Crying of Lot 49

This was by far the weirdest book I've read all year. It seems sort of like a mix between a warped mystery and a satire of just about everything in the sixties. The weird thing about it is that it reminds me of a mystery because you see Oedipa figure out all these clues and try to piece them together like bits of evidence in a mystery novel, but it never really leads to any conclusion. It's a mystery without suspense because it's put together in such a manner as to make the reader feel as insane as Oedipa does instead of building up to a grand finale. The language and pop-culture allusions mixed with satirical images of subcultures makes it hard to take seriously, which is probably why it feels differently than a mystery novel even though the entire plot is driven by piecing together bits of evidence to try to arrive at some final conclusion. It is, however, a mystery in the sense that Pynchon never really tells the reader whether Oedipa is really onto something with the Tristero and Lot 49 or if it's all in her head. He makes it ambiguous so the reader is just as confused as she is. Oedipa's paranoia mirrors the paranoia of the Cold War era and makes fun of it, bringing up the question of whether the paranoia was due to real threats or just in the minds of Americans. Oedipa shows how easy it is to put pieces together to try to come up with some way to make sense of it all, whether there's meaning behind it or not. I think Pynchon purposefully leaves the "mystery" unsolved to maybe get people thinking about the issue while at the same time pointing out who ridiculous things are.