The Crying of Lot 49 and the Problem of Interpretation

This week we're looking at postmodernism's challenge to the notion of interpretation - that is, who decides the "meaning" of a text? The author? The reader? And is there meaning "in" texts at all?

Thomas Pynchon's novel seems to explicitly address these questions, offering a central character whose increasingly frustrating attempts to determine the truth about her world mirror the reader's.

Post your thoughts or questions regarding the novel here. You might even find some answers.

And while you're at it, you could do worse than looking up the online reader's guide which is in the process of being created. Importantly, it's a wiki, which means it's created by readers and is as much an interpretation as anything else. Don't take it as a definitive explanation of what the novel is "about". At the very least, though, it does offer intriguing hints, links and ponderings. It's far from complete, though (if completion were ever possible for this sort of project).

And for some fun, why not take a quiz to find out what sort of postmodernist you are.