ENG 332: Contemporary American Literature

This expanded and updated companion to The Crying of Lot 49 contains more than five hundred notes keyed to the 2006 Harper Perennial Modern Classics, the 1986 Harper Perennial Library, and the 1967 Bantam editions. The majority of notes are interpretive, although some are designed to provide a historical context or to recover the meaning of a reference that, over time, has proved ephemeral. This new edition adds quotations and paraphrases drawn from criticism published since 1994.

In the introduction to this collection of original essays on Thomas Pynchon's important novel, Patrick O'Donnell discusses the background and critical reception of the novel. Further essays by five experts on contemporary literature examine the way the novel organizes signs; the comparison of postmodernist Pynchon and the influential South American writer, Jorge Luis Borges; metaphor in the novel; the novel's narrative strategies; and the novel within the cultural contexts of American Puritanism and the Beat movement.

Includes relevant chapter: "Reading against the Machine: Oedipa Maas and the Quest for Democracy in Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49"

Includes relevant chapter: "Convoluted Reading: Identity, Interpretation and Reference in The Crying of Lot 49"

Includes relevant chapter: "The Crying of Lot 49 and Other California Novels"

Includes relevant chapter: "The Female Quest Narrative: The Crying of Lot 49"