The word, the self, and the underground estate of pierce inverarity in Thomas Pynchon's "The Crying of Lot 49"

Abstract

"Not least among the possible forms of dychotomization to which Pynchon’s fiction lends itself is the division into the “overground” realm of the visible and various forms of the underground. Thus in V., Benny Profane, tired of the street, the spurious alternative to the hot-house of paranoid speculation and a metaphysical cul-de-sac, is offered a chance to try his luck under the arid thoroughfares of the West: he literally climbs down under the streets of New York, and his peregrinations in the sewers of this city are not free of anticipatory desire for some sort of soteriological revelation. On a less literal level, Malta, with its supposedly rich deposits of myth and ancient wisdom, stands in opposition to the superficiality of a civilization where people tend to oscillate between self-induced mindlessness and self-created façades. Godolphin makes his terrible discovery under the gaudy skin of reality, and Stencil’s quest centers upon a conspiracy whose alleged aim is to undermine the metaphysical foundations of the West. In all cases, whether they are imagined or real, and whether their message appears to be hope-inspiring or frightening, Pynchon’s murky underworlds lure with the promise of transcendence, of going beyond the predictable mendacities of daylight." (fragm.)