This book required some processing after I finished it. I’m not sure I really enjoyed it, but I do not now have the same viscerally negative reaction I had at first. I am also not a fan of post-modernism, so I suppose reading early postmodern fiction (at least, I suppose that is how this is categorized as Pynchon’s later works are definitely postmodern) is not always the route to take.

There’s no plot here by design. The assemblage of chapters run in a linear chronological progression, but the reader is never certain about what exactly Oedipa (the protagonist) is truly up to. Ostensibly, she is the co-executor of the will belonging to her deceased ex-lover. Yet, when she arrives in a suburb of Los Angeles to begin understanding how to execute the will she is led down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories that surround a subversive organization known by its acronym W.A.S.T.E. Her pursuit of knowledge about this organization takes her through a psychedelic progression of nonsensical events.

By the end of the book, one is left wondering this was simply an LSD trip as experienced by the protagonist. There are several references to psilocybin and LSD and Pynchon wrote this work around the time that LSD/psilocybin use became popular study substances among academics and the government. This was also published around the transition to psychedelic rock in the United States and the rise of “acid parties.”

Perhaps not as bad as I thought at first, but still a book I wouldn’t recommend.

2.5