After forcing my way through this, I must say that there was no great Ahah! moments that pulled me to the keyboard to share and had there been, I think I would have held off out of spite.
I’m just not into the garbled silliness that the story attempts to unravel. For one thing, I never got friendly with the protagonist, Oedipa Maas. Her tendency towards self-reflective rather uncaring attitude failed to grab me. For another, her name–as well as all the other characters in the book–were so obviously symbolic and unreal that they started to make me grit my teeth as soon as I hit them.
There is a jolly romp through California as Oedipa, named executrix along with a lawyer named Metzger who comes across as rather mindless (this part was believable) run into all sorts of schemes and characters that would more likely fill a lifetime rather than mere months (or however long it was–I lost track). It’s a story meant to provoke thought (another problem I had here, the used book had copious margin notes in a cramped writing I could not decipher so they were merely distraction) but one of intrigue as well. I just didn’t like the mishmash style of Pynchon’s writing and so there really was nothing but pure determination to keep me reading through the end.
The end, which didn’t finish the adventure nor the question of characterization in its final sentences. I will pull out Thomas Pynchon’s “V” some day, but not real soon.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology