I must admit I was a sucker for Lot 49 from the start, because it grapples with really interesting and important topics: how do we see meaning out in the world? To what extent is it taken in, or constructed? Is this all narratives are too? If meaning is out there in the world, yet depends on us, can we really say the two are altogether separate?

Yet what really drew me in about the book was how Pynchon wrote characters as sad and relatable, yet absurd and hilarious. It's a tough balance to hit, and wonderful to see in action.

The book comes across as less satirical today as simply imbued with the spirit of the times: movements everywhere, a thousand radical splinters each trying to consummate their programs to change the world and change themselves. It's something that I didn't quite understand until I read the similarly-excellent Before the Storm and Nixonland, both by Rick Perlstein on the politics and zeitgeist of the late fifties through early seventies.

And the prose—oh wow, the prose. Melifluous but not saccharine, evocative but not straightjacketing, wry but not sardonic. Pynchon can write.

It's a good book and you should read it!