The Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon, Thomas - 1966

Philadelphia, PA & New York, NY: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1966. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Fine/Near Fine. "The Crying of Lot 49...is the story of Oedipa Maas, a young woman who finds herself appointed executrix of a former lover's estate. This is annoying enough, but when it leads to the gradual revelation of the secret postal system of the outcasts..."(from rear flap) A first edition of Thomas Pynchon's second novel, published three years after his Faulkner First Novel Award-winning V. made a splash whose ripples still resonate. Another hauntingly humorous cult-popular classic by this uncatagorizable giant of twentieth & twenty-first century American literature. As Richard Poirier wrote at the end of his New York Times review when it was first published, "What is also noticeable here, and throughout the novel, is that the major character is really Pynchon himself, Pynchon's voice with its capacity to move from the elegy to the epic catalogue. The narrator sounds like a survivor looking through the massed wreckage of his civilization, "a salad of despair." That image...is typically full of sadness, terror, love, and flamboyance. But then, how else should one imagine a tryst with America? And that is what this novel is." A very important item for any serious Pynchon collection, in relatively wonderful condition. Book very fine with very mild soiling & scratching to edges, very light wear, soiling & spotting to upper & lower edges of front, back covers & spine, very small bump at top right corner of front cover, interior almost mint with only very light browning to edges. Dust jacket in near-fine condition with very minor rubbing & moderate creasing at top right corner of front cover; moderate wear & soiling of back cover esp. vertically at or near edges; very small missing portion at lower spine; top appx. 1/16" horizontal portion of front & back covers neatly cut off (can be determined from jagged remains at spine); unclipped front & rear flaps in very fine condition with only very light browning & creasing at edges.