American Literature / Unit 16 AML 1539 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Thomas Pynchon and *The Crying of Lot 49*
Captions available
The idea
The witness says all of Pynchon's fiction is structured the same way: a vast plot unknown to a main character, whose task becomes to make order out of chaos, a job that devolves on the reader too. The short novel of nineteen sixty-six concerns a secret postal system.
In practice
A plot the character has to decode.
Where people slip
The reader is given the same task.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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