The Confusion of Lot 49

            The Crying of Lot 49, in simple terms, is confused. Thomas Pynchon imbues every scene in the book, from the seemingly random onset of Oedipa Mass’s journey as the executor of Pierce Inverarity’s will to the concluding moments of an estate auction overrun by conspiracy, with notes of hesitancy, jilted by shadows of paranoia and doubt. Nothing makes sense--or perhaps everything does. A confusing sentiment--and the crux of the story, or lack thereof. Oedipa acts as the standard-bearer for the reader, tugging at plot threads that may or may not be there. The question of whether anything is happening at all remains, always. A pervasive haze shrouds Lot 49, obscuring what truths the reader or Oedipa may derive at any given moment. One specific moment embodies this worldview, the confusion of Lot 49.

            The moment to which I refer is Oedipa’s interaction with John Nefastis, a scientist who claims to have invented a perpetual motion machine by invoking a literal version of the famed thought experiment Maxwell’s Demon. As Oedipa interprets it in the book, “There were two distinct kinds of this entropy. One having to do with heat-engines, the other to do with communication. The equation for one...looked very like the equation for the other. It was a coincidence. The two fields were entirely unconnected except at one point: Maxwell’s Demon” (84). Notice that Pynchon does not focus on the defined qualities of each individual equation. Whether it has to do with heat-engines or communication is irrelevant: what he emphasizes instead is that any perceived similarity is purely the product of coincidence. His statement as such is granted its own sentence ( “It was a coincidence”) and furthered in the subsequent phrases, while Nefastis’ explanation of the actual nuances of the the experiment is, for the most part, ignored. So the reader is meant to understand only that there is nothing to understand. Lot 49’s main plot, the perceived mail conspiracy supposedly uncovered by Oedipa as the book progresses, acts as a macrocosm for this principle of visible yet non-existent connection.

            That concept is furthered by Nefastis, in distinctly literary terms. Simplifying his verbiage for Oedipa, Nefastis says, “Entropy is a figure of speech...a metaphor...The Demon makes the metaphor not only verbally graceful, but also objectively true”(85). Pynchon’s diction, despite acting within a description of a scientific concept, employs language intended to clue the reader in as to the possibility of Oedipa’s (and Nefastis’s) delusion, as well as to the possibility of their own. Nefastis’ explanation pulls from rhetorical vocabulary: metaphor, figure of speech, verbally graceful. The connection between the fields is a metaphor, “entirely connected except at one point: Maxwell’s Demon.” By referring to literary nomenclature, Pynchon implies that the Demon exists within the novel itself, that it may be more than figurative, that Oedipa herself may be the one point holding together a perceived connection that, in reality, is no more than self-deception. The reader is granted a sense of dramatic irony here, made aware of the possibility of Oedipa’s folly: but only briefly, as she proceeds to raise the question herself.

            Oedipa, in comprehending the nature of Maxwell’s demon, begins to realize that the concept may apply to the narrative that she has constructed--that she may be the demon in the box.  She, of course, is terrified at this prospect, having already (in pursuit of a potential farce) cheated on her husband and left home for an indeterminate amount of time, presumably at some monetary expense. So, she asks the inevitable question: “‘But what,’ she felt like some kind of heretic, “if the Demon exists only because the two equations look alike? Because of the metaphor?’ Nefastis smiled; impenetrable, calm, a believer. ‘He existed for Clerk Maxwell long before the days of the metaphor’” (85). Oedipa, in questioning her own mission, feels like “some kind of heretic”, as if by considering the possibility of being wrong, of the conspiracy existing only in her head, she is committing blasphemy, rebelling against a natural order. Nefastis, then, represents a pious counterpart: “impenetrable, calm, a believer”. But his answer only reaffirms her fears. Nefastis reacts to her question by referencing Clerk Maxwell’s faith; in other words, the Demon existed because Clerk Maxwell believed it so. Oedipa’s question is left unanswered. She remains in the dark, lost in a haze of probability and confusion and belief that, when combined, results in a worldview centered in uncertainty, in the reality that without looking inside the box, one can never know whether or not the metaphor, or the Demon itself, exists at all.

            In this scene, Thomas Pynchon creates a microcosm for the novel’s thematic crux. The reader, from beginning to end, is never sure whether the mail conspiracy is anything beyond delusion. Oedipa, too, doubts herself more and more as the narrative progresses, but still is never able to reach a definitive conclusion. The Crying of Lot 49’s worldview is built on Oedipa’s question, the question of whether the story exists at all. Nefastis’s answer, then, defines Oedipa’s and the reader’s subsequent perspective. It exists if you believe it to exist. Would you like it to?

Word Count: 865