The Crying of Lot 49

Oedipa Maas finds herself, in the first chapter, in a mess of memories triggered by the receipt of a letter claiming she had been named executor of the estate of her former boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity. She “stood in the living room, stared at by the greenish dead eye of the TV tube, spoke the name of God, tried to feel as drunk as possible” in order to escape the reality and of the situation. A present theme so far in this chapter is the process of mental thoughts disrupted by other influences, in this case: TV, God, and alcohol. Later in the chapter, other characters experience or prescribe something that disturbs the mind. Mucho Maas’ former job as a used-car salesman was noted in the novel with hints to psychological malfunctioning: “…he could never accept the way each owner, each shadow, filed in only to exchange a dented, malfunctioning version of himself for another, just as futureless, automotive projection of somebody’s else’s life.” Oedipa suggests that her husband was not quite right in the head and has since left the lot. He is currently working at the west coast radio station KCUF, reversed to spell fuck.

Pychon’s interplay with words in this chapter cleverly disguises the intent of the original word. Was the novel named after the used-car lot Maas worked at and was confused by his own reality? The latter word play suggests the tone of sexuality that is pervasive throughout the book. The first chapter hits on many of Oedipa’s relationships she’s had and continues to thwart advances from Roseman, her lawyer on the estate case. The relationship with the psychiatrist Dr. Hilarious (an odd name, perhaps a state induced by the drugs he prescribes), is not healthy in that he reaches out to her needs. Instead he recommends the use of illicit drugs to further distant herself from needs. “I’m having a hallucination now, I don’t need drugs for that,” she tells him. This first chapter seems to create scenarios in which reality is confused with many different memories, interrupted by bouts of drunkenness or drug-use, influenced by God and the TV tube, and internally corrupted by mental illness.

One particular image that confuses Oedipa is the painting of a triptych with “prisoners in the top room of a circular tower, embroidering a kind of tapestry which spilled out the slit windows and into a void, seeking hopelessly to fill the void” and hung in an exhibition of paintings by Remedios Varo in Mexico City. Oedipa’s reaction to this painting is tearful and full of sorrow. She recognizes that, like the frail girls trapped as prisoners in a tower, she too finds the want to escape her own life and does so engaging in relationships with other men and tampering in reality with influences that separate her further from her situation.