It all makes sense now....

The article by Ien Ang that we read this week reminded me distinctly of a book I read a few years ago by Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49. In fact, the concepts raised in both works are exactly the same. Unfortunately, I don’t remember very much of the book, not nearly enough to propose a thorough analysis by any means. It was recommended to me because I had, at that point, taken to a strange fascination with entropy. When I read it, I really had no clue what part entropy played in the plot of the novel. All I could tell was that it was about the breakdown of communication and a crazy lady who was hallucinating all the time. Now I see how it all comes together. It was written during the sixties, a time of much turbulence and uncertainty. One of the subplots of the book is about this subversive, secretive courier service whose members often send meaningless letters to one another, leading the receiver, not the sender to create the meaning of the message, and showing, as Ing says, effective communication is not simply getting the message from sender to receiver. The courier service’s symbol is a muted post horn, depicting the failure of communication. And this group contrasts and is opposition to the USPS, who is trying to impose a structure upon communication.