Thomas Pynchons The Crying Lot 49 Essay -- Pynchon Crying Lot 49 Essa

Peter Barry says of the cultural materialist approach to literature that it is difficult to know how to place opus of this kind (189). By writing Barry refers to cultural materialist criticism itselfnot the work being criticizedbut it is probably safe to assume that the analysis properly reflects the analyse in this respect. It is certainly arguable that Thomas Pynchons THE CRYING OF LOT 49 qualifies as difficult to place, and this may be its only legitimate connection offered to a cultural materialist reading. Yet similarities arise between the text and the theory that suggest, at least on some level, a harmonious ideal. Of course, should such a comparison exist, it is only by the theorys compatibility to the text, it being the work critiqued and, besides that, having originated much earlier than the theory. But there is value in separate the two as if they are more than just analysis and analyzed, but two products of a literary history whose similarities point toward or inf luence on-going likenesses. Such a likeness is their contribution to an overall theme of almost fairy tale-style escapism. A fundamental start is to examine the use of Shakespeare in both(prenominal) situations. This may seem odd without an understanding of its intrinsic contribution to both the novel and the theory. In LOT 49, Oedipa Maas encounters a number of eccentrics and organizations that all hint at involvement in some sort of mail system conspiracy, not the least of which is a Jacobean play called THE COURIERS TRAGEDY by Richard Wharfinger. The play and playwright are of course fictional, but whats more, they are blatantlycausticallyrelated to Shakespeares HAMLET. Oedipa found herself after five proceedings sucked utterly... ... structure to which they belong. This structure, in its very essence, seeks to project in a variety of ways new worlds by which to interpret reality.Works CitedBaldick, Chris. Structuralism. OXFORD CONCISE DICTIONARY OF liter ary TERMS. 2nd edition. New York Oxford University Press, 2001.Barry, Peter. Structuralism. BEGINNING THEORY AN INTRODUCTION TO LITERARY AND CULTURAL THEORY. 2nd edition. Manchester Manchester University Press, 2002.Pynchon, Thomas. THE CRYING OF LOT 49. Perennial Classics edition. New York HarperCollins Publishers, 1999.Scott, Sir Walter. IVANHOE. World Classics paperback edition. Oxford Oxford University Press, 1996.Snicket, Lemony. A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS BOOK THE SIXTH THE ERSATZ ELEVATOR. New York Scholastic Inc., 2002.