It is the shortest of his novels, and widely held to be the benchmark of this literary lion’s career. Written in 1966, The Crying of Lot 49 demonstrates the piquant wit and power of invention that are the hallmarks of Pynchon’s acclaimed works.

Read our full plot summary and analysis of The Crying of Lot 49. Traveling across Southern California, she meets some extremely interesting characters-including a teenage rock band called the Paranoids, a right-wing historian and critic of the postal system, and a former child actor with whom she has an affair-and begins to unravel conspiracies she suddenly sees all around her. The Crying of Lot 49 is a novella by Thomas Pynchon that was first published in 1966. The main character, Oedipa Maas, has been given the job of. with observations on communication theory. When her ex-lover, wealthy real-estate tycoon Pierce Inverarity, dies and designates her the coexecutor of his estate, California housewife Oedipa Maas is thrust into a paranoid mystery of metaphors, symbols, and the United States Postal Service. In The Crying of Lot 49, Pynchon combines the themes of decay and conspiracy developed in V. It's the story of a (yup, desperate) housewife named Oedipa Maas who, in attempting to take care of her ex-boyfriend's will, uncovers what may be a centuries-old conspiracy called the Tristeroa radical group. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, the plot follows Oedipa Maas, a young Californian woman who begins to embrace a conspiracy theory as she possibly unearths a centuries-old feud between two mail distribution companies. The Crying of Lot 49 was released in 1966 and was both a critical darling and a national bestsellerwhich doesn't happen a lot.

Thomas Pynchon’s highly original, postmodernist classic, a satire of American life about a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a seeming international conspiracy. The Crying of Lot 49 is a 1966 novella by the American author Thomas Pynchon.

“The comedy crackles, the puns pop, the satire explodes.”- New York Times

The crying of lot