2 – The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
June 27, 2008
Oedipa Maas wanders into a quasi-invisible conspiracy to desert the U.S. Postal Service. Is it apophenia?
This book is the awakening from a dream. A dream in which you saw meaning in every detail and every event was related and was PROOF. But now you are awake and all the strands of your dream are slipping away and you are left with half-memories of urgent searchings and your dream companions (those specific strangers whom you knew surprisingly well). You feel a desperate triumphant urge to make sense of things. You can’t.
I felt like Oedipa at the deaf-mute dance. Bogged down.
1 – Mrs. ‘Arris Goes To Paris by Paul Gallico
June 5, 2008
I picked this novel first because the title made it sound easy to read. It was. This book is a simple souped up parable from the British 1950s. Mrs. Harris, a elderly cleaning lady who talks like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, discovers how far she is willing to go to get something she desperately wants. We root for her. The narrator shows her foibles and fortes. He teaches us a lesson: Look how heroic “insignificant” people are. Look at the drama and worth of the lives we never see on TV. And realize the high value of human friendships.
