Keeping It Bouncing in the Crying of Lot 49 - Essay Example

Keeping It Bouncing in The Crying of Lot 49 A recurring theme that can be found in Thomas Pynchon’s novel The Crying of Lot 49 is that confusion hasa tremendous effect on society and that in order to counter it one must always be in motion, juggling the constant influx of information and images one receives in an effort to decipher a truth that is entirely subjective depending on where your consciousness is located at the time. At the same time, it is also important to understand that keeping that information bouncing while the process of interpretation takes place is not meant to guarantee any answers and, furthermore, that no guarantee should be sought. In essence, then, to reach an entirely subjective meaning of Pynchon’s novel a reader must do exactly what Pierce Inverarity advises Oedipa to do; namely to keep bouncing the massive reception of information in order to decode the meaningful clues from the meaningless ones. Pynchon’s protagonist, Oedipa Mass, spends the novel engaged in the pursuit of clues or else debating whether she should involve herself in the mysteries that surround her. As coexecutrix of Pierce’s estate, Oedipa takes off on an odyssey to unlock the full impact involved in Inverarity’s bequest. As her odyssey progresses Oedipa comes to perceive that Pierce Inverarity’s influence not only on her life but on the rest of the world appears to be more substantial, such as when she recollects that Pierce “owned a large block of shares, had been somehow involved in negotiating an understanding with the county tax assessor to lure Yoyodyne here in the first place. It was part, he explained, of being a founding father" (25-26). Executing Pierce’s will sets Oedipa on her journey to begin boucing information back and forth in an attempt to balance it and understand it, causing Oedipa to eventually piece together clues so that they form a truth about Pierce that assigns him great authority, including the power to leave behind the clues to the mystery of Tristero as an inordinately elaborate plan of some sort that is directed entirely for her benefit. This idea causes Oedipa to reflect upon the possibility that Pierce "might himself have discovered the Tristero, and encrypted that in the will, buying into just enough to be sure shed find it. Or he might even have tried to survive death, as a paranoia; as a pure conspiracy against someone he loved" (179). The novel engages with the theoretical ideas of Newtonian forces, especially action and reaction through the idea that Inverarity still manages to be a moving force despite being in a state of total entropy through the unfortunate outcome of being a corpse. Oedipa’s exploration for the truth is not simply physical, however, as it might be if this were just a mystery or detective story, but it is also metaphysical. Oedipa’s rationale in the novel becomes ironic in light of the fact that she is executing another’s will while at the same time she appears to be having her will executed by Pierce. It is as if Pierce is guiding her from beyond the grave to look past the ennui that satisfies the masses as they uncritically receive the steady stream of information provided by the television that Pierce has described as “filthy machines” (91). On one level Oedipa’s attempt to untangle this morass of information is analogous to the Demon. The Demon is capable of undoing the law of entropy by manufacturing a "staggering set of energies" that are produced by destroying "massive complex of information" (84 –85). In order of Oedipa to realize the advice to keep it bouncing, she must learn to do what the Demon does; to constantly separate, decode and reintegrate information that never stops or even slows down. Pierce intends for Oedipa to learn a valuable lesson from Maxwell’s Demon, a machine that suggests that information flow can be bounced until it can be decoded as either a truth or a lie “depending where you were: inside, safe, or outside, lost" (105). Her experience in translating the hieroglyphs is there to provide her with the key to understanding what the “it” is in Pierce’s advice on bouncing. It is information and the lessons she gains from translating is intended to show her that she needs to create connections in order to keep it all bouncing, but also that any interpretations of information will be dependent on her position in relation to it. At the beginning, Oedipa is constructed to be safe inside, protected within the cocoon of willed ignorance. Within that is the truth that from the outside, that cocoon isn’t safe at all and offers no real protection. It is not enough, in other words, merely to have the ability and the desire to bounce information and filter it down to a truth; that particular truth will be dependent upon your perspective. When she undertakes this act of translation, Oedipa arrives at an importance understanding of herself; that her obsession with finding meaning is “bringing something of herself” (90) to that activity and even the mere act of investing oneself in process of bouncing and decoding information is vital because is serves to situate one’s perspective. As long as Oedipa was unwilling to invest herself in the act of understanding, even if she started to decode things, the result would be different due to the static condition of her consciousness before she began her jobe executing Pierce’s will. What happens to Oedipa is that she commits a fearless act that few dare try. Rather than mindless giving herself over to unquestioned assimilation into the system or taking the route of near-mad solipsistic insistence that everything is a conception of her own consciousness, she confronts the uneasy choice that to keep moving on and avoid entropy requires the effort of constantly deciphering clues and mysteries. Oedipa begins the novel as just another American deadened by the corporate consumption of the soul. Like most others, her existence is one that depends on handing over control of one’s self to the determining powers that be. It is only when confronted with a mystery that burns too brightly within her natural curiosity that she is able to push forward and retrieve enough sense of wonder to do something. There is no real mystery for Oedipa to solve, of course; that is the entire point. Pierce isn’t concerned with leaving behind some grand final answer at which Oedipa should arrive. He sets the clues and her investigation in motion to get her to understand that life is all about the passionate commitment to deciphering clues precisely because there is no revelation at the end. Pierce’s counsel for Oedipa to “keep it bouncing” relates not to the end of her quest, but to the quest itself. To keep it bouncing not only means understanding that there are no such things as absolute truths and absolute answers, but to rejoice in that fact. The ambiguous elements of the ending of The Crying of Lot 49 are completely in keeping with Pierce’s advice to keep it bouncing. If Pynchon had ended the novel with unconditional answer to all its mysteries it would be tantamount to an abrupt end to the transmission of information. When and if that transmission ever does end, there will simply be no need to keep it all bouncing in the effort to arrive at an acceptable interpretation. The lack of an end to transmission also projects the idea that such an ending shouldn’t be faulted, but commemorated. Read More