The Crying of Lot 49
1966 U.S. first edition
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| Author | Thomas Pynchon |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Postmodern novel |
| Published | 1966 (J. B. Lippincott & Co.) |
The Crying of Lot 49 is a novella by Thomas Pynchon, first published in 1965. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, it is about a woman, Oedipa Maas, possibly unearthing the centuries-old conflict between two mail distribution companies, Thurn und Taxis and the Trystero (or Tristero). The former actually existed and was the first firm to distribute postal mail; the latter is Pynchon's invention. The novel is often classified as a notable example of postmodern fiction. Time included the novel in its "TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005".
The novel follows Oedipa Maas, a California housewife who becomes entangled in a convoluted historical mystery, when her ex-lover dies having named her as the co-executor of his estate. The catalyst of Oedipa's adventure is a set of stamps that may have been used by a secret underground postal delivery service, the Trystero (or Tristero).
According to the narrative that Oedipa pieces together during her travels around Southern California, the Trystero was defeated by Thurn und Taxis—a real postal system—in the 18th century but Trystero went underground and continued to exist into the present (the 1960s). Its mailboxes are disguised as regular waste bins, often displaying its slogan, W.A.S.T.E. (an acronym for "We Await Silent Tristero's Empire") and its symbol, a muted post horn. The existence and plans of this shadowy organization are revealed bit by bit but there is always the possibility that the Trystero does not exist. Oedipa is buffeted between believing and not believing in it, without finding proof either way. The Trystero may be a conspiracy, it may be a practical joke or it may simply be that Oedipa is hallucinating the arcane references to this underground network that she seems to be discovering on bus windows, toilet walls and everywhere in the Bay Area.
Prominent among these references is the Trystero symbol, a muted post horn with one loop. Originally derived, supposedly, from the Thurn and Taxis coat of arms, Oedipa first finds this symbol in a bar bathroom, where it decorates a graffito advertising a group of polyamorists. It later appears among an engineer's doodles, as part of a children's sidewalk jump rope game, amidst Chinese ideograms in a shop window and in many other places. The post horn (in either original or Trystero versions) appears on the cover art of many TCL49 editions and in artwork created by the novel's fans.
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