Summary

We began class by writing responses to two separate questions: “Why this ending?” for first-time Crying of Lot 49 readers, and a question about Oedipa’s relationships with men in the novel for those who had studied it before.  We then discussed our responses, generally agreeing that this was the only possible way the novel could have ended (but that it was also still frustrating; however, if there had been a conclusive ending, the informational entropy would be removed and information space would have been destroyed).  Several theories of what happened post-novel were brought up: some people thought it was all some sort of drug trip (we also noted that of all the characters in the novel, Oedipa and Hilarius were the only two who did not explicitly experiment with drugs), some thought Pierce was still alive, and others suggested that Oedipa herself would be the bidder.  The theory-developing that we were doing could easily be viewed as an extension of the paranoia present throughout the novel.

Word Count: 166

Passages

"For here were God knew how many citizens, deliberately choosing not to communicate by U.S. Mail. It was not an act of treason, nor possibly even of defiance. But it was a calculated withdrawal, from the life of the Republic, from its machinery. Whatever else was being denied them out of hate, indifference to the power of their vote, loopholes, simple ignorance, this withdrawal was their own, unpublicized, private."

•  Here Oedipa is discussing her changing views on "Tristero." She recognizes that the people using this system are simply delivering their mail to avoid censorship. This organization releases the bonds of the monopoly the government imposes with their mail system. By creating this alternative way, it eliminates the monopoly. This is similar to informational entropy. In the creation of an alternative mail system, it provides an environment with more entropy.

"Cherish it!" cried Hilarius, fiercely. "What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by its little 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."

• Dr. Hilarius is talking about human fantasies. He tell Oedpia to "cherish it!" while she still has them because you have nothing else. He makes the fantasies appear to be everything. They make you different from others in that they cannot be created by someone else, but once you give them up you essentially become like everyone else. Which would make you "cease" or end as a creative human.

"Passerine spread his arms in a gesture that seemed to belong to the priesthood of some remote culture; perhaps to a descending angel. The auctioner cleared his throat. Oedipa settled back, to await the crying of lot 49."

• These are the last lines in the book and they appear to give a religious description of Passerine. The man auctioning these "valuable" stamps is being portrayed as an angel. In a couple of lines before he was described as a "puppet-master," these two descriptions portray him having a control that Oedipa is looking for throughout the novel. Thus almost fulfilling Oedpia's needs but the text is abruptly ended.

Key Terms

entropy - In thermodynamics, entropy describes a system's tendency toward randomness; randomness here would describe a spreading out of particles until the system is homogeneous (for the universe and energy, this means heat death).  Informational entropy deals more with how much information a media form can convey.  The examples given in class were a telephone and a whiteboard: the phone allows for unlimited speaking, and anything can be said, so its entropy increases, while limited space on a whiteboard decreases entropy and limits the amount of information conveyable.  The Nefastis machine harnesses both of these principles and defies both by using Maxwell's Demon to keep particles sorted with the assistance of a sensitive.