The Crying of Lot 49

Upon the completion of this book (The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon), my original declaration that this book was eccentric and confusing, stands confirmed. Before I really delved deep into the book, I was aware that the novel would have hallucinations and a sense of paranoia (as vividly displayed by the music band “The Paranoids” that were constantly present). From the onset of the book there was this general consensus from literary elements as well as the cultural elements of the time, that this book was unusual and was a depiction of the times. At the very beginning of the story, Oedipa’s doctor is randomly calling her in the wee hours of the morning attempting to convince her to take LSD: “When can you let us fit you into our schedule.”(8). This random and abrupt incident serves to set the absurdity of the tone for the story. Occurrences such as these are common happenings in the novel and they add to the confusion as well as ridiculous nature. The next major act presented in the story that hinted to me that this would be a strange tale of everyone being “paranoid” was the continuous presence of “The Paranoids”. Each time The Paranoids were around, naturally, I assumed (as the characters felt) an eerie feeling was around. The band seemed to appear in the most random, awkward, and strange moments, like when the minor character, Manny Di Presso suddenly runs up on Oedipa and Metzer claiming to be a lawyer bringing a case against the estate of Pierce Inverarity: “Metzer looked around. The Paranoids and their chicks may have been out of earshot…. ‘They’ve been listening’, screamed Di Presso, ‘thosde kids. All the time, somebody listens in, snoops; they bug your apartment, they tap your phone-‘” (48). The Paranoids seem to add even more absurdity to bizarre situations. Everyone is on the edge of their seat. Everyone believes that there is some great conspiracy out there and the presence of the Paranoids adds to the mood of their anxiety. This was another indicator to me that this book would be full of delusions. The last and one of the most important indicators of the certain in congruency of the story was the use of drugs/the attempt to get others to take drugs. Drugs such as LSD and mushrooms were highly popular drugs during the 1960s and the topic of drugs surrounds this entire story. Each chapter has some mention of drugs and has representations of the side affects of drugs: “They had all been smoking, snuffing, or injecting something, and perhaps did not see her at all.” (98).. Even though Oedipa refuses to take them, she herself is constantly surrounded by people who are taking them and the atmosphere is mostly convoluted with these drugs, that even though she does not directly take these drugs, she still suffers the side affects such as hallucinations and confusion. These hallucinations interfered with her every day functioning as she was willing to admit to herself that: “Later, possibly, she would have trouble sorting the night into real and dreamed.” (95). With such conflict and confusion amongst the main character, I knew that I myself was doomed to be confused, because if she herself did not know whether or not the events she believed to be happening were real or not, then how was I suppose to know. I think Pynchon did this (wrote the story this way) to heighten the story so it would not only fit in the time period by its topic and allusions, but also in the mood of the times.

The Brooch

It is quite possible that Howard suffers from the Oedipus complex in which he unconsciously dreamed of killing his father to marry his mother, however since his father went away after six months after his birth it is quite possible that his eccentric attachment to his mother is “the marriage”. With his competition gone (his father), Howard has claimed his mother as his woman and he has a weird and twisted relationship to his mother and toward other girls. It seemed as if Howard was not even really interested in women, by the angelic look he had on his face as he passed by these women without looking at them. “…hurried with averted head, even when his mother was not with him, past young girls in the streets…” (648). If he had already formed a solid “relationship” with his mother, there was no need for him to betray her messing with other women. Their strange relationship continued even when he went to college she moved with him. They had grown so dependent on each other with the absence of strong male figures in both of their lives (she being husbandless and fatherless) gravitate towards each other. They are filling that missing void with each other, esp. Howard’s mother. She reminds me of Narcissa in “There Was a Queen”, because Narcissa did the same thing after the death of her husband and all she had left was her little son. Getting stuck in the Oedipus complex is very unhealthy and will inevitably lead to unhealthy relationships with women in the future, thus with Howard, he went from one extreme to the next: He married a “loose” woman (who was doomed to have unhealthy relationships as well, because she was an orphan and had no one around to teach her how to build healthy relationships with men). The first signs that their relationship was doomed to be dysfunctional was when he was so eager to marry her so quickly and then his physical aggression towards her. “She fell back a little as he gripped her shoulder…he dragged her, screaming and struggling…across the dance floor…took her across his lap and spanked her.” (651). Howard is assuming a father role in spanking her. This is obviously not a typical husband-wife relationship. Being in a relationship with someone other than his mother was definitely hard for him that is why his relationship with his wife, Amy, was so messed up, because he really did not know how to balance his emotions and feelings in a relationship with a woman. Eventually the battle between his weird relationship with his mother and with his wife (with neither of them working out successfully) leads to his suicide.

There Was a Queen

“There Was a Queen” by William Faulkner depicts the triumph of the New South and the fading away of the “Old South”. This depiction is paralleled to the young Bayard wife, Narcissa, and the last “true” Bayard woman, Miss Jenny. Miss Jenny is the last blood true full blooded member of the Satoris family and she herself is close to death. In direct opposition to Miss Jenny is Narcissa the young wife of the last dead Bayard. Miss Jenny represents the fading South, while Narcissa represents the new age of the South, which is full of change.
Miss Jenny is the Queen referred to in the title. She has been reigning over the family land and slaves ever since the death of the rest of her relatives. As she continues to age, times are drastically changing during this post Civil War period; however she, like most Southerners deeply rooted in their own mindsets, is stubborn to change. Even the house servant Elnora notices this change with the coming of Narcissa and she does not like it either. With much disdain and disgust, Elnora declares that Narcissa is unlike the Sartoris family and has no business attempting to fit in. “I ain’t got nothing against her. I just say let quality consort with quality, and unquality do the same thing.” (734). Elnora (and Miss Jenny) recognizes and feels that Narcissa is unlike the Sartoris family in many ways and she does not have a good feeling about the future changes that may come along with her presence.
Despite her resilience to the changes, she and Elnora must endure them through Narcissa. Narcissa is disrupting Southern traditions as she changes the food they eat. No longer is cornbread or biscuits a normality at the dinner table, but rather they eat sliced bread. Most true old Southerners are willing to shout their love for biscuits and cornbread at the top of their lungs, however with Narcissa representing the “New South”, she is already breaking with once firmly traditions. Narcissa persists in doing things atypical of a normal Southern woman as she brings a Jew home for dinner. Miss Jenny had done well with holding her tongue up until that point. “…she knew at once he was a Jew, and when he spoke to her her outrage became fury and she jerked back in the chair like a striking snake, the motion strong enough to thrust the chair back from the table.” (736). She just could not under any circumstance tolerate a Jew at her dinner table, which is completely understandable, because those were the beliefs steadfastly lodged in her brain. Northerners were the enemy and a Jew was even worse.
As all of these changes continue, Miss Jenny is slowly dying and fading away to the background. The final straw that sealed the fate of the New South completely overtaking the Old South was when the new of Narcissa’s sexual encounter to retrieve old love letters was revealed. Receiving love letters from a man that was not your husband, was in itself bad enough, however to sleep with a man to obtain some sort of “treasure” in return, for whatever reason, was completely unacceptable and uncommon in the Old South. Miss Jenny could not take it. This news was too much for her and she herself realized that this battle was lost. Narcissa was too much for her to combat alone in her old age and fragile state, thus she faded away into death. She placed her bonnet on her head in despair and denied access to the light: “…a slender, erect figure indicated only beside the window framed by the sparse and defunctive Carolina glass.” (742).

Gertrude Stein's Work

Upon my first reading of Gertrude Stein’s writings, I was highly confused. The words seemed randomly placed on the paper in a meaningless fashion as if it was painting canvas just splashed with paint and called art, yet in this situation it would be called “literature”. After taking a step back and reading the biographical note by Linda Wagner Martin, I realized that Stein’s writing was a unique form of literature misunderstood by many. Linda Wagner Martin explicitly explains the inimitable nature if Gertrude Stein’s work: “Diligent in her efforts to create a meaningful language, one that would reach the reader's consciousness in ways that most writing did not, Stein plumbed areas of communication that are as often non-verbal as linguistic.” In her writings, Stein used the random and sporadic, yet continuous placement of words to add to the meaning and rhythm of her writings. For example in “Susie Asado”, Stein uses repetition to form a sort of rhythm to go along with her subject. Susie Asado was believed to have been an actual dancer (either flamenco or salsa), thus the recurrence of, “sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea” (1149) can seen to be a sort of beat for the reader to catch as they imagine Susie Asado. Another example of Stein’s attempt to use her erratic repetitive words to form pictures is in “Preciosilla”. Stein is depicting a sex scene in and the rhythm of these two lovers can be caught and imagined as Stein says, “….go go go go go go, go. Go go. Not guessed. Go go.”(1150). Stein has created fragment sentences that on the surface seem to make no sense, however as one listens to the words, one gets a sense of the scene that is taking place. So like that piece of art work we might view which we might see as merely paint splashed on a canvas, Stein’s literature is really complex and picturesque, however one must view her uninhibited use of words as literature that draws upon more of our senses beyond sight. We must attempt to hear the piece or we will not get an accurate reading of the literature.