If So, Then Who?

My reactions to chapter six, the concluding chapter in The Crying Of Lot 49, are difficult to describe. The problem is that I don’t really know what to think of the ending. It was definitely unlike anything I had thought of whilst reading. The whole time it kept me following a mystery, such as when I saw the DaVinci Code (which I really didn’t get), to end up nowhere. No mystery is solved, and the whole experience was a joke. Then I wonder what on earth was Thomas Pynchon thinking when he wrote a book so useless and meaningless for a while, only to conclude in desperation.

After taking a break from my anger, I come back to realize that this book was satire, which I had of course realized but failed to remember when reading the final chapter. This satire, though, is kind of unusual. It targets something which most of my previous experience in satire didn’t: itself. What am I supposed to do now? Am I supposed to take the text seriously when it is mocked by its author? Am I supposed to understand this as a higher level message or some proof about social interactions? Maybe it’s an approach to explaining life, or maybe it’s just a big group of words. Anyhow, I don’t quite come across its real intentions, if it happens to have any. Of course, I have come to many conclusions of my own, but I am skeptic whether they are what Pynchon intended.

I have come to think that I must learn to laugh at myself, or maybe I must learn to read for the mere purpose of entertainment. No doubt that the author is great at producing some laughs, and as a good comedian might judge, that’s more than enough. Maybe we can extract a psychological lesson from it, in which we learn to doubt sanity and social interactions as established. I am not quite sure at this point if suddenly I am the one being mocked. Is it explained by my recent lack of sleep, or am I simply the expected? Suddenly I identify myself with Oedipa and her madness, but mine must not be so.

Certainly you must, by now, have quit reading the words of this madman. If the previous is true, then what, why should I keep on writing?