Rating: 
Summary: an inadequate three-word summary
Review: For all of you who believe your inability to comprehend this book is due to the "flawed writing" and not your inability to take an extra second and appreciate the intentional wordplay and thoughtfulness that went into the crafting of this masterpiece, I give you a quick summary of the novel so you can impress your pseudo-intellectual friends with your interpretational prowess: willing self marginalization. I would go on to mention the exquisite beauty and meaningfulness of the tapestry Oedipa viewed in Mexico, but I fear it would be lost on the Neanderthals and unnecessary for the enlightened. All in all, one of the more important works of the 20th century.
Rating:
Summary: A 20th Century Classic
Review: I first fell in love with this novel as an English major at the Univ of Conn during the late 60's. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald in The Great Gatsby, this is Pynchon at his best. By the way, I think the original cover is the best I've ever seen on this book. I re-read it on average once or twice a decade, and I never fail to be moved by it. One of the great accomplishments is Pynchon's ability to move strongly in the direction of comedy, yet keep an equal tension in the direction of tragedy. Are the skeletons in the lake comedic or tragic? Or does Pynchon manage to draw comedy and tragedy together as two faces of the same coin? The sailor in the burning bed, and the mystical annual resurrection of the dandelions, are just two of the ironic crescendos of this symphony. Oh, and it's a masterpiece of terror, which is most evident in the revelation of the title's meaning, and the slamming door shutting out the light at the end. Ignore the few pompous asses who have derided this great book -- buy the book. Get a glass of Chablis on a quiet night, put on a copy of Steve Miller Band's "Sailor" album (1969?), and kick back for a kick butt read.
Rating:
Summary: Flawed Writing???
Review: Did I really read that review?I'm actually gobsmacked. More gobsmacked than when I first finished The Crying of Lot 49. And I was fairly gobsmacked then.
Rating:
Summary: Great authors are not to blame for your lack of education.
Review: For God's sake--- why do so many people write these idiotic reviews, these reviews that are nothing so much as confessions of stupidity? Why do people believe that the primary aim of all art, even that of fictive prose, is absolute simplistic clarity? These are the same chuckleheads who fail to understand impressionism and cubism; they are the people who fail to recognize that distortions of photographic reality (or the use of abstract, metaphor-laden prose with poetic, rather than simple reportorial, qualities) are attempts to reveal a hidden truth or an occult sensation, something intangible lurking beneath the surface of the hubbub that constitutes our everyday lives. "Guernica" strives to convey the absolute chaos and horror of war, something of the mental distortion endured by those unlucky enough to fight; "The Scream" tries to convey the sense of terror that resides the very nature of being, a sense only perceived by the introspective and the sensitive; and "The Crying of Lot 49" dissects the effects of sixties culture, and its cultural precedents, on the bare skeleton of America. It uses metaphor to make sense of the welter of confused action that is American life (read: it does not strive to obfuscate it). None of these masterworks fail simply because they refuse to be obvious. There is a place for the realism of Michelangelo and the journalistic minimalism of Hemingway, but artistic expression should not, is not, and cannot be confined to those styles that lend themselves to easiest comprehension. Some art reaches for wispier, more difficult ideas, and demands that we, the readers and viewers, make the effort required to understand. Reading is like weightlifting. It is a skill. It requires repetition and practice. One must read incessantly and carefully to become a good practitioner of the art. One should not skip anything, not so much as a single ambiguous phrase, not so much as a single word that falls outside one's vernacular. One should strive to ascertain the primary meaning of every word of a given text and as many secondary meanings as possible as well. And one must never expect that educated and erudite and soulful being, that being that John Milton called a "master spirit"--- the writer--- to dumb his prose down for easy consumption by dim-witted orangutans. Thomas Pynchon is not to blame for the fact that you know nothing of history, culture, literature, and so forth. Yet people blame him, and Shakespeare and Dante and Baudrillard and everyone else, rather than themselves and their TV-addled ignorance. For shame! There is more at stake here than the dignity of great writers themselves; there is more at stake here than the possibility that Thomas Pynchon might have to endure reading one of these asinine reviews and wind up asking himself, "Am I just throwing pearls before swine?" No, the matter is graver than that: potential readers are also victims. They read some numbskull's pronunciamento that Pynchon's book is a "great idea" with--- I can barely repeat it--- "flawed prose" (all the while writing in a terrible prose style himself, this astute reader, employing that stilted language of imbecility that everyone can easily understand), and think to themselves, "Humph. I guess it's not so good." And then these misled readers will buy John Grisham instead, whose work the fans of facile clarity and structural simplicity have awarded numerous five-star reviews. Literacy in America is limping toward death. The confederacy of dunces is on the verge of conquering the last bastions of a proud intellectual tradition. Wake up, America. Man cannot live on "Gilligan's Island" and "The Firm" alone--- unless he wishes to celebrate the millennium by returning to the trees.
Rating:
Summary: Pynchon is amazing
Review: Truly splendid writing. He packs more into 150-odd pages than most writers could dream of in an entire career. If you're not yet reading Pynchon because you've heard he's nearly impossible to penetrate, then this is the one. It's accessible, crisply written and (mostly) devoid of the immenseness of structure that marks the bigger works like GR and Mason & Dixon. This is interesting, challenging reading, but doable for anyone who can read on a high school level and who doesn't mind a little active reading for a change. We can't spend all our lives being spoon fed another Grisham "Attractive Southern Lawyer Fights Random Injustices and Gets Shot At" or book with Fabio sweating on the cover.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Deal of Fun
Review: A very enjoyable book. I will be forever grateful to it for making me laugh out loud during a particularly nasty flu. How anyone can find this book 'difficult' or 'unreadable' is beyond me. What is so hard about this book? I found it eminently readable. Indeed, it was the book that made me think that I might be able to move on to the bigger books, like 'V' or 'Gravity's Rainbow. 'The Crying of Lot 49' is difficult, I suppose, but only if you have spent your life reading only John Grisham or Anne Rice.
Rating: 
Summary: Some wit embedded in impenetrable gibberish
Review: Reading this book is a painful experience. But those that manage to slug through this gleaming example of the nadir of 20th century prose will get the occasional chuckle. I am positive that Pynchon does have something of value to say, and if you can make it through his unintelligible writing style and acid-head syntax, I am sure you can find it.
Rating: 
Summary: Great idea, flawed writing
Review: The ideas contained in this book are as good as you can get. There are symbols and symbols of symbols, metaphors of metaphors. It also contains whacky characters, weird situations, and ancient conspiracies. In all, a fun mix. Too bad the writing is flawed. The problem is twofold. First off, when Pynchon tries to be deep he can become unreadable. Luckily I understood (at least I think I understood) what he was getting at without these verbal misfires. Second, Pynchon can cut a little too close to the bone in his prose. He cuts away vital cues in his dialogues and descriptions in an attempt to sound modern. I still recommend this book. However, be forwarned: This will not be easy reading, and it won't be your fault.
Rating:
Summary: My favorite book
Review: After several readings, I can say without hesitation that Lot 49 is my favorite book. Like most, I had a very difficult time with it at first, but I assure anyone that it IS a worthwhile read. Maybe even the most important American book of the late 20th century. We should all be aware of the kinds of plots "they" are hatching against "us" as we enter a new age, and Lot 49 is nothing if not an excellent spur to reflection on the topic. Which is not to say that that's all it is. Pynchon's shortest, most straightforward novel is also a brilliant and devestating critique of the contemporary intellectual landscape (or lack thereof). It has seemingly infinite layers of meaning, and one can find a commentary on or critique of just about any aspect of this modern life in its pages. No offense to anyone, but if all you see in Lot 49 is a conspiracy story or a pretentious literary jumble, you should look again harder. On a purely technical level, Pynchon's writing is intricate and beautiful, and he has a brilliant eye for those things that we tend to pass over blindly in our hurried lives. To those who hated Lot 49, that's perfectly alright, but please make sure your disdain isn't merely due to a want of close reading. I think a complete understanding of the novel is probably impossible, but it CAN be understood. You'll be a richer person for trying, I promise. J. Kerry Grant's companion is an excellent distillation of the enormous body of critical interpretation surrounding Lot 49, and it can offer a perfect handle on the book. It helped me enormously. If you're afraid it'll give away all the "amswers" and obliterate your own reading of the novel, don't be. If there's a lesson to be learned from Lot 49 (and there are many) it's that there are no right answers anyway. You have nothing to lose by reading either the novel or the companion. I couldn't recommend either highly enough. Please, feel free to email me, whether or not you agree. I'd love to hear from anyone with an opinion.
Rating:
Summary: My daddy, my doggie and me
Review: This book is sheer genius! I thought the whole "Cashiered" movie sequence was one of the funniest and most black of satires ever written. Anyone who doesn't see the humor in a little boy, his father and faithful St. Bernard fighting WWI germans in a miniature submarine as absolutely hysterical, well, oboy, they need to have a funny bone transplant. Read this book over and over. Then read it again.
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