摘 要

《拍卖第四十九批》的作者托马斯·品钦是美国后现代主义文学代表作家，代表作有《V.》（1963) 、《万有引力之虹》（1973) 、《葡萄园》（1990）、《梅森和迪克逊》（1997）等。其小说风格独特，内容交织着历史与科学，结构复杂难解。与同时期其他小说家不同的是，女性角色在他的小说中处于更加中心的位置，拥有更加正面的形象。

1966年完成的《拍卖第四十九批》是他晦涩复杂的作品中最易读懂的一部长篇小说。小说主人公奥狄芭是一名加州家庭主妇，她因被前男友皮尔斯指定为遗产执行人而前往圣纳西索履行职责，却不曾想在清查遗产的过程中发现了有关地下邮递系统特里斯特罗的秘密。她不断收集信息，试图弄清真相，通过她的视角，一场与美国边缘化人群相关联的巨大阴谋得以呈现。

本文以托马斯·品钦的仿雅各宾派复仇剧式的中篇小说《拍卖第四十九批》为例，采用文献阅读的研究方法，在已有的研究基础上从恋人关系、陌生人关系、阶级关系这三种关系层面分析这部小说中的沟通缺失现象。同时用小说里出现的沟通缺失与当代的沟通问题作对比分析，讨论现代社会的交流阻滞现象，从而给出推动有效沟通，增强社会联系的可行建议。

关键词：《拍卖第四十九批》；沟通缺失；分析

Abstract

Thomas Pynchon, the author of The Crying of Lot 49, is a representative writer of American postmodernist literature. His masterpieces include V. (1963), Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), Vineland (1990), and Mason and Dixon (1997). His unique writing style can be recognized from the content which is intertwined with history and science, and the structure which is complex and difficult to understand. In addition, female characters are in a more central position and have a more positive image in his novels, which distinguishes him from other novelists of the same period.

The Crying of Lot 49, completed in 1966, is the most comprehensible novel among his obscure and complicated works. The protagonist Oedipa, a California housewife, is appointed by her ex-boyfriend Pierce as the executor of his estate and then goes to San Narciso to perform her duties, but she never thoughts to discover the secret of the underground mail system Trystero in the process of checking the heritage. She keeps gathering information and trying to find out the truth. From her perspective, a huge conspiracy associated with the marginalized population of the United States is presented.

Taking Thomas Pynchon’s novel, The Crying of Lot 49, similar to a revenge play in Jacobin-like type, as the object of the study, this paper, through extensive reading of the literature and on the basis of the existing research, analyses communication missing in this novel from three aspects: romantic relationship, stranger acquaintanceships and class relationship. At the same time, the deficient communication in the novel and the contemporary communication problems are comparatively analyzed to study on the phenomenon of communication blockade in modern society, so as to give feasible suggestions to promote effective communication and strengthen social ties.

Key Words: The Crying of Lot 49; communication missing; analyze

Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Thomas Pynchon and His Works 1

1.2 Plot of The Crying of Lot 49 2

1.3 Significance and Layout of the Paper 3

2 Literature Review 5

2.1 Previous Research on Communication 5

2.2 Previous Research on Communication Missing 7

2.3 Previous Research on The Crying of Lot 49 7

3 Communication Missing in Romantic Relationships 9

3.1 Communication Missing Between Oedipa and Her Husband 9

3.2 Communication Missing Between Oedipa and Her Ex-boyfriend 11

3.3 Communication Missing Between Oedipa and Her Extramarital Lover 12

4 Communication Missing in Stranger Acquaintanceships 14

4.1 Communication Missing Between Oedipa and Her Psychologist 14

4.2 Communication Missing Between Oedipa and A Philatelist 15

4.3 Communication Missing Between Oedipa and Other Acquaintances 16

5 Communication Missing in Class Relationships 18

5.1 Communication Missing Between Mucho and the People Poorer than Him 18

5.2 Communication Missing Between Pierce Inverarity and Underprivileged People 18

5.3 Communication Missing Between Government and the Bottom of the Society 19

6 Conclusions 22

6.1 Implications 22

6.2 Limitations 23

6.3 Suggestions for Further Studies 23

References 24

Acknowledgements 27

An analysis of the communication missing in The Crying of Lot 49

1 Introduction

1.1 Thomas Pynchon and His Works

When it comes to Postmodernism in American Literature, one famous yet mysterious novelist must be mentioned, Thomas Pynchon, who was born in 1937 in Glen Cove, Long Island, New York. Thomas’s writing talent began to emerge in Oyster Bay High School, publishing works on school newspapers on many occasions. After graduating from Oyster Bay High School, He then began studying engineering physics at Cornell University in 1953, but later transferred to the English Department to study literature. He finished his university, earning a B.A. Degree in English, in 1958 with two-year interruption of serving in the Navy. And then he worked as a technical writer and engineering aide for Boeing Aircraft in Seattle to make a living. Years later he left Boeing and lived in seclusion as a nomad, contributing more on writing.

Despite literary activity, he kept himself away from social connecting. It was many years before his "appearance" on The Simpsons (1989), he was depicted with a paper bag over his head. There is even no photo of recent Pynchon, which makes him a secret to public.

His early life greatly influenced his writing. Writing during university laid the groundwork for his release of two short stories in 1959. In many of his later novels, his short two-year service in the U.S. Navy, his engineering knowledge learned at university, his contacts with artists in Greenwich Village, and the knowledge of contemporary new technology acquired in his work at Boeing Company all became the material for his later creation. His first novel V. was published in 1963 and received instant critical acclaim. V. won Pynchon the William Faulkner Foundation Award for best first novel of the year. Pynchon’s second novel, The Crying of Lot 49, was published a few months later in 1966. This same year, The Crying of Lot 49 won the Richard and Hilda Rosenthal Foundation Award of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. The important nonfiction article, A Journey into the Mind of Watts, written by Pynchon was published June 12th in New York Times. Pynchon’s most celebrated novel, the very intense Gravity’s Rainbow, was published in 1973 and shared the National Book Award with a collection of Isaac Bashevis Singer stories, A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories. The award was accepted for Pynchon by comedian, "Professor" Irwin Corey. Although it was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in the same year, the rejection by the organizing committee eventually made Pynchon miss the award.

The concept of thermodynamics "entropy" is the core concept in Thomas Pynchon’s works, and most of his novels are related to it. Among Thomas Pinchin’s early short stories published after graduation from university, Entropy is the most important one. This novel buries all the themes of his later novels and is the best key to enter the world of his novels. This novel applies the second law of thermodynamics to the observation and description of human society, and its sensitivity is very advanced. In addition to drawing on and using many elements of traditional elegant culture and literary forms, Pynchon’s works also show a close relationship with the practitioners and products of popular culture, such as comics, TV programs, cooking, and folk art. This ambiguity of the traditional boundary between "elegant" and "vulgar" cultures is sometimes regarded as a "deconstruction" and as one of the symbolic features of post-modernism. Pynchon's lexical politics has a core principle, that is, he always narrates fiction in a high context, tacitly recognizing the reader as a member of the language community. This makes his works more obscure and difficult for readers, especially foreign readers.

1.2 Plot of The Crying of Lot 49

One day, Mrs. Oedipa Maas suddenly found herself designated as the executor of the former lover Pierce, a California real estate mogul. Because of Pierce’s numerous inheritances which makes her task extremely complicated, Oedipa left home with her husband Machu’s approving and went to San Narciso to look into Pierce’s affairs. Among the auction legacies, there is a collection of precious stamps collected by Pierce. She was acutely aware of the anomaly but she could not know what it exactly was. I In the process of further verification of Pierce’s industry, she found more and more clues point to an underground NGO called Trystero. At the time, Trystero’s role in American society was to destroy and subvert the US official stamp system through a postal system called WASTE. This underground organization uses the WASTE stamp system to help many marginalized people, such as homosexuals, tramps, and prostitutes, pass on some secret information.