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.