PYNCHON, Thomas. The Crying of Lot 49. London: Jonathan Cape. 1967.
8vo. Original purple cloth lettered in silver to the spine, in the dustwrapper designed by Peter Barber, correctly priced 21s net to the front flap, unfaded black top-stain; pp. [6], 9-183, [3]; light pushing and fading to spine tips, a few faint spots to fore-edge of page block, a little loss and peeling to laminate at wrapper edges and tips, small, elegant bookplate of former owner to front pastedown; a sound near fine copy in like wrapper.
A bright first UK printing of Pynchon's concentrated and enigmatic second novel.
Pynchon’s second – and shortest – novel finds Oedipa Maas, executrix of her former lover’s estate, drawn into an increasingly vertiginous network of signs and symbols as she attempts to carry out her task. The investigation leads through a succession of marginal characters and competing narratives, leaving her isolated at the threshold of a possible revelation.
Described by Frank Kermode as “[t]he best American novel I have read since the war”, The Crying of Lot 49 condenses the author’s obsessions of conspiracy, entropy, and the instability of meaning, into something compellingly rich and strange.
SKU: 2123724