That was incredible, but can anyone explain the ending to me?

That was incredible, but can anyone explain the ending to me?

The book is a puzzle. The key isn't in the ending.

I don't know if I understand Pynchon's style. The book's ending was very anti-climatic.

Well you see, she's waiting for the crying of lot 49.

It's a puzzle with no solution.

A postmodern mystery has no resolve. It's an endless spiral downward into paranoia and more questions that "detective" Oedipa is bombarded with in the culture of advertising and political schemes.

There's nothing to explain. It's deliberately abrupt and deflationary.

Are all of his books like this? This is my first read by him, i'm going to start V. within the next few months though.

you'll find V. a lot more conventionally appealing, i think. less of an exercise and more of an experience.

The open end resonates with the entirety of the plot. You never find an answer.

V. is a bunch of short stories tied together

>Are all of his books like this?
He never spoon feeds you an answer and ties things up in a bow if that's what you're asking. And Lot 49 is like his least complex book.

People say this but it's actually a fairly conventional novel with the occasional shift of perspective to a spectator. There are a few chapters that are a little far out but they wouldn't function on their own as short stories. As long as you aren't an idiot it's pretty easy to read it like a normal novel.

end this meme
just read GR and decide whether or not you want to read the rest of his shit

Bleeding Edge ended pretty similarly.

>explain the ending to me?
Ok. She's waiting for the crying of lot 49. Then she is waiting for the book she herself is a part of, which means the story itself is like a snake eating its own tail, slowly closes around something, but what is that something? It is obviously the fact that the story was written in such way that Oedipa is aware of the fact, since she is both the one who watches and who is watched, so the story of the book is a story made up by the main character of the book, this is, Oedipa tells the story, and what happens in the story is whatever she wants to happen. She shows you an interpretation of whatever happens in the 'real' world, and what happens in Oedipa's world is a combination of what happens in the real world and the necessary interpretation of the fact that will adjust the real world events to Oedipa's expectations. We can see now that Oedipa is mentally ill, and she is suffering many mental disorders but with a shift: she knows she is insane but she plays her character because she follows what she thinks is written for her. She must be mentally ill or be the one sane person, but in one case or the other it doesn't really matter, the former and latter are one and the same.

Did you even read the book bro it's a fucking stamp auction

It seems like you didnt read the book...

Fuck off you retard

you sound incredibly stupid

it's all setup for the seventh book in a Series of Unfortunate Events

If this ending was unsatisfying I would recommend you stop there. They don't get any tidier anywhere else in the catalog.

I thought the ending was awesome. You finally find out what the crying of lot 49 is, which is what the whole book was about.

I agree. The stories even shifts tie together really well too and everyone talks about how the ending is a confusing or not concise, but I think it explains a lot more than Crying of Lot 49 does. Also, reading Under The Rose and, to a lesser effect, Lowlands really helps with the book.

Is the Bleeding Edge as good as V, Crying of Lot 49, or his Short Stories

>Is the Bleeding Edge as good as V, Crying of Lot 49, or his Short Stories

Bleeding Edge is his least-impressive effort, lesser even by lesser-Pynchon (Vineland, Inherent Vice) standards. But if by short stories you mean the Slow Learner stuff, it's better than those, which I'm surprised he allowed to be published and are legacy-diminishing. His collected book forwards would be superior to Slow Learner.

Bleeding Edge is worth reading because in it he reveals that he's played Final Fantasy X.

I don't really think many people on Veeky Forums understands pynchon's works, including myself. Beyond the whole 'everything is a puzzle, the meaning is that there is no meaning' postmodernist spiel, I think very few of us actually comprehended TCOL49. The depth of the references in this book is far beyond the average literary reader. Postmodernism is not lolsorandum nonsense devoid of meaning.

I remember seeing a Veeky Forums post a long time ago where an user gave a solid interpretation of the concepts which the book explored, and went into depth about how the various aspects of the narrative all played a part in the overarching theme. It was really acute and convincing, and I wish I had saved the post, because it was the first time I truly 'understood' what the point of the book was. Unfortunately, this was a couple years ago, however, and I've totally forgotten by now.

I thought the introduction to Slow Learner was really interesting but yeah I can see how his short stories in the collection are a little weak.

And this, guys, is why you write an ambiguous ending. All sorts of schizos will get a kick out of, um, revealing the hidden layers of truth and they will put the full force of their conviction behind their theories, thus disseminating word of your work.

I agree. It takes an exceptional reader to comprehend Pynchon, and Veeky Forums seems like it's mostly made up of average to below average readers who force themselves through difficult works to seem intelligent.

And knows who Hideo Kojima is. And Tor. And post-postmodernism.

I liked it better than lot 49 but that might just be because it's about a time I'm more familiar with.

The game sections are really not great though but they are few and far between. Another con is people that see the book will think you are reading sci-fi.

The ending isn't ambiguous. It's stated pretty clearly that she's awaiting the crying of lot 49. What's not to get?

IDK Veeky Forums bros I came up with a grand explanation for the whole book back in the day, I'll try to recount some of it w/ few specific examples.

Oedipa is searching desperately to empathize with her husband in a marriage that's growing dry. That's how the book starts. He cries selling cars in a car lot and it seems that this has some significant meaning to him. I personally believed that he went through some great trauma and she's trying to unlock the experience, going through a deluded grand adventure tying crazy things together in a vain effort to see what's up with him crying in a lot. The Crying of Lot 49 then is a metaphor for the kind of realia left behind some significant source of trauma - an auctioneer reads off the values of stamps (which are signs for other icons or symbols of things), and that's what her entire adventure led her to - a loose recollection of something left over to represent the original trauma.

That means that user was a "better" reader of 49 by the book's own premise. It is rather consciously filled with ideas, motives, ways to analyze and develop thought around its content.What the book is, essentially, to the reader,is the same thing Inverarity's inheritance is to Oedipa - An experience of a search for truth or meaning, in an entropic universe of symbols - either an authentic one, or a one carefully constructed to emulate the search.
That process of 'sorting' the noise, of creating more and more options to read this universe, is what Pynchon portrays. Creating illusions based off the symbols around us, freeing them from the 'binary' definition of meaningful/less, then seeing these illusions dissolve and immediately opening new doors for a possible truth, that is the point Pynchon makes imo. He wants the reader to try and analyze the text, and of course to develop his own ideas, even absurd ones, about its possible meanings.

Pynchons my fav writer for sure because my fav thing in books is goofs, gags, jokes and rambunctious behavior, and his books are full to the brim of it. Every novel is like one of those novelty snake cans, you open the book & POP you get a face fulla snakes and you fall back cackling. The mad mind, the crack genius, to do it! and then you think hmmm whats he gonna do next, this trickster, and you pick the book back up and BZZZZZZZZZZ you get a shock and Hahahahahah you've been pranked again by the old pynchmeister, that card. "Did that Pynch?" he says, laughing yukyukyukyuk. Watch him as he shoves a pair of plastic buck teeth right up into his mouth and displays em for you- left, right, center- "you like dese? Do i look handsome???" Pulls out a mirror. "Ah!" Hand to naughty mouth. And you're on your ass again laughing as he snaps his suspenders, exits stage right, and appears again hauling a huge golden gong.

It's not your granddad's literature.