Blog #11

Blog #11
Ross Reed
4/18/11

Oedipa’s desire to become something important and make something of her self puts her in possibly a government conspiracy. Who would have guessed that there could be such a plot behind postal fraud. Oedipa in this chapter acts like wonder woman using her beauty and personal connections to find clues from all sorts of important men on Tristero.
I enjoyed reading about her tour of the manufacturing plant she took on a stockholders tour. Thomas Pynchon did a very good job describing the paranoid office scene in which Oedipa is overwhelmed by the situation.
“ Somehow Oedipa got lost. One minute she was gazing at a mockup of a space capsule, safely surrounded by old , somnolent men; the next, alone in a great, fluorescent murmur of office activity. As far as she could see in any direction it was white or pastel: men’s shirts, papers, drawing boards. All she could think of was to put on her shades for all this light, and wait for somebody to rescue her. But nobody Noticed.”
-( pg. 66)

Oedipa’s super agent personality really came into use when she wondered up upon Stanley Koteks. He was sitting at his desk drawling the symbol. Oedipa wanted to extract information out of Koteks so she tries to sound conspiratorial. Oedipa acting like a Charlie’s Angles girl eventually get Koteks to say too much information about his knowledge of the “ sensitives” and he realizes he had made a mistake.
Mr Toth’s scene is very influential for the plot, she is trying to find out if he knows anything of mysterious men who were bandits too the riders on the Pony Express. He recalls something about men dressed in black. Pynchon forgets to put a period after the “Mr” In Mr. Thoth’s name, there may be a reason for this but then on the other hand I can see Thomas Pynchon doing something like this just to mess with us and it has no significance at all.
In this week’s reading there seemed to be a theme of all of her clues coming to together. With the WASTE acronym, and the horn symbol, all of the clues found of the stamps there is definitely a common feeling that oedipa may have uncovered something big.

I Hope First Impressions Aren't Lasting Ones

Blog #10

Ross Reed

Interpretation of lit

4/10/11

My first impression of The Crying Of Lot 49 is that this book seems very confusing, I am having a hard time figuring out what parts are supposed to be funny and what parts are supposed to be serious. 

I think the names of the characters describe their personalities very well. Oedipa Mass, our main character learns that her wealthy ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity left her in his will and there is a messy situation regarding how to handle it because she has no knowledge on how to do it. She starts loosing her mental sanity and tries to get treatment from her doctor, Dr. Hilarius. He calls her in the middle of the night one night and talks about LSD. Then the next day she goes to see her lawyer about the will and he proposes to her. 

Based off of what I have read so far in this book I feel confident that there will be a lot of characters and relationships to keep track of in this book. Also I’ve noticed a theme for classical music and there must be some importance to that. 

Over and all, this book so far has not grabbed my attention at all and I actually found myself zoning out while reading it. I’m still optimistic that this book must get interesting somewhere because we are reading it in an interpretation of lit class, and we wouldn't read this book if there was no story to interpret. 

Blog #9
Ross Reed
Interpretation of Lit
Future Unclear

Adrian Veidt “ The Great” succeeded in accomplishing his goal to kill millions of people to save billions of people but the question remains was it the correct move? The biggest practical joke has been played on society and now there is the biggest secret to keep. If the truth gets out that the alien monsters were made by Veidt there becomes a downward spiral back to nuclear war tension and Veidt’s reputation would be shot.
Adrian sits in his study room all alone in front of a globe with the universe inside of it. He ponders humanity and his actions. He’s uncertain he made the right move even after he tries justifying his actions to himself. He tried telling himself that someone had to do it, so why not him since he is such a courageous bad ass. This doesn’t work because he realized he has killed so many innocent people and his reputation could be ruined if word got out he was behind it all. He looks towards Jon for answers, he wants Jon to look into the future and tell him if he made the right decision in the end. Jon responds with “ nothing ever ends”. Adrian is still left without a certain answer. Jon’s response could mean that Adrian’s plan might be found out or war will happen again regardless of this close call. It is up to the reader to ponder what the outcome will be because there is no certain answer given.
The last scene in the novel is when Rorschach’s Journal is discovered. There lies again the chance that everything will be made public. I believe eventually Adrian’s secret would be found out sooner or later.