It All Meant Nothing.

My mom loves to read. Ever since she started a book club with her friends she reads one book a month. Reading has never been my favorite thing to do but this year because of my English class I have read some interesting books I would never imagined I would read. They seemed interesting and weird because I always saw my mother reading the most common novels, the ones you would find in the tables at the entrance of Barnes and Nobles. So, the book I read also seemed weird to her. One day she asked me what I was reading, and I told her that I had just finished The Crying of Lot 49. as I told her the title she made a weird face and asked me “what’s it about?” I really had no idea, I had no idea I had just read a 152 page book and I did not know what it was about. I had to tell her something so I finally told her “it’s a mystery novel, about this woman, Oedipa Mass and how her she was left in charge of her former boy friends will. “But what’s the mystery Isabella?” “It involves a mail company and all the clues she finds about this secret mail company called Tristero. ” I saw, by the way she looked at me that she really did not believe so she left and did not ask me anything else.

Then, I thought the book ended but proving nothing. Could it really been seen as the end of the novel? The mystery as I had told my mom is never solved. We never know who the mystery bidder is. All we ever know is that by trying to solve this mystery she ends up losing everything she once loved. The novel ends with a pessimistic feeling, leaving Oedipa and the people that once were close to her distorted (http://cl49.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chapter_6) for nothing. She gained nothing and lost everything in the end just to try to figure something out and in the end, she couldn’t.

The ending, odd and uncertain gives the book more reason to say it means it nothing. Pynchon does not wrap it up for us and explains in the end. He gives us more to ask ourselves. What next? But the truth is, nothing comes next because it all meant nothing.

The Power Of Words.

I think people underestimate the power of words, even I do it. Most of the times I don’t read a book because I now they movie is going to come out soon so I simply watch the movie later. Even if my mom and sister say that the book is a million times better. I have to say they were right. I recently read a book called Twilight and fell in love with it, the came out and as I watched it I could not help but think how much they omitted from the book. It was a good movie, but compared to the book it was mediocre. There was no way the movie could describe what a paragraph or even a sentence in the book said.

In the essay The, Sentence is a Lonely Place, Gary Lutz displays the respect and importance language has. He describes how he discovered the importance of words and personifies the words. “the words fizzed and popped and tinkled and bonged”. I saw it as a way to influence reader. The essay wants to give words and language power. This leads back to my example of the movie. A movie may be really good it, by representing the book in a literal way like Pride and Prejudice, still the book is more powerful because of the impact words causes. It may also depend on the writer, to be able to cause that impact on the reader you have to be able to write well. What I am trying to say is that I agree with Lutz, words are magical, and the way he writes this essay to show the power that language has. You never actually come to think about this until you read the essay. How Lutz plays his own example of how he became engaged with words makes you reflect that he is saying the truth. It is an interesting piece of writing that not only makes the reader reflect on what is said but shows how the author uses his own beliefs to write a great piece of writing.

Things Change.

Most of the books and movies we are familiar with have a similar plot. There’s a beginning, middle, and an end. In the beginning we are introduced to the characters and what the story line is going to be about. Then comes the climax when usually the bad thing or problem happens, the turning point and the problem are resolved.

The Crying of Lot 49 stared out like this. We are introduced to Oedipa Mass the main character of the story. She receives a letter leaving her in charge of her former boyfriends’ will. The middle of the book is everything Oedipa has to do to figure out the will. The mystery we encounter about the mailing company W.A.S.T.E, the clues she figures out and how she figures it out. Since I have not finished the book I don’t know how everything will turn out. Having read the second last chapter I expected that things would start to get organized, but this book continued to surprise me. Instead of getting better things got worse for her, Oedipa becomes a different person from the one we see at the beginning of the novel. “Where was the Oedipa who’d driven so bravely up here from San Narciso? The Optimistic baby had come on so like the private eye in any long-ago radio drama, believing all you needed was a grit, resourcefulness, exemption from hidebound cops’ rules, to solve any great mystery”(100). Her psychiatrist Dr. Hilaruis has gone crazy, locked himself in his office. She realizes that Mucho is addicted to LSD. Oedipa is becoming isolated from the people.

“And had gently conned herself into curious, Rapunzel-like role of a pensive girl somehow, magically, prisoner among the pines and salt fogs of Kinneret, looking for somebody to say hey, let down your hair.”(10). Remember how I said that maybe Oedipa wanted to be rescued from something? She feels like Rapunzel because she is trapped in her life and does not know how to escape. Every time worst things happen to her, instead of getting close to solving the mystery something happens that make her feels lost again, even more. Oedipa needs to be rescued from her own life.

Who knows, maybe in the last chapter things will get better for her. She may be rescued or her life may stay the same and she will become the Rapunzel that no prince wanted to rescue.

More Clues.

In chapter 3 we are introduced to a symbol Oedipa sees on going to the bathroom. “a loop, triangle and a trapezoid”(38). We did not know it’s meaning, but guessed it was a clue to the mystery we want to uncover. As the novel continues, the symbol appears even more:

1. When Oedipa goes to Yoyodine, meets Stanley Koteks, finds him doodling on a piece of paper, and he was doodling the symbol.
2. She meets an old man named Thor. He tells her a story about how he had a ring that belonged to an Indian, and guess what, the symbol was inscribed on the ring.
3. While Oedipa was looking through Pierce’s collection of stamps. She found it on the Pony Express issue of 1940. “there it was again, her WASTE symbol, showing up black. A little right of center”(77).
We now know that two things are for sure: the mysterious symbol is really the W.A.S.T.E and it looks like the Thurn and Taxis symbol.

From all the clues we are given in this chapter it easy to say that it is a mystery novel. Probably a satirical mystery and through all this Pynchon it aiming to make fun of something. Could it mail companies, a scheme of the past that was left uncovered, or mysteries themselves?

The First Clue Of The Mystery.

Today in class we discussed chapter 3. I was relived because I was in desperate need of explanation. In order to do so, we chose any sentence from the novel. “You are paranoid” (page 17). From reading the novel, we know the paranoids are a band Miles is in. First, we get the feeling of a double meaning here, the actual band name and Oedipa saying he really is paranoid person.

Why paranoia? This had to mean something. Could it be that maybe Oedipa herself is paranoiac? There are no reasons to think that, she seems like a normal person. I’ll tell you, if you keep reading this can change. Paranoia is a slowly progressive personality disorder marked by delusions, especially of persecution and grandeur (dictionary.com). One that Oedipa may start to develop. Her character or personality won’t change but everything around will start to mean something. The first clue that Pynchon gives us about this is “a loop, triangle, and a trapezoid”(38) the thing that she sees while going to the bathroom. There is no actual meaning or purpose for this yet, it may become more important later on.

If we think about the Da Vinci Code, the same happens. Ever since the professor meets the dead guys niece he starts believing more about the clues, bad things start to happen to him. He becomes paranoiac. All of sudden everything means something. Pynchon may be giving clues like this to start the solving of the mystery, that we the reader and Oedipa at the same time are discovering.

The End.

I have reached the end, the end of The Selfish Gene. I have to say this is not an ordinary book, it’s so different from everything else I have read. The way Dawkins talks about boring science terms makes you actually want to read, to see what he has to says. It is just so original. I remember how in the first blog I wrote about this book I criticized it just because it was about science. It is not the best book I have read because it is up to some point boring and confusing.

What else can I say, The Selfish Gene and in the end it was selfish. Apart from learning really complicated terms, this book made me realize how people are only selfish. I used to think there were some individuals that did care for others and were generous, apparently I was wrong. Those certain people are like that because in the end they will be benefitted by what they do for others. In other words, it’s altruism but as another way to be selfish. Even if we try to by altruistic, we can’t our selfishness end up winning, it it’s stronger because that the nature of the humans we go first than anybody else. We always have self interest “single genes cheat against their other genes with which they share a body” (236). Since our genes our like that, selfish for a same body, we are like that. “The success that a replicator has in the world will depend on what kind of a world it is- the pre-existing conditions” (265). In the end we are the ones who created this selfish world and Dawkins was trying to show us this and that we should “try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do. ”(3). After all it depends on us.

A Freud Like Image?

So as my last blog says, I just started a new book The Crying of Lot 49. It started out weird. It was hard keeping up with what the author was trying to say because there were a lot of ideas coming up. I basically knew 3 things. Oedipa is the main character, she was left in charge of her former boyfriends money since he died, know, starting chapter 2 she was leaving her city and going to San Narciso.

Many things come to my mind when I am reading. One of these is the title, why Crying of Lot of 49? I was sure about one thing, it had to mean something but what? I could not come up with anything but in my class we talked about the 1960 how this book may be around those times. Then the California gold rush came up, the 49’s football team. Does this ring a bell? It did to me clearly there has to be some kind of connection, lets hope we can figure it out.

In chapter 2, the sex scene described by Pynchon in page 29 really called my attention. The way he described it creates a perfect image. I know this has nothing to do with an important aspect of the book but as I read this part I could not help but think about my philosophy class where I had recently studied Sigmund Freud. With a complicated yet interesting way of thinking Freud talks about sex, and how this is an important part of human behavior. Paul Johnson, another thinker criticizes Freud by saying that he degraded the human by saying he was a sexual figure. Whether you agree or not depends on you, I don’t because agree because Freud talks about sexuality in a good way of the human being, saying it is an important part of our “ello, and yo”, something important for each individual.Other may see it as a way of man only thinking in women in a sexual way, again i disagree because even if this may be true in some cases, sexuality is an importnat part of every individual, its a necessity.

Quite a random thought I had there, but I just felt like sharing this with you.

Altruism. Another Way Of Being Selfish.

Today, as any other Sunday I went to mass. Usually I don’t understand the lecture that he gives but tonight it was simple. Is was about selfishness and the importance of being generous and give to others. I couldn’t help but think in the book I was reading in my English class: The Selfish Gene and how the main idea in it is how humans are selfish, and how we must become altruist. Dawkins has never mentioned this altruism directly he because “there is no altruism here, only selfish exploitation by each individual of every other individual” (168).

“The best policy is indeed to fly up to into a tree, but to make sure everybody else does too” (170) doesn’t reading this make you think altruism is possible? It is did to me, but I guess I got a little carried away because the only reason we make sure everyone else goes up the tree is because it is for our own good.

I read an article in the NY times that talked about economist and how they think that “the typical person makes rational decisions in line with its own self-interest.” (NY times). The article used the example of “what might look like a good old-fashioned interfamilial altruism may be a sort of prepaid insurance tax. ”(NY times). Proving Dawkins theory of a new selfishness. How for example adults visit their elderly parents to assure the inheritance not because they want to. They do but because each individual will be the one that benefits in the end.

I am not generalizing, not all people are like this, still it is interesting to see how not only Dawkins sees this way and how his theory is correct. It is sad to admit but we are selfish “survival machines” and our only motivation in being altruistic is if we are going to be benefited also.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20freakonomics-excerpt.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&sq=selfishness&st=cse&scp=2

Simply Wierd.

The first thing I do when starting a new book is read the back cover. “The highly original satire about Oedipa Mass, a woman who finds herself enmeshed in a worldwide conspiracy, meets some extremely interesting characters, and attains a not inconsiderable amount of self-knowledge”(The Crying of Lot 49) I did not know what I was getting into. Usually, after reading the back cover I get a general idea of what the book is going to be about this time I got nothing.

Thomas Pynchon starts off the novel telling us that Oedipa arrives to her house and finds a letter. After that I got lost in the story. Since I did not understand what was happening in the novel the names of the character began to call my attention. Oedipa, Mucho Maas, Pierce, Dr. Hilarius, Roseman do these names seem common? I could not help but wonder why Pynchon decided to use these weird names. Maybe throughout the novel they will have some significance, it could be a joke, or it can be just plain absurdity (in the back cover it said it was a satire).

“And had gently conned herself into curious, Rapunzel-like role of a pensive girl somehow, magically, prisoner among the pines and salt fogs of Kinneret, looking for somebody to say hey, let down your hair.” Why would Oedipa feel like Rapunzel? Dis she feel like she had to be rescued from something? Or is it just absurdity again? There are more questions that were left unanswered, hopefully they will be answered and my impression of the book will change. We just cant know with what will Thomas Pynchon surprises later on.

The Power Of Nice.

Nice guys finish first, shouldn’t it be “nice guys finish last”(202)? as I read chapter 12 I was facinated with the game prisoners dilema and how Dawkins applies it to animals and plants. The game is playes like this:
There is a banker who gives out the winnings to the two players. Each player has two cars, one labeled cooperate and the other defect. In order to play each player chooses one card and plays it face down on the table. The trick here is that our winnings depend not only in the card we choose but on the other players card. Since there are four card there are four possible outcomes.
Both players play cooperate: the banker pays each 300$
Both players play defect: the bankr fines both playes for 10$
Player A plays cooperate player B plays defect: the banker fines player A 100$ and pays player B 500$.
The fourth outcome is the other way around: the banker fines player B 100$ and pays player A 500$.
The conclusion we can get from this is that “regardless of which card you play,my bets move is always defect”(205)
You know what move you are going to make but you don’t know the move of the other player. When it comes to computers you can program them to play with a strict strategy. Using this examples is how Dawkins explains how nice guys finish first. Lets compare two strategies: the first one, is tit for tat this ine starts by cooperating and then copies the prior move of the other player. The other strategy is Naïve prober, this one “is basically identical to tit for tat except that , once in a while, say on a random one in ten moves it throw sin a gratuitous defectation and claims the high tempation score”(210) In a competion tita for tat will be the startegy that wins because it is a “nice” strategy but throughout the game you would think the other strategy the evil one would win. This happens almost with every situation in life, for example the bully. He is the strong one, the one everone fears so people do what he wants. But eventually he stops being the strong one when someone stands uo to him and ends up alone with no friends, therefor he looses.
A situation similar to this one occurs in Macbeth. Lady Macbeth and Macbeth want to kill the king, Duncan, in this case they are seen as the bad ones. As I said before they start of winning because they kill him and get want they want, the throne. This is how I thought things were, nice guys finishing last and the bad guy succeding, but as this chapter made me realize things are not like this, not even in Macbeth because soon after they had killed the king Lady Macbeth kills herself and Macbeth is also killed so the glory of the bad did not last long. I know can believe Dawkins idea that “even with selfish genes at the helm nice guys can finish first”(233)