The Crying of Lot 49 follows Oedipa Maas, a young California woman named executor of her former lover's tangled real-estate estate. Sorting through his holdings, she stumbles onto clues pointing to Trystero, a secret centuries-old underground postal network, and finds herself unable to tell whether she has uncovered a vast conspiracy, an elaborate hoax, or her own unraveling mind.
Books mentioned in The Crying of Lot 49 (2)
The Rise of the Dutch Republic by John Lothrop Motley: “From obscure philatelic journals furnished her by Genghis Cohen, an ambiguous footnote in Motley's Rise of the Dutch Republic, an 80-year-old pamphlet on the roots of modern anarchism...”
The Egyptian Book of the Dead: “Some immediacy was there again, some promise of hierophany: printed circuit, gently curving streets, private access to the water, Book of the Dead.”
Books that mention The Crying of Lot 49 (2)
The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides: “What did Saussure's Writings in General Linguistics have to do with Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49?”
How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom: “Thomas Pynchon's The Crying ofLot 49.”