Three-sentence Summary

Crying of Lot 49 tells a story of the power and vulnerability of our minds. An already paranoid woman looking for an escape becomes obsessed with and trapped by a conspiracy theory about an underground postal carrier. She continues to journey deep into seamless conspiracy.

Takeaways

Honestly, I know I missed a lot of the references this book made to the “real world”, but still this book was very entertaining and enjoyable to read. I didn’t have many takeaways that I could directly apply to life and that is okay; again I enjoyed reading this book.

What did she so desire to escape from [p. 11]?

… four walls having at some point become preferable to this illusion of speed, freedom, wind in your hair, unreeling landscape — it wasn’t [p. 15].

Shall I project a world? [p. 64]

There was a dark machine at the center of the planetarium. I think this was alluding to our minds being the “dark machine” projecting the world we want to believe.

A main theme is the vulnerability — but also power — of our mind to believe correlations of events that it has drawn. There is also a theme of how all of us are vulnerable and struggle alone to either fall victim to, or continually challenge what our minds want us to believe. A theme of not challenging those who seem to be authority figures or questing “the system” occurs [p. 59]. “I’ll wait in the car”, says the other co-executor, Metzger, while Oedipa tries to talk to the director of a play.

… The night has gone so gray, I’d lose the way, and it’s dark inside. No, I must lie alone, Till it comes for me; … [p. 26]

While it may have all been a single conspiracy that Oedipa journeyed through, each person she encountered had fallen victim to their mind and was running from something.

D.E.A.T.H. - Don’t Ever Antagonize The Horn. I think the meaning here is that you “die” when you don’t challenge your mind. Similar to in Infinite Jest when David Foster Wallace talks about being “dead” when you are no longer able to choose.

This mute postal horn symbol was a trigger for Oedipa and giving in to her mind. She talks about how it was exhausting seeing it everywhere [p. 100].

Her psychiatrist also goes crazy, which I think symbolizes that no one is “immune” to the power of our minds [p. 108].

When her psychiatrist went crazy, the media was immediately there to make a story [p. 112].

Hold it tightly by its tentacle, don’t let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. Whatever it is, hold it dear, for when you lose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be [p. 113].

Talking about it’s better to have some feeling than none at all. That it’s better to feel something than to escape to nothingness.

There is a theme of “exits” from routine life — again, similar to Infinite Jest.

… onto a network by which X number of Americans are truly communicating whilst reserving their lives, recitations, of routine… maybe even onto a real alternative to the exitlessness, to the absence of surprise to life, that harrows the head of everybody American you know… [p. 140]