The Criticism of Lot 49

Somewhat belatedly, I am currently reading New Essays on: The Crying of Lot 49.

Criticism of The Crying of Lot 49 will continue to ask and answer versions of these questions, though perhaps the point is that the novel is put in the form of a question: it is, conceivably, a quest without end, an inquiry into and dramatization of our incessant desire for meaning, our will to generate signs and significance wherever we plant our feet. Framing this desire as a question is one of the hallmarks of postmodernist literature, to which Pynchon's work is a considerable contribution. But this formulation also leads to one of the primary questions about postmodernist fiction itself: are its speculative nature, its parodic playfulness and bookishness merely forms of diversion which lead us away from an engagement with "reality"?

When I finish with New Essays I will perhaps write an essay of my own, then move on to Slow Learner.

Hopefully this summer will lend time for me to read V. and Gravity's Rainbow.

And maybe one of these days I'll get around to writing that essay on The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Maybe after I read Kafka on the Shore.