"Crying of Lot 49" Chapter 4 -- Thomas Pynchon

The Crying of Lot 49 is a book like no other I have read before. It possesses a sense of humor that I have not often read in books, yet is still extremely confusing and difficult to follow. Oedipa Maas is a very strange character as well. In this chapter, Mrs. Maas goes to a stockholder meeting for the company Yoyodyne. During a tour in this meeting, she becomes a little lost and meets Stanley Koteks. Mr. Koteks is a very interesting character, and seems to me to be a little mentally unstable. He goes on this crazy talk about a perpetual motion machine; but what interests Oedipa is that he was drawing the same mysterious symbol that she found in the stall at the bar. She also finds the symbol on an old signet ring shown to her my an old man named Mr. Thoth, who also tells her about strange dreams he has about his grandfather, who fought against some mysterious "Indians." Oedipa then goes back to Mr. Fallopian in order to try and piece together the mystery of this symbol, and it is then that she realizes she may be uncovering a very old conspiracy. This novel has a lot of satire in it, as well as some odd humor. I look forward to discussing it in class tomorrow and diving deeper into the underlying themes and motifs that are present in this work.

"A Supermarket in California"; "America"; "In the Baggage Room at Greyhound" -- Allen Ginsberg

All three of Allen Ginsberg's poems, "A Supermarket in California", "America", and "In the Baggage Room at Greyhound" seem to give an overly depressing tone as to what the typical American feels everyday. "A Supermarket in California" gives a very descriptive, yet odd, representation of an average supermarket; the narrator seems to tell of this trip as if he is in a dream, and it seems that he must fantasize his world to stay out of depression. The final paragraph of the poem gives the reader a sense that the narrator feels that his world is a living hell as he alludes to Charon, who was the ferryman to the underworld, and also the waters of the river Lethe, one of the five rivers of the underworld. "America" just seems to be an odd poem outlining the many problems of American society, its government, and its workforce. This poem did not interest me that much. "In the Baggage Room at Greyhound" gives a depressing look into what an American with a low-paying job had to deal with. It talks about the hardships of the job and how poorly the employee was taken care of. All of these poems have a depressing tone to them, and I wonder if the author had struggles with depression and drug use based off the way he jumps from topic to topic in his poems.

"Howl" -- Allen Ginsberg

This poem, if you could call it a poem, was a very graphic representation of self-gratification and a euphoric way of life. Personally I found this to be very disturbing and I did not enjoy reading this at all. The whole point of this "poem" seems to be to talk about drugs, sex, alcohol, as well as many other socially disturbing ideas. I was also very irritated with the lack of grammar in this, considering the majority of the writing is a series of run-on sentences and fragments. It appears to me that this work was written mostly while the author was either high or drunk, and if I had to guess, I would say this author had some serious issues. Again, I was rather appalled by this reading and feel I would have been better off not having to read this.