The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) is a novel by the author Thomas Pynchon. The shortest of Pynchon's novels and often considered his most accessible, the book is about a woman, Oedipa Maas, possibly unearthing the centuries old conflict between two mail distribution companies, Thurn und Taxis and the Trystero (or Tristero). The former actually existed, and was the first firm to distribute postal mail; the latter is Pynchon's invention. The novel is often classified as a notable example of postmodern fiction. Image File history File links Size of this preview: 381 × 599 pixel Image in higher resolution (1590 × 2500 pixel, file size: 414 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) cover of the Crying of Lot 49 US first edition This image is of a book cover, and the copyright for it is... Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. ... In political geography and international politics, a country is a political division of a geographical entity, a sovereign territory, most commonly associated with the notions of state or nation and government. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative, typically in prose. ... A publisher is a person or entity which engages in the act of publishing. ... Year 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the 1966 Gregorian calendar. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ... ISBN-13 represented as EAN-13 bar code (in this case ISBN 978-3-16-148410-0) The International Standard Book Number, ISBN, is a unique[1] commercial book identifier barcode. ... Year 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the 1966 Gregorian calendar. ... A novel (from French nouvelle Italian novella, new) is an extended, generally fictional narrative, typically in prose. ... An author is any person(s) or entity(s) that originates and assumes responsibility for an expression or communication. ... Thomas Ruggles Pynchon, Jr. ... It has been suggested that first class mail be merged into this article or section. ... The Princely House of Thurn und Taxis is a German family that was a key player in the postal (mail) services in Europe in the 16th century and is well known as owners of breweries and builders of countless castles. ... The term Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated Pomo[1]) was coined in 1949 to describe a dissatisfaction with modern architecture, founding the postmodern architecture. ...

Characters

Oedipa Maas - The novel's protagonist. After her ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity, dies and she becomes co-executor of his estate, she discovers and begins to unravel a worldwide conspiracy. Oedipa functions in the novel as a type of detective, trying to find out the meaning behind Trystero in the play The Courier's Tragedy.

Pierce Inverarity - Oedipa's ex-boyfriend and a wealthy real-estate tycoon. The reader never meets him directly: all encounters are presented through Oedipa's memories. At the beginning of the novel he is already dead and is said to have been extremely rich, having owned, at one time or another, a great deal of real property and holdings in California. Official language(s) English Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Area  Ranked 3rd  - Total 158,302 sq mi (410,000 km²)  - Width 250 miles (400 km)  - Length 770 miles (1,240 km)  - % water 4. ...

Wendell "Mucho" Maas - The husband of Oedipa, Mucho once worked in a used-car lot but recently became a disc jockey for KCUF radio in Kinneret, California (a fictional town). Towards the end of the novel, the effects of his nascent LSD use alienate Oedipa. Side project of members from big time metal bands. ... Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly called LSD, LSD-25, or acid. ...

Metzger - A lawyer who works for Warpe, Wistfull, Kubitschek and McMingus law firm. He has been assigned to help Oedipa execute Pierce's estate. He and Oedipa have an affair.

Miles, Dean, Serge and Leonard - The four members of the band called The Paranoids. They serve as a means of satirizing the southern Californian youth hippie culture in the mid 1960s.

Dr. Hilarius - Oedipa's psychiatrist, who prescribes LSD, which she does not take, to Oedipa as well as other housewives. He goes crazy toward the end of the story. Admitting to being a former Nazi doctor at Buchenwald, he holes up in his office, but is taken away peacefully by the police after Oedipa disarms him. National Socialism redirects here. ... Gate with the words Jedem das Seine (literally, “to each his own”, but figuratively “everyone gets what he deserves”) Buchenwald concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg (Etter Mountain) near Weimar, Thuringia, Germany, in July 1937, and one of the largest such camps on German soil. ...

John Nefastis - A scientist obsessed with perpetual motion. He has tried to invent a type of Maxwell's demon, trying to create a perpetual motion machine. Oedipa visits him to see the machine after learning about him from Stanley Koteks. Maxwells demon is an 1867 thought experiment by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, meant to raise questions about the possibility of violating the second law of thermodynamics. ... This article or section should include material from Parallel Path See also Perpetuum mobile as a musical term Perpetual motion machines (the Latin term perpetuum mobile is not uncommon) are a class of hypothetical machines which would produce useful energy in a way science cannot explain (yet). ...

Stanley Koteks - An employee of Yoyodyne Corporation, Oedipa meets him when she wanders into his office while touring the plant. He knows something about the Trystero, but he refuses to say what he knows.

Randolph Driblette - The director of the production of Wharfinger's The Courier's Tragedy seen by Oedipa and Metzger. Driblette is a leading Wharfinger scholar, but he commits suicide before Oedipa can extract any useful information from him about Wharfinger's mention of the Tristero. Oedipa's meeting with Randolph after the play, however, sparks her to go on a quest to find the meaning behind Trystero.

Mike Fallopian - Oedipa and Metzger meet Mike Fallopian in The Scope (a Yoyodyne employee bar.) He tells them about The Peter Pinguid Society. Oedipa searches him out again later.

Genghis Cohen - The most eminent philatelist in the LA area, Cohen was hired to inventory and appraise the deceased's stamp collection. Oedipa and he discuss stamps and forgeries.

Professor Bortz - Formerly of Berkeley, now teaching at San Narciso, Bortz wrote the editor's preface in a version of Wharfinger's works. Oedipa tracks him down to learn more about Trystero.

Plot summary

After being defeated by Thurn und Taxis in the 1700s, the Tristero organization goes underground and continues to exist, with its mailboxes in the least suspected places, often appearing under their slogan W.A.S.T.E., an acronym for We Await Silent Tristero's Empire, and also a smart way of hiding their post-boxes disguised as regular waste-bins. In the plot of the novel, the existence and plans of the shadowy organization are revealed bit by bit, or, then again, it is possible that the Tristero does not exist at all. The novel's main character, Oedipa Maas, is buffeted back and forth between believing and not believing in them, without ever finding firm proof either way. The Tristero may be a conspiracy, it may be a practical joke, or it may simply be that Oedipa is hallucinating all the arcane references to the underground network, that she seems to be discovering on bus windows, toilet walls, et cetera.

The Trystero muted post horn

Prominent among these references is the "Trystero symbol", a muted post horn with one loop. Originally derived, supposedly, from the Thurn and Taxis coat of arms, Oedipa finds this symbol first in a bar bathroom, where it decorates a graffitto advertising a group of polyamorists. It later appears among an engineer's doodles, as part of a children's sidewalk jump rope game, amidst Chinese ideograms in a shop window, and in many other places. The post horn (in either original or Trystero versions) appears on the cover art of many TCL49 editions, as well as within artwork created by the novel's fans. Image File history File links MutedPosthorn. ... Image File history File links MutedPosthorn. ... The Post horn (also posthorn or post-horn) is a valveless brass instrument used to signal the arrival or departure of a mounted courier or mail coach. ... The Post horn (also posthorn or post-horn) is a valveless brass instrument used to signal the arrival or departure of a mounted courier or mail coach. ... A modern coat of arms is derived from the medi val practice of painting designs onto the shield and outer clothing of knights to enable them to be identified in battle, and later in tournaments. ... Polyamory (from poly=multiple + amor=love) is the desire, practice, or acceptance of having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved. ... An 1800 depiction of jumping rope A jump rope, rope skipping, skipping rope or skip rope is the primary tool used in the game of skipping played by children and many young adults, where one or more participants jump over a spinning rope so that it passes under their feet...

Oedipa finds herself drawn into this shadowy intrigue when an old boyfriend, the California real estate mogul Pierce Inverarity, dies. Inverarity's will names her as his executor. Soon enough, she learns that although Inverarity "once lost two million dollars in his spare time [he] still had assets numerous and tangled enough to make the job of sorting it all out more than honorary." She leaves her comfortable home in Kinneret-Among-The-Pines, a northern California village, and travels south to the fictional town of San Narciso (Spanish for "Saint Narcissus"), near Los Angeles. Exploring puzzling coincidences she uncovers while exploring Inverarity's testament, Oedipa finds what might be evidence for the Trystero's existence. Sinking or ascending ever more deeply into paranoia, she finds herself torn between believing in the Trystero and believing that it is all a hoax established by Inverarity himself. Near the novel's conclusion, she reflects, Saint Narcissus can refer to: Narcissus, Argeus, and Marcellinus, martyrs Narcissus, Urban, and Ampliatus, martyrs Narcissus of Jerusalem, a bishop of Jerusalem An early bishop of Girona San Narciso Category: ... Flag Seal Nickname: City of Angels Location Location within Los Angeles County in the state of California Coordinates , Government State County California Los Angeles County Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) Geographical characteristics Area     City 1,290. ...

He might have written the testament only to harass a one-time mistress, so cynically sure of being wiped out he could throw away all hope of anything more. Bitterness could have run that deep in him. She just didn't know. He might himself have discovered The Tristero, and encrypted that in the will, buying into just enough to be sure she'd find it. Or he might even have tried to survive death, as a paranoia; as a pure conspiracy against someone he loved.

Along the way, Oedipa meets a wide range of eccentric characters. Her therapist in Kinneret, a Dr. Hilarius, turns out to have done his internship in Buchenwald, working to induce insanity in captive Jews. "Liberal SS circles felt it would be more humane," he explains. In San Francisco, she meets a man who claims membership in the IA, Inamorati Anonymous—a group founded to help people avoid falling in love, "the worst addiction of all". (Ironically, the anonymous inamorato wears a lapel pin shaped as the Trystero post horn, which Oedipa first saw on an advertisement for group sex.) And, in Berkeley, she meets John Nefastis, an engineer who believes he has built a working version of Maxwell's Demon, a means for defeating entropy. The book ends with Oedipa attending an auction, waiting for bidding to begin on a set of a rare postage stamps, which she believes representatives of Tristero are trying to acquire. (Auction items are called "lots"; a lot is "cried" when the auctioneer is taking bids on it; the stamps in question are "Lot 49".) The   (German for Protective Squadron), abbreviated (Runic) or SS (Latin), was a large security and military organization of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi Party) in Germany. ... Nickname: Location of the City and County of San Francisco, California Coordinates: , Country United States of America State California City-County San Francisco Founded 1776 Government  - Mayor Gavin Newsom Area  - City  47 sq mi (122 km²)  - Land  46. ... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ... Berkeley is a city on the east shore of San Francisco Bay in northern California, in the United States. ... Maxwells demon is an 1867 thought experiment by the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, meant to raise questions about the possibility of violating the second law of thermodynamics. ... Ice melting - classic example of entropy increasing[1] described in 1862 by Rudolf Clausius as an increase in the disgregation of the molecules of the body of ice. ...

Pynchon devotes a significant part of the book to a "play within a play", a detailed description of a performance of an imaginary Jacobean revenge play, involving intrigues between Thurn und Taxis and Tristero. Like the Mousetrap which Shakespeare placed within Hamlet, the events and atmosphere of The Courier's Tragedy (by "Richard Wharfinger") mirror those in the larger story around them. The Jacobean era refers to a period in English and Scottish history that coincides with the reign of James I (1603 – 1625). ... The revenge play or revenge tragedy is a form of tragedy extremely popular in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Hamlet and Horatio in the cemetery by Eugène Delacroix For other uses, see Hamlet (disambiguation). ...

As in his earlier novel, V., Pynchon seems to be making a point about human beings' need for certainty, and their need to invent conspiracy theories to fill the vacuum in places where there is no certainty. Also, as he had in V., Pynchon laces the book with original song lyrics and outrageously named characters—e.g., Genghis Cohen, Manny DiPresso. "Mike Fallopian cannot be a real character's name," protests one reviewer.^[1] book cover V. is the debut novel of Thomas Pynchon published in 1963, concerning the journey of discharged U.S. Navy sailor Benny Profane through a decadent group of artists in 1956, along with the attempt of an aging traveller named Herbert Stencil to locate the mysterious woman he knows... A conspiracy theory attempts to attribute the ultimate cause of an event or chain of events (usually political, social, or historical events), or the concealment of such causes from public knowledge, to a secret, and often deceptive plot by a covert alliance of powerful or influential people or organizations. ... For other uses, see Genghis Khan (disambiguation). ... Manic depression, with its two principal sub-types, bipolar disorder and major depression, was first clinically described near the end of the 19th century by psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin, who published his account of the disease in his Textbook of Psychiatry. ...

Some have hypothesized that Pynchon was influenced by the racial tensions in southern California that would later turn into riots across the country. Critics have read the book as both an "exemplary postmodern text"^[2] and an outright parody of postmodernism.^[3] Pynchon himself disparaged this book, writing in 1984, "As is clear from the up-and-down shape of my learning curve, however, it was too much to expect that I'd keep on for long in this positive or professional direction. The next story I wrote was The Crying of Lot 49, which was marketed as a 'novel,' and in which I seem to have forgotten most of what I thought I'd learned up until then."^[4] The term Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated Pomo[1]) was coined in 1949 to describe a dissatisfaction with modern architecture, founding the postmodern architecture. ... In contemporary usage, a parody (or lampoon) is a work that imitates another work in order to ridicule, ironically comment on, or poke some affectionate fun at the work itself, the subject of the work, the author or fictional voice of the parody, or another subject. ... Year 1984 (MCMLXXXIV) was a leap year starting on Sunday (link displays the 1984 Gregorian calendar). ...

Allusions within the book

The Crying of Lot 49 book cover, featuring the Thurn und Taxis post horn

As ever with Pynchon's writing, the labyrinthine plots offer myriad interconnecting cultural references. Understanding these references allows for a much richer reading of the work. J. Kerry Grant wrote A Companion to the Crying of Lot 49^[5] in attempts to catalogue these references, but it is neither definitive nor complete. Image File history File links The Crying of Lot 49 book cover This image is a book cover. ... Image File history File links The Crying of Lot 49 book cover This image is a book cover. ...

The Beatles

The Crying of Lot 49 was published shortly after Beatlemania and the "British invasion" which took place in America and other Western countries. Indeed, internal context clues indicate that it is probably set in 1964, the year in which A Hard Day's Night was released. Pynchon, aptly, makes a wide variety of Beatles allusions. Most prominent are the Paranoids, a band composed of cheerful marijuana smokers whose lead singer, Miles, is a high-school dropout. The Paranoids all speak with American accents but sing in English ones; at one point, a guitar player is forced to relinquish control of a car to his girlfriend because he cannot see through his hair. It is not clear whether Pynchon was aware of the Beatles' own nickname for themselves, "Los Para Noias";^[6] since the novel is replete with other references to paranoia, Pynchon may have chosen the band's name for other reasons. The Beatles arrival at Americas JFK Airport in 1964 has proved a particularly enduring image of Beatlemania. ... For other uses, see British Invasion (disambiguation). ... The film A Hard Days Night (1964) is a mockumentary written by Alun Owen and starring The Beatles during the height of Beatlemania. ... A Cannabis sativa plant The drug cannabis, also called marijuana, is produced from parts of the cannabis plant, primarily the cured flowers and gathered trichomes of the female plant. ...

Pynchon refers to a rock song, "I Want to Kiss Your Feet", a self-abasing version of "I Want to Hold Your Hand". The artist, Sick Dick and the Volkswagens, echoes such actual groups as the El Dorados, the Edsels, the Cadillacs and the Jaguars^[5] (as well as an early name the Beatles themselves were forced to use, "Long John and the Silver Beetles"). "Sick Dick" may also echo Richard Wharfinger, author of "that ill, ill Jacobean revenge play" known as The Courier's Tragedy.^[5] On top of all this, the song's title also keeps up a recurring sequence of allusions to Saint Narcissus, a third-century bishop of Jerusalem. Music sample I Want to Hold Your Hand ( file info) Problems? See media help. ... Cover of compilation album The El Dorados were an American doo-wop group who achieved their greatest success with the song At My Front Door in 1955. ... The Edsels were an American Doo-Wop group active during the late 1950s and early 1960s. ... The Cadillacs were an American rock-and-roll and doo-wop group from Harlem, New York; active from 1953 to 1962. ... Saint Narcissus can refer to: Narcissus, Argeus, and Marcellinus, martyrs Narcissus, Urban, and Ampliatus, martyrs Narcissus of Jerusalem, a bishop of Jerusalem An early bishop of Girona San Narciso Category: ... For other uses, see Jerusalem (disambiguation). ...

Late in the novel, Oedipa's husband Mucho Maas, a disc jockey at Kinneret radio station KCUF, describes his experience of discovering the Beatles. Mucho refers to their early song "She Loves You", as well as hinting at the areas the Beatles were later to explore. Pynchon writes, This is a list of fictional radio stations. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... She Loves You is a hit song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, originally recorded by the The Beatles for release as a single in 1963. ...

"Whenever I put the headset on now," he'd continued, "I really do understand what I find there. When those kids sing about 'She loves you,' yeah well, you know, she does, she's any number of people, all over the world, back through time, different colors, sizes, ages, shapes, distances from death, but she loves. And the 'you' is everybody. And herself. Oedipa, the human voice, you know, it's a flipping miracle." His eyes brimming, reflecting the color of beer.

"Baby," she said, helpless, knowing of nothing she could do for this, and afraid for him.

He put a little clear plastic bottle on the table between them. She stared at the pills in it, and then understood. "That's LSD?" she said.

Lysergic acid diethylamide, commonly called LSD, LSD-25, or acid. ...

Vladimir Nabokov

Pynchon, like Kurt Vonnegut, was a student at Cornell University, where he probably at least audited Vladimir Nabokov's Literature 312 class. (Nabokov himself had no recollection of him, but Nabokov's wife Véra recalls grading Pynchon's examination papers, thanks only to his handwriting, "half printing, half script".)^[7] The year before Pynchon graduated, Nabokov's novel Lolita was published in the United States; among other things, Lolita introduced the word "nymphet" to describe a sexually attractive girl between the ages of nine and fourteen. In following years, mainstream usage altered the word's meaning somewhat, broadening its applicability. Perhaps appropriately, Pynchon provides an early example of the modern "nymphet" usage entering the literary canon. Serge, the Paranoids' teenage counter-tenor, loses his girlfriend to a middle-aged lawyer. At one point he expresses his angst in song: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. ... Cornell University is a university located in Ithaca, New York, USA. Its two medical campuses are in New York City and Education City, Qatar. ... Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков, pronounced ) (April 22 [O.S. April 10] 1899, Saint Petersburg – July 2, 1977, Montreux) was a Russian-American, Academy Award nominated author. ... Lolita (1955) is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. ... For other uses, see Angst (disambiguation). ...

What chance has a lonely surfer boy

For the love of a surfer chick,

With all these Humbert Humbert cats

Coming on so big and sick?

For me, my baby was a woman,

For him she's just another nymphet.

Lolita (1955) is a novel by Vladimir Nabokov. ...

Remedios Varo

Near the beginning of The Crying of Lot 49, Oedipa recalls a trip to an art museum in Mexico with Inverarity during which she encounters a painting: Bordando el Manto Terrestre [image] by Remedios Varo. The painting shows eight women inside a tower, where they are presumably held captive. Six maidens are weaving a tapestry that flows out of the windows. The tapestry seems to constitute the world outside of the tower. Oedipa's reaction to the tapestry gives us some insight into her difficulty in determining what is real and what is a fiction created by Inverarity for her benefit. Useless Science or the Alchemist, 1955 Remedios Varo Uranga (December 16, 1908 - October 8, 1963) was a surrealist painter. ...

She had looked down at her feet and known, then, because of a painting, that what she stood on had only been woven together a couple thousand miles away in her own tower, was only by accident known as Mexico, and so Pierce had taken her away from nothing, there'd been no escape.

California Gold Rush

The significance of the number 49 within the novel cannot be placed for sure, but, as the book is preoccupied with the theme of communications, the year 1849 would seemingly bear some resemblance to the text. 1849 was the second year of the California Gold Rush in which vast quantities of telecommunications equipment, including a private mail system, were rolled out to support those rushing to California.^[8]

The Courier's Tragedy

Pynchon devotes a significant part of the book to a "play within a play", a detailed description of a performance of an imaginary Jacobean revenge play, involving intrigues between Thurn und Taxis and Tristero. Like the "The Murder of Gonzago" which Shakespeare placed within Hamlet, the events and atmosphere of The Courier's Tragedy (by the fictional Richard Wharfinger) mirror those in the larger story around them. The Jacobean era refers to a period in English and Scottish history that coincides with the reign of James I (1603 – 1625). ... The revenge play or revenge tragedy is a form of tragedy extremely popular in the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... Hamlet and Horatio in the cemetery by Eugène Delacroix For other uses, see Hamlet (disambiguation). ...

In many aspects it resembles a typical revenge play, such as The Spanish Tragedy by Thomas Kyd, Hamlet by William Shakespeare and plays by John Webster. Title page of the Quarto edition (1615) The Spanish Tragedie: or, Hieronimo is Mad Againe is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1587-1590 and first performed in London around 1590. ... Thomas Kyd (1558 - 1594) was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama. ... Hamlet and Horatio in the cemetery by Eugène Delacroix For other uses, see Hamlet (disambiguation). ... Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ... John Webster (c. ...

Response

The Crying of Lot 49 was widely read at its release. In fact, the symbol of the Trystero, a muted postal horn, was found scribbled on walls and on necklaces following the success of the book.

Allusions to The Crying of Lot 49 in other works

1967 U.S. paperback edition

• The Yoyodyne company, which first appears in V., is also referenced in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, and it is a manufacturer of starship drives in the Star Trek universe. Angel, the spin-off series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, includes a firm named Yoyodyne, although this may be an indirect allusion via the Buckaroo Banzai film. ABC television created a website for a fictional company named PB-Sales, in connection with their TV show Lost; PB-Sales specializes in managing and controlling other corporations, including Yoyodyne and Daystrom Data Concepts (a nod to the Star Trek episode "The Ultimate Computer"). ^[9] The GNU General Public License uses "Yoyodyne, Inc." as the name of a company in an example of a copyright disclaimer.

• Pynchon himself has made two cameo appearances on the animated television series The Simpsons. In both cameos, his face is drawn covered by a paper bag to preserve his anonymity. His second appearance, on the sixteenth-season premiere "All's Fair In Oven War", features a sequence of puns. Tasting a wasabi-flavoured chicken wing, he comments:

"These wings are V.-licious! I'll put this recipe in my Gravity's Rainbow Cookbook, right next to The Frying of Latke 49."^[10]

• On his album Fishcoteque (1988), the Jazz Butcher (a.k.a. Pat Fish) named one track "Looking for Lot 49".

• Two bands named Lot 49 have existed, one a "hardcore" group from Ontario and the other an indie rock group from New York City.

• The Florida group, Yoyodyne, takes their name from the novel.

• Both Radiohead and Yo La Tengo have included Pynchonian motifs in their works, some of them hinging upon TCL49.^[11] Yo La Tengo named a song "The Crying of Lot G" on their album "...And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out". Radiohead also references the novel in the name of their online merchandise shop and mailing list, W.A.S.T.E. (which originally sent out physical mail, making the reference more apt)

• Nicholas Meyer's 1993 novel The Canary Trainer describes a fictional painting by the famous Impressionist Degas, a painting which happens to show Sherlock Holmes playing violin in the Opera Garnier. To explain why this work is not prominently displayed in an art gallery, Meyer adds a tongue-in-cheek footnote, explaining that it was bought by the late "Marquis de Tour et Tassis", then auctioned off by the Marquis's widow. Both the aristocrat's name (a clear variant of "Thurn and Taxis") and the auction are wry nods to Pynchon.

• The sixth book in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events sequence also contains a TCL49 reference. The middle child, Klaus, is reading an auction catalogue and mentions that he has "read up to Lot #49, which is a valuable postage stamp". Later on they attend the auction, but delays force the auctioneer to skip Lot 49.

• In the novel Count Zero (1986) by William Gibson (who has often stated his admiration of Thomas Pynchon), the multinational corporation Maas Neotek is named in honor of Oedipa Maas.

• In Lawrence Norfolk's novel Lemprière's Dictionary (1991), a mysterious Mr. O'Tristero suddenly appears out of nowhere to tell the protagonist and writer Lemprière that he is his "rival," after which he disappears again.

• Although Pynchon himself disparaged this book somewhat (see above), he reused characters from it. Clayton "Bloody" Chiclitz, the Yoyodyne founder who originated in V., returns in Gravity's Rainbow, and Mucho Maas has a cameo in Vineland.

• In 2003, the peer-to-peer program WASTE briefly appeared, designed by Justin Frankel as a reference to the book's dark postal service W.A.S.T.E. It uses encryption to maintain privacy, while also requiring encryption keys on both sides to get into the network in the first place, maintaining its shadowy namesake. Ironically, it was disavowed by Nullsoft's parent company, AOL, and considered all subsequent downloads unauthorized. Development of this darknet still continues as of 2006^[12].

• In Frank Portman's novel King Dork, The Crying of Lot 49 is one of the books Tom Henderson finds in his house basement.

• A muted post horn can be seen in the graffiti in the background of one shot in the 1980 film, Rude Boy, starring the Clash.

• The song Dr Hubris and His Vile of Turpentine by indie singer-songwriter Emily Wells contains the lyrics "In the middle of your pride, a crying hole the size of Lot 49" as well as references to San Narciso.

• In Ken Kesey's novel Sailor Song the boat bought by Michael Carmody is originally named Lot 49 and then re-christened Cobra.

• In the 2007 film Cthulhu, one of the pivotal scenes is that of an auction of the hero's mother's estate; the auctioneer, a woman, is introduced as "Lauren Passerine", as the hero's lawyer points out that "an auctioneer cries a sale". When the object of the hero's curiosity, his mother's house, comes up for bids it is classified as Lot 49.

• The entire text of the book is the message encoded within the dynamic art installation San Jose Semaphore^[13], located on the top of the Adobe Systems headquarters building in San Jose, CA. The winners of the challenge to decode the message^[14] and the answer^[15] were revealed on 14 August 2007 at 1:00pm PDT.

Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (453x747, 112 KB) Summary The Crying of Lot 49, copyright 1966, 1965 by Thomas Pynchon. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high resolution version (453x747, 112 KB) Summary The Crying of Lot 49, copyright 1966, 1965 by Thomas Pynchon. ... Yoyodyne is a fictional defense contractor introduced in Thomas Pynchons V. (1961) and featured prominently in his novel The Crying of Lot 49 (1965). ... book cover V. is the debut novel of Thomas Pynchon published in 1963, concerning the journey of discharged U.S. Navy sailor Benny Profane through a decadent group of artists in 1956, along with the attempt of an aging traveller named Herbert Stencil to locate the mysterious woman he knows... The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension! (sometimes just Buckaroo Banzai) is a science fiction film that has reached cult film status. ... The current Star Trek franchise logo Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment series and media franchise. ... Angel is a spin-off of the American television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. ... Buffy the Vampire Slayer is an Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated American cult television series that initially aired from March 10, 1997 until May 20, 2003. ... The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) operates television and radio networks in the United States and is also shown on basic cable in Canada. ... This is a list of fictional companies. ... Lost is an Emmy Award and Golden Globe-winning American serial drama television series that follows the lives of plane crash survivors on a mysterious tropical island, after a passenger jet flying between Australia and the United States crashes somewhere in the South Pacific. ... 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Notes

External links in the following were last verified on 9 July 2005, unless otherwise noted. is the 190th day of the year (191st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

1. ^ Geddes, Dan. "Distorted Communication in Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49", The Satirist (September 2002).
2. ^ Castillo, Debra A. "Borges and Pynchon: The Tenuous Symmetries of Art", in New Essays, ed. Patrick O'Donnell, pp. 21-46 (Cambridge University Press: 1992). ISBN 0-521-38833-3.
3. ^ Bennett, David. "Parody, Postmodernism and the Politics of Reading", Critical Quarterly 27, No. 4 (Winter 1985): pp. 27-43.
4. ^ Pynchon, Thomas R. Introduction to Slow Learner (Boston: Little, Brown: 1984). ISBN 0-316-72442-4.
5. ^ ^{a b c} Grant, J. Kerry. A Companion to The Crying of Lot 49 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1994). ISBN 0-8203-1635-0.
6. ^ Harrison, George MBE et al. The Beatles Anthology (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000). ISBN 0-8118-2684-8.
7. ^ Appel, Alfred Jr. Interview, published in Wisconsin Studies in Contemporary Literature 8, No. 2 (spring 1967). Reprinted in Strong Opinions (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973).
8. ^ Tanner, T. Thomas Pynchon (London and New York: Methuen, 1982, ISBN 0-416-31670-0), p. 65
9. ^ PB-Sales website, accessed 18 May 2006.
10. ^ (long) A review of "All's Fair in Oven War (FABF20)" by Benjamin Robinson
11. ^ Spermatikos Logos, a web resource on Pynchon.
12. ^ WASTE page at SourceForge, accessed 14 April 2007.
13. ^ San Jose Semaphore, a public artwork by Ben Rubin
14. ^ (PDF) A paper describing the decoding of the code and revealing the answer
15. ^ (PDF) The artist presents the solution to the semaphore's code

Jorge Luis Borges (August 24, 1899 – June 14, 1986) was an Argentine writer. ... George Harrison, MBE (25 February 1943[1][2] – 29 November 2001[3]) was an Academy Award and Grammy Award-winning English rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, author and sitarist best known as the lead guitarist of The Beatles. ... SourceForge is a collaborative revision control and software development management system. ...

References

• Pynchon, Thomas R. The Crying of Lot 49 (J. B. Lippincott, 1966): the original hardcover edition.
• Pynchon, Thomas R. The Crying of Lot 49 — Harper and Row, 1986, reissued 1990. ISBN 0-06-091307-X: Perennial Fiction Library edition.
• Pynchon, Thomas R. "A Journey into the Mind of Watts", The New York Times Magazine (12 June 1966), pp. 34-35, 78, 80-82, 84. Pynchon's article about the 1965 Watts riots.
• Cover images, in HyperArts.
• ThomasPynchon.com, a web-based exploration of Pynchon's fiction.