Russian Nesting Doll

As we talked about in class, The Crying of Lot 49 is a novel that parallels Oedipa’s search for meaning within her life with the reader’s search for meaning within the novel itself. One important way in which Oedipa searches for meaning within her monotonous life is to relate it to aspects of the media. There are several notable occasions in which the plot progression is ingrained in some aspect of the media, and the actual plot progression can only be explained and understood through the lens of the media. The first example of this is during her tryst with Metzger. Not only is their entire love affair played out alongside one of Metzger’s movies, in which he is Baby Igor, but “The Paranoids” provide a soundtrack to their love-making that is so influential and involved that their twosome becomes a group affair. Oedipa’s feelings during her time with Metzger is explained as a, “sexual crescendo in progress” (42), and during the love making Oedipa is focused more on counting the number of guitars within the band than the person she is sleeping with, though ironically, moments earlier she was too drunk to even realize that she was having sex, “She awoke at last to find herself getting laid” (42).

In order for the reader to interpret this scene, the reader also has to interpret the Baby Igor film and “The Paranoids” music, which just contributes to the image of the slowly unraveling yarn ball that was mentioned in class. Though, in this situation and the other situations in which plot is set up alongside aspects of the media: The Courier’s Tragedy, and Mucho’s interview of Oedipa for his radio show immediately following her interactions with the crazed Dr. Hilarious; a mental image of a Russian Nesting Doll might just be more appropriate. Thinking about this novel as a small doll within a bigger doll within a bigger doll reflects the deconstructionist movement during which this postmodern novel was written. Something can only be explained in terms of something else, eventually resulting in the inability to explain anything at all.

Rachel Jordan