The Crying of Lot 49

“He could still 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 else's life.”

When working as a car salesman, Mucho witnessed the churn of consumerism. People bought cars as an attempt to rectify a profound dissatisfaction with their existence. Advertisements and social cues had taught them that a new car would be a better expression of the identity that they wished to project into the world. They traded their old, dented, broken selves (as represented by the cars) for something new and exciting, only to feel the same familiar disappointment that this new identity still, somehow, was not right.

“Roseman cherished a fierce ambivalence, wanting at once to be a successful trial lawyer like Perry Mason and, since this was impossible, to destroy Perry Mason by undermining him.”

Roseman understands his profession through the lens of television. The television character Perry Mason has created an unassailable status for lawyers, one which Roseman has tried and failed to match. He cannot live up to this impossible, fictional standard, so he dedicates his life to waging a war against an imagined enemy. Television has sold Roseman a fake, aspirational reality, and then he has turned his life toward attacking this fictional enemy as a way to give substance to his existence.

“She had noticed the absence of an intensity, as if watching a movie, just perceptibly out of focus, that the projectionist refused to fix.”

Life does not satisfy Oedipa, but she struggles to pinpoint the specifics of this dissatisfaction until she embarks on her investigation. The alienation and unhappiness that she feels is overwhelming and ever-present but perpetually obscured. No one else in the society is willing to admit to the ways in which modern existence feels hollow and unsettling. Life is life a bad movie, projected badly, which the authorities refuse to address.

“Like many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts.”

Places are given meaning through their mapping; by assigning names to areas of California, people attempt to comprehend and make sense of the diffuse and nebulous spread of complicated and incomprehensible reality. Each place, once named, becomes a group of concepts. The name is a signifier; these concepts function as the signified. San Narciso is not just a place on a map; it is a name that conjures up all the emotions, history, and traumatic experiences that Oedipa associates with her ex-boyfriend Pierce. 

“Did Mucho stand outside Studio A looking in, knowing that even if he could hear it he couldn't believe in it?”

The irony of Mucho's job is that he works in broadcasting but struggles to communicate in the chaotic world. Oedipa imagines his struggles manifested as a workplace metaphor. Mucho stands on one side of the glass, able to see the people inside but not able to speak directly to them. This layer of removal represents the disconnect he feels from society.

“Raymond Burr is an actor, impersonating a lawyer, who in front of a jury becomes an actor.”

Manny di Presso and Metzger are caught in a cycle of recurrences that distract them from what is real and what is fiction. At various times, they have both been lawyers impersonating actors and actors impersonating lawyers. They have also played each other, adopting shifting identities in a world where nothing is quite fixed or expected. The discussion about actors hints at the broader unknowability of the postmodern world, in which reality is a series of interconnected subjective experiences that must be constantly assembled and disassembled.

“She noticed also a fat stomach the suit had hidden.”

When he arrived in her hotel room, Oedipa was struck by Metzger's handsome appearance. Tucked away beneath his business suit, however, he has been hiding a "fat stomach" (27). The hidden stomach hints at Metzger's sense of shame; he has constructed an identity as a handsome, successful lawyer but, in the novel’s argument, he fears that his physical appearance does not correspond to this identity. Thus, he is ashamed of his stomach and hides it beneath the symbol of business success. The secret truth about Metzger is not that he has a larger stomach but that he feels the need to hide this stomach from the world.

“They accuse us of being paranoids.”

In an ironic way, Mike Fallopian's pithy retort illustrates the extent to which paranoia is engrained into every social interaction. Even though he resents being accused of paranoia, his comment instinctively divides the world into two distinct categories: us and them. The "us" (33) happens to contain everything Mike supports, while any accusations come from the implied existence of “them.” Mike's dismissal of his paranoia is itself an acknowledgement of the existence of paranoia as a fundamental part of society.

“You never get to any of the underlying truth. Sure he was against industrial capitalism. So are we. Didn't it lead, inevitably, to Marxism? Underneath, both are part of the same creeping horror.”

Mike belongs to an extremely right-wing organization, which, ironically, tacitly accepts the Marxist critique of capitalism as part of its fundamental ideology. According to Marx, the material conditions of capitalism eventually give way to communism. Mike, an ardent opponent of communism, thus views capitalism as a threat to his right-wing ideology. He agrees with Marx, yet views these conclusions with "creeping horror" (34) rather than optimism. Mike's beliefs are an ironic, reactionary synthesis of capitalist thesis and Marxist anthesis.

“Hearing the plot of The Courier's Tragedy, by Richard Wharfinger, related near to unintelligible by eight memories unlooping progressively into regions as strange to map as their rising coils and clouds of pot smoke.”

The relating of the plot of the play creates a postmodernist illustration of the unknowability of reality. Each of the "eight memories" (45) provides a subjective retelling of the story. Though they are telling the same story, they are telling different versions of their subjective experience of the story. None of these versions are inherently true or untrue, especially as they are recounting the story of a fictional play that is already fragmented in terms of its plot. Reality has conspired to turn the plot of the play into a layered intersection of subjective realities; Oedipa must find meaning in the intersections of subjectivity rather than waste time searching for an illusive and impossible objective truth.

“It isn't literature, it doesn't mean anything. Wharfinger was no Shakespeare.”

Driblette's warning to Oedipa provides an ironic comment on the text itself. He warns Oedipa against overwrought literary analysis but does so as a character in a complicated work of literary fiction. As such, the author and the reader (as well as this guide) are locked in a complicated knot of irony and misdirection, in which literary analysis is essential but also disparaged by the literature itself.

“Shall I project a world?”

Throughout the novel, Oedipa repeats this phrase to herself like a mantra. The mantra is a microcosm of her search for meaning at the center of the Tristero conspiracy: She can never quite be certain that she is uncovering the truth or simply an elaborate, overwrought hoax. She is projecting a world on top of her own reality, mapping a subjective experience over the raw, chaotic physical world in front of her. That she frames the mantra as a rhetorical question hints at the conflict inside her as well as her knowledge that she must continue regardless of the answer.

“It was supposed to sound conspiratorial, but came out silly.”

At various points in the novel, the narrative becomes self-aware. The absurdity of Oedipa's investigation breaks through the confines of the page. Her investigation, like the comment, is supposed to "sound conspiratorial" (63) but delves often into absurdity. Even the subtleties of the comment hint at the impossible nature of Oedipa's situation. The comment (and the text) is not supposed to be conspiratorial but only to "sound conspiratorial" (63). Even this declaration is based on a subjective interpretation of the comment.

“You're so right-wing you're left wing.”

Metzger's ideological debates with Mike assert the importance of subjectivity. Mike is content to position himself an extreme right-winger. Under Metzger's scrutiny, however, he is forced to confront the reality that many of his ideological positions are not so different from their extreme left-wing equivalents. Metzger explodes the use of a spectrum as a metaphor for assigning political positions; the intricacies and subjective nature of ideology cannot be truly distilled to a simple spectrum. Political ideology, like everything else in the novel, is far too complex and chaotic to be reduced to a simple literary device.

“It's obviously a counterfeit.”

Pierce's stamp collection contains a number of obvious counterfeits. These stamps are fake; they are not created or distributed in the traditional way. However, they have a significant value in their own right. Even though they are fake, the inclusion of the muted-post-horn symbol makes them valuable for Oedipa's investigation. Likewise, they are of academic interest to stamp experts like Genghis Cohen. The value of obviously counterfeit stamps, even compared to the real stamps, demonstrates how value is a subjective social construct. The stamps are only valuable because people imbue them with value, culturally and socially. In this respect, the valuable fake stamps symbolize Oedipa’s evolving relationship with the subjective value of society, in which she creates her own meaning based on her subjective experience.

“Are you there, little fellow, Oedipa asked the Demon, or is Nefastis putting me on?”

Oedipa asks Maxwell's Demon whether he exists or whether this entire situation is an elaborate joke being played on her by John Nefastis. The question is one that will recur throughout the novel. Oedipa can never be quite sure whether the absurd situations she finds herself in are part of an elaborate joke or whether reality itself is so absurd that it resembles a joke, or whether the distinction even really matters. The question Oedipa asks to the Demon goes unanswered, as do all of her other questions. The act of asking the question is more important than any answer.

“An inamorato is somebody in love. That's the worst addiction of all.”

The love-stricken members of Inamorati Anonymous perceive love and emotional sincerity as an addiction. In the alienated society presented in the novel, such an addiction is as dangerous as narcotics or alcohol. An addiction to love is something that needs to be monitored and controlled, lest the person lose themselves in a flood of emotions. The existence of Inamorati Anonymous illustrates the society's mistrustful relationship with sincere, genuine love.

“The only alternative was some unthinkable order of music, many rhythms, all keys at once, a choreography in which each couple meshed easy, predestined.”

The "only alternative" (100) of which Oedipa can conceive is one that she encounters again and again. The overlapping, chaotic interplay between competing subjectivities is the postmodern explanation for the nature of society. There is no simple explanation, and not everyone is dancing to the same tune. Instead, reality is created from the repeated intersection between these subjective experiences, creating an "unthinkable order" (100) in which everything is happening all at once.

“‘I worked,’ Hilarius told her, ‘on experimentally-induced insanity.’”

Hilarius confesses to working in an extermination camp during the Holocaust. The same techniques he refined in Buchenwald are now used to treat suburban housewives like Oedipa. His confession shows Oedipa the ways in which trauma and violence have infected every structure and institution in society. The truth of the world amounts to the pain and guilt that are hidden beneath thin veneers of denial and diversion.

“Now he would never be spooked again, not as long as he had the pills.”

Mucho used LSD to quell the gnawing dissatisfaction with reality that affects so many characters. Life is a series of chaotic intersections between subjective experiences, in which a single objective truth is impossible to discern. Mucho has embraced the chaos. The LSD allows him to discern the competing boundaries of reality, and now they mean something to him, even if they mean nothing to other people. He has learned to find meaning amid the chaos of existence, even if the influence of the LSD means that he can never depend on this meaning as any form of objective truth. 

“They are stripping away, one by one, my men.”

The deeper that Oedipa goes in her investigation, the more she feels as though the dependable institutions of her life are being stripped away. She loses Mucho, Metzger, and Dr. Hilarius in quick succession, men who represent (respectively) the domestic life, the thrill of sex, and the benefits of medicine. These were part of her prior existence that she relied on to make sense of the world, but now they are absent from her life. As these representative men are stripped away, all that is left is her investigation.

“True pornography is given us by vastly patient professionals.”

The "true pornography" (119) referenced is not sexual in nature. Rather, it is a series of woodcuts that depict sexual scenes. The titillation comes, for the characters, from the knowledge that they can garner from these woodcuts. The true nature of the conspiracy is the "true pornography" (119) to which the narrator refers, demonstrating how Oedipa has gone beyond her sexual desire for men like Metzger or Mucho. Now, she craves only knowledge and understanding. Satisfying this desire with clues is likened to satisfying sexual desire with pornography.

“There was no moon, smog covered the stars, all black as a Tristero rider.”

Oedipa's perception of the world has been changed by her investigation. Earlier, she corrected herself when she noticed the smog. San Narciso has "haze" (81), rather than smog. Now, however, she has come to accept her initial instincts. She refuses to cower to social expectations, such as the common understanding that San Narciso has haze rather than smog. Similarly, her choice of simile is telling, as she likens the night to a Tristero rider. She has become so enmeshed in the mystery that she is seeing the Tristero everywhere and embracing the social lessons taught to her by her investigation.