Harold Innis, Empire and Communications (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951) p. Molly Hite, Ideas of Order in the Novels of Thomas Pynchon (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1983) p. Jean-Baptiste Moëns, Timbres de l’office Tour et Taxis depuis leur origine jusqu’à leur suppression (1847–67) (Brussels: Le Timbre Poste, 1880). Thomas Schaub, Pynchon: the Voice of Ambiguity (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981) pp. Robert Ornstein, The Moral Vision of Jacobean Tragedy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960) p. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. Although both novels use a quest pattern Oedipa reacts much more than Stencil and discovers one of the central paradoxes of the novel, a paradox pointed out by Norbert Wiener: that although the United States has the most highly developed communications media in the world, information is nevertheless guarded with the utmost secrecy by small groups. Stencil’s quest is absurd from the beginning Oedipa’s moves from normality into strangeness and, unlike Stencil, she realizes how a plethora of information constantly sidetracks her from a simple search. Stencil personified an absurdly blinkered activity, Oedipa is much closer to a conventional fictional character because Pynchon grants her more awareness. Oedipa is named as co-executor for a dead real-estate tycoon and former lover - Pierce Inverarity - and during her investigations into his estate stumbles across an underground postal network whose roots lie in Renaissance Europe. Oedipa Maas although, as we shall see, this method presents Pynchon with certain formal difficulties.

The novel’s perspective throughout stays close to that of its protagonist Mrs. 1 It is less than a quarter its length, it appears to possess a simple linear plot, and it covers both a short time-span and a very specific local area - Southern California. Although published only three years after V., The Crying of Lot 49 (1966) makes a staggering contrast with the earlier novel.

The crying of lot 49