Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

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While Thomas Pynchon’s second and arguably most accessible novel thematically “singl[es] up all lines” (Crying 20) with the overarching leitmotifs of his oeuvre, it really stands as the odd one out in terms of length. With its roughly 130–180 pages (depending on edition), The Crying of Lot 49 might appear as a relapse towards the brevity of Pynchon’s first work, the short stories later published in Slow Learner. Particularly when compared to his other major works, V., Gravity’s Rainbow, Mason & Dixon and Against the Day, which tend to incorporate a plethora of such micronarratives and knot them into a byzantine tapestry, The Crying of Lot 49 at first sight seems …

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Citation: Huber, Sebastian. "The Crying of Lot 49". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 09 December 2010 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1139, accessed 08 October 2024.]

1139 The Crying of Lot 49 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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