Okay The Crying Lot of 49 (hey, what do I do here underline?) it is just you and me now.
Anyways, I like this book. Stoked we are reading it. Here are some thoughts.
So, the girl who lent me this book told me that it was basically all about analyzing literature and I can see it, I can see it. Oedipus is looking for clues and trying to put together the pieces to the puzzle, she fears though that all she will be left with is, "compiled memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but never the central truth itself, which must somehow each be too bright for her memory to hold; which must always blaze out, destroying its own message irreversible, leaving an overexposed blank when the ordinary world came back." I think there are several other times in this book so far were you get the feeling that no matter how hard you search and search and think and think you may never come to an exact answer. Once you think you have one thing figured out, another clue pops up and your whole perspective is changed, or seemingly heightened. Everything is open to interpretation and exploration. While reading it seems as though revelations tremble "just past the threshold of understanding." Her conversation with Driblette when he is in the shower seems like one giant metaphor for literary analysis. Take for example the names in the this story. No matter how many scholars have tried to figure out what exactly Pynchon meant by these names, no clear answers have been found. I heard about that last fact in this lecture from Yale University.

Another thing that I learned from this lecture, I started watching it before I read the book, is about why Oedipus is the perfect character for the job. The professor in this lecture mentions that although critics at the time thought of Oedipus as a lightweight, Oedipus is sort of a trickster, people may underestimate her as just a women, and she plays into this role to find specific clues. Take for example when she runs into Koteks and the conversation runs into trouble she bats her eyelashes, "figuring to coquette her way off this conversational hook." Later when she goes to Vesperhaven House she approaches Mr. Toth in a granddaughterly manor. She seems so innocent, perhaps people will give her details, thinking she is just a simple old housewife who won't be able to connect any dots, really. Also Oedipus takes on another role as motherly when she goes to see Cohen and finds him a mess. I'm also intrigued by the line "changeless salt hatchings of her identity."Also Oedipus is a smart lady. She is constantly looking for patterns from the battery on the radio to the houses of the Southern California landscape. She trusts her intuition in when clues may be important. Copying the bathroom message at The Scope and then at the play she senses something "peculiar, and a gentle chill, an ambiguity" beginning "to creep in among the words."

So, the clues we have so far: their is something going on with the postal service. We know that Thurn und Taxis is a underground mail carrying system who used the post horn as their "coat of arms." This single looped horn is found on stamps used by Thurn und Taxis. However, Oedipus has stumbled upon a double looped horn, the second loop suggesting the mute, trumpeters use to play quietly. This muted horn was on the ring that Mr. Toth had from his grandfather, who got it when he cut off someones finger, it was also the symbol Koteks was drawing and it was also in the ladies room at The Scope. We also know at this point in the story that we do not WASTE, we say W.A.S.T.E and bones are also a reoccurring thing. They were in the play, a cemetery has just been ripped up, also the false Indians, and bones is the whole reason that Di Presso is being followed. And we also know that perhaps the characters in the play know something about Trystero, because as Oedipus put it, "all those people, are so obviously onto something."

Things I would like to discuss, Trystero, I do not know what this means exactly? This also plays into the play which I would like to discuss more because it was hard for me to follow while reading? There has also been two references to kissing of feet. Does this mean anything.