The Crying of Lot 49?

[Liam Coerr]

Have any of you read The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon? I've recently read it, and have been creating a sizeable amount of art based on it. It is very related to mail, specifically unofficial mail  carrier organizations within the US. A good read for anyone interested in postmodern lit or mail-related arts. 

Anyway, If any of you have read it, please send me a message and I will send some art your way. I'd also be very open to discussing the book with anyone who desires that. 

[De Villo Sloan]

LIGMA, I'm glad you brought up The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. I agree w. what you say. The book has avant approaches you see in a lot of mail art (Ray Johnson was on some level pomo) and the book is about the postal system. It also has the paranoid quality of Neoism.

The Crying of Lot 49 has come up in discussions here at IUOMA before. But I am surprised it is not more iconic among m-a folks.

You definitely make some good observations here.

[joey Patrickt]

read it. I have read many books by TP. right now mid way through 'Against the Day'

[Alan Brignull]

This book is the subject of the Letter Writers Alliance bookclub next month:

https://letterwriters.org/collections/events/products/book-club

It's not my usual genre of book but I read it recently and found myself initially bewildered then eventually sort of understood what was going on. It's not the type of text you read to understand, you splash about in a sea of words and some of them soak in.

[Terri Jones]

I looked at some of the reviews on Amazon. Sounds really interesting. Thanks for the suggestion. 

[Jean Vengua]

This comes years too late, probably (it's now 2024), but I taught The Crying of Lot 49 as a teaching assistant in grad school, and now I can't do any mail art without thinking about the book. Would love to receive some Lot 49 mail art. :-)   JV

[Ilya Semenenko-Basin]

Thank You. Many years have passed and it's Christmas 2024. After reading Your message, I downloaded the Russian translation of this novel from the Internet and now I want to read it on New Year's Eve.

[Denice Newton]

Wow.  I just started this.  Interesting for sure.  Would love to have some mail Art. 

oops.  Years too late.  lol 😂