation and of the symbol was a Yoyodine executive, who found the Inamorati Anonymus after finding out that his wife was cheating on him. This leads us affirm to point when Oedipa saw for the first time the muted post horn as a part of the advertisement for this organization, which makes us believe if Tristero really is real or just an organization of people who have forsook love and make sure that no one else ever falls in love are using secretive methods to communicate with each other. some other characteristic of this novel, and another symbol of the Trystero, is the so called WASTE. This can stand as an acronym which means We Await Silent Trystero Empire, which is always written on ceaseless waste bins. This can also stand for a secret undergrounf information network that is used by people who forsook their own lives and chosen t olive I nsecrecy and away form the government. There are even corporations who refuse to use the official postal system, like Yoyodine, and there is also an organization known as Peter Penguid Society, of which Mike Fallopian is the member, who oppose the monopoly of the US Postal Service and are using their own private system.This is a system of information transfer that is used by those who want to stay on hidden, secret, and there are signs that Tristero is the runner of it. They use waste bins and their postman, or couriers,are bums and other social missfits. Inamorati Anonymus is the organiztion that openly uses the WASTE system for their communication. These two symbols, the muted post horn and the WASTE system, give us and Oedipa clues about Tristero but the lalso confuse us, brcause as we l earn about their connectionwith Tristero, we also learn their other meanings and that they are being used by some other ynderground isoalted groups and organizations. After all this confusion, Oedipa returns to the Jacobean Drama, where she first heard the word Tristero.She comes in contact with Emory Bortz, a proffesor at San Narciso College, for the information about the play itself, especially the Tristero version of the play. Unfortunately, the only person who knew the real story about the play was Driblette, who directed the play Oedipa saw, and he commited a suicide. As we draw near to the end of the novel, we see that Oedipa discovers a great deal of historical Tristero, about its origins. She discovers that it was created around 1577, I nthe Netherlands. After William of Orange achieved independence from Spain and the Holy Roman empire, he replaced the people who were in control of the Thurn and Taxis and Leopold Is rule, and in their place put a man named Jan Hinckard.Howe ver, Hinckard was challenged by his cousin Hernando Joaquin de Tristero y Calavera. Tristero fought a irregular war against Hinckard from 1578. until 1583. Tristero gives up the fighting and sets up a covert system. However, Oedipa finds out that during 17th Century, Thurn and Taxis struggle to maintain their system ,and this may mena that Tristero was very impelling during that time and period. Tristeros presence as the black coated bandits was affirm by Proffesor Bortz wh ogave her a book An Account of the Singular Peregrinations of Dr. Diocletian Blobb. Dr. Blobb survived one of their attacks with him being captured by them and sent back to England in order t otell everyone of the author of Tristero.Oedipa in the end managed t odiscover a great deal of historical information about the Tristero, but this did not satisfy her because she still did not know why Driblette mentioned the Tristero in his work, when in the original work there is no mentioning of them at all. Wheteher this is true or not, Oedipa tells everything to Mike Fallopian back at the Scope, where she first saw the muted post horn. Fallopian, after hearing her story and her findings, asks Oedipa if she ever considered the possibility that this may all had been a joke score by Pierce Inverarity. She did consider this, but refuses to think like that anymore. Later she goes back and again searches through all of the Pierces possesions and finds out that Pierce had presence in all the places and had inlfuence on all the people she met.He owned Zapfs Used Bookstore, where she bought her copy of the Jacobean drama, he also owned the Tank Theater, where she saw Driblettes production of The Couriers Tragedy. Proffesor Bortz works at San Narciso College, which was founded by Pierce himself, and even blobbs Peregrinations were bought at Zapfs Used Bookstore. Thisl eads her to believe that Fallopian may be right, that all of this was nothing more than joke, a gag produced by Pierce himself. The endi ng of the novel also does not help us, for it is open ended. Oedipa goes to an vendue of Peirces stamp collection, which is under the name Lot 49, but that is where it all ends. In a conclusion, we are left confused whether this was all real.Pynchon did a great job of providing the information about the historical founding of the Tristero, but he also filled his novel with other information, all of it made up, even the historical. Instead of finding answers, we find more and more questions. The Crying of Lot 49 shows a fragmented world in which there are always more alternatives, in this world information leads to more information which create more questions and answers. This leads people, like Oedipa in this case, to create various alternate interpretations just in order to create some look of the bigger picture onto which they will hold to. This entire Tristero conspiracy may have been a joke or a paranoid basis by Oedipa herself, or maybe there is truth behind it all. We will n ever know.We do know, that there are secret organizations who uses secret and clandestine means of communicating, there are people who have secret identities, who render truth somewhere else. We all live in the world filled with information and symbols and who knows, maybe there is a secret undercover conspiracy by a secret postal system who wants t obring down the monopol of the governments postal system. Personally, I find this novel to be very interesting because it deals with a mystery and search for the truth. When I read it, I found it hard t ounderstand it in the end, whether this is all true, if there really is Tristero, or maybe this was all just a paranoid dream by Oedipa or maybe even a possibilty that this was all a bad joke by Pierce with Oedipa as its target.any(prenominal) the truth is, we will never really know, for the novel has the open ending, but all quests, all attempts to find some sort of truth end up like that with more questions than answers and with multi ple interpretations of evidence and information. End Notes 1. Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, First ever-living fiction library edition, 1986. Pg. 52 2. ibid. , Pg. 111 Bibliography www. wikipedia. org www. sparknotes. com http//www. examiner. com/x-13462-West-Palm-Beach-Literature-Examinery2009m7d19-Modernism-v-Postmodernism-part-one-The-Crying-of-Lot-49 http//cl49. pynchonwiki. com/wiki/index. php? title=The_Crying_of_Lot_49 Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49, First perennial fiction library edition, 1986