Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great introduction to Thomas Pynchon, 18 Oct 2007
Some people will find Thomas Pynchons's style almost inpenetrable(it's been described by critics as turgid and overwritten before) - so rather than getting stuck straight into V or Gravity's Rainbow (500 pages +) those who wish to read Thomas Pynchon may like to try this first at a little over 100 pages.
Although there are many comic scenes in the book the overall effect is starkly melancholy, as the main character, Oedipa Maas, prompted by the contents of an ex-lover's estate of which she is unexpectedly made executrix, obsessively pursues a secret postal service with medieval roots in Europe, which appears to exert a malign yet unclear effect on society...or does it? The book never answers this, as it ends just as Oedipa may be about to find an answer.
Instead the reader is left with a bleak sense of Oedipa's growing paranoia, neurosis and unhealthy fixation with the apparent secret society, in a likely metaphor for conspiracy theorists and cults everywhere. It's a funny book, but the madness of obsession and paranoia are well conveyed in the subtext of the plot, and might leave you feeling creeped.......
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
It's practically perfect!, 8 Jul 2003
By A Customer
I haven't attempted Gravity's Rainbow yet but after reading The Crying of Lot 49 know that I will - it's on my bookshelf for the moment I finish DeLillo's Underworld which is an epic journey in itself. If you haven't read any Pynchon, don't even try it without making yourself very comfortable with a notebook, a biro and a perplexed look. Combining a vast complexity of narrative themes and strands, this novel (and it is tremendously novel) also makes startling use of different types of media including film and drama ensuring that the reader is never allowed to relax and miss the point. The reader is torn between voyeurism and genuine fear as Oedipa appears knowing but unwitting and definitely not in control. She's a great creation through which to explore the notions of modern femininity, marriage, religion, our attitudes to death, to drama, to mass media and our insatiable consumption of it, and so many other things that this book explores. Read it at your peril, ignore it at your peril - it's one of those books you didn't know you couldn't live without until you'd finished reading it.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Mind-Altering Achievement, 3 Jan 2008
Yay... I've read a book without dr who in it... quite an achievement :-)
In most circumstances I'd be left with a feeling of "yes... and...?" if a tale finished like this one did... but strangely enough I don't... it is closed... even though it is totally left unfinished... very weird you get this build up of intensity and pace throughout as the plot twists and mysteries deepen... and then towards the end it kind of slows down, almost like thought processes as you realise you might not actually want to resolve things...
It's an unusal journey for a character... and as I say is pretty much left unresolved... there are still loads of questions about Oedipa and what happens next... but that's right... there should be no resoltuion...
I looked stuff up on Wikipedia - Tristero, Thurn & Taxis... the latter was real... which has made me slightly curious about how much else is factual... books like that are always intriguing... ones that mix fact and fiction into a big mush and you can no longer see where ones ends and the other begins...
I've never been much for conspiracy theories... always figure people are to busy or too stupid to actually conspire... but this is at least plausible... in a surreal sort of way... and as I've mentioned has helped open my eyes to coincidence, or synchronicities - I mean I had always noticed the big ones... just maybe not taken in the actual number of them... or really noticed the little ones... like coming home after reading about the SS Salesman and Tristero to find my partner watching "The Doctor" and on screen are guys in SS looking uniform and others blacked up, all in black and looking all spooky and scary... I wouldn't have really noticed before...
The way that each character that we meet is on their own journey... many peripheral characters in novels serve to advance the plot, and I suppose each journey does do that... but strangely some people get a better conclusion that Oedipa... a more resolved conclusion as opposed to a better one... I don't think walking out to sea, or losing your mind to paranoia or LSD is a "better" conclusion, just more conclusive... Obviously not all... but some...
I did find I had to go back and read some bits over, but i think that's more to do with the distracting nature of trying to read on the bus, rather than any criticism of the author... Some bits made me laugh out loud and made everybody on the bus look at me... Hmmm... paranoia... :-)
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