Pynchon in Public Podcast

Oedipa, with the help of a Warfinger scholar, digs into the history of the Trystero. As the people and things in her life gradually fall away, she finds herself in a fugue. The last bit of her former lover, Pierce, who set her upon this quest, goes up for auction. It is there that she faces the crying of lot 49.

After a night spent wandering the streets of San Narciso and seeing the post-horn at nearly every turn, Oedipa encounters an old sailor who asks her to drop a letter into W.A.S.T.E. for him. She tails a deliveryman for a while, and then heads back to Kinneret…where things are certainly in a much different state than when she left.

Chapter 5 begins with Oedipa visiting John Nefastis and his homemade Maxwell’s Demon device. Afterward, she begins a night of peregrination, wandering from place to place, point to point, the muted post-horn always seeming to follow – or perhaps precede – her.

Chapter 4 finds Oedipa first at a stockholders’ meeting of Yoyodyne, after which she finds a young man seemingly hip to the W.A.S.T.E. system. In a code-heavy conversation, he mentions the last of the true inventors, John Nefastis, who created a real, live Maxwell’s Demon that will work with the aid of a psychic sensitive. Later, she finds an edition of The Courier’s Tragedy with notably differing text, uncover a bit more about the Tristero’s possible involvement in early American postal services, and talk to eminent philatelist Genghis Cohen.

The Courier’s Tragedy is a Pynchon-invented play within the novel modeled on the revenge tragedies of seventeenth century England. It’s wildly violent and hugely entertaining…but what’s the point? How might it work within the novel? And what of Oepida’s encounter with the play’s director? We might just have some answers for you; then again, we might just have more questions.