The Crying of Lot 49

Pierce Inverarity is a "California real estate mogul" (1) whose death becomes the catalyst for the plot of The Crying of Lot 49. Without telling her, Pierce names his ex-girlfriend Oedipa as the executor of his will. She has no experience in this role. She is chosen seemingly as a final, morbid joke on Pierce's behalf, which Oedipa has no choice but to engage with. This final action is an illustration of the power imbalance between Pierce and Oedipa that continues throughout the novel. It is illustrative of the power imbalance between men and women in general in a patriarchal society, and it is telling that Oedipa, a housewife, will be the mystery’s investigator. He is flat and static.

At all times, Pierce seems to be the person in control of Oedipa’s fate as she gradually surrenders herself to the investigation. Pierce may be dead, but he is a totalizing figure in the novel. He is everywhere, in a spiritual and commercial sense. Oedipa eventually learns that Pierce seems to own everything (or, at the very least, a part of everything) in San Narciso. Everywhere she goes, everything she does, she runs into the lingering traces of her now-dead ex-boyfriend. Despite his ubiquity in the novel, very little is actually known about Pierce. Shortly after she receives the letter from Pierce's estate, Oedipa remembers Pierce's habit of adopting different "voices" (3). He would perform these voices, stereotypical ethnic accents and celebrity impressions, for his own amusement. Oedipa's memory is a hint at the indefinability of Pierce's character.

Pierce adopted so many different personalities, in so many different places and in owning so many parts of so many properties, that it is impossible to distinguish an actual objective Pierce in the middle of it all. Instead, Oedipa understands Pierce through a series of competing impressions. The real voice of Pierce is found at the locus point between his jokes; Oedipa must assemble her understanding of Pierce from a competing series of subjective realities (jokes and impressions), just as she must later do with the Tristero conspiracy. Pierce's indefinable character is an early indicator of Oedipa’s changing relationship with reality.

Pierce's jokes haunt the novel. Later, Mike Fallopian suggests to Oedipa that the entire investigation might be an elaborate "hoax, maybe something Inverarity set up before he died" (129). This suggestion lingers in Oedipa's mind. The joke may be revenge against her for some unknown slight or insult, or some way to pay her back for the end of the relationship. The joke itself may be premised on its unfairness: There is no reason for the joke; it is as absurd as everything else. Oedipa eventually rejects the idea that her investigation is a joke. To do so would be a rejection of reality itself. When the investigation is all she has left in her life, she feels uncomfortable defining her existence as a misguided joke from a former partner.

Pierce's presence takes on a symbolic form. He affects everything in Oedipa's life, changing her relationship to her world and the institutions that define it. In a roundabout way, he is responsible for the end of her marriage, as his legal team arranges for Metzger to visit Oedipa and then sets Oedipa up on the investigation that alienates her from Mucho. Pierce continues to have an influence on Oedipa and the community, even in death. In this way, he represents the occluded ruling class of American society. His influence is deliberately obfuscated, tucked away inside stock portfolios and land deals. He is distant, removed from the day-to-day life of San Narciso not only because he is dead but also because he leads a materially different existence from everyone else. The man who "once lost two million dollars in his spare time" (1) is not relatable to the suffering Navy veteran. Oedipa is only able to cradle one of them in her hands, however, as the plight of the poor man earns her compassion in contrast to the disconnected, dead Pierce and his absurd desire for her to investigate reality.

When she is appointed as the executor of Pierce Inverarity's estate, Oedipa is introduced to Metzger. The first thought that enters her mind is that he is "so good-looking" (16) that he must have been sent by someone as a joke or a trick. Gradually, she begins to pick apart his backstory and learns that he is a former child actor. As they drink alcohol, they watch an old movie in which he starred. Oedipa is challenged to guess the ending of the movie, which may be being screened out of order. Metzger's challenge is an ironic act of meta-textuality. He is pushing Oedipa to guess the direction of the traditional narrative; a traditional narrative is something from which the novel itself will depart. Oedipa must try to guess the direction of her own narrative, and she is largely unsuccessful, just as she is when trying to guess the ending of Metzger's movie. As they drink more, Metzger challenges Oedipa to a game of Strip Botticelli. Oedipa accepts, but inverts the seduction by dressing in as many clothes as she can. The nascent affair ironically results in Oedipa wearing more clothes than ever before. When Oedipa and Metzger do eventually have sex, Oedipa is forced to reckon with the impact this will have on her marriage. There is neither her nor Mucho's first act of infidelity. Nevertheless, it is illustrative of the moral transgressions that will happen as her investigation progresses. Metzger is a mostly flat and static character.

Later, Oedipa returns to the motel to find that Metzger has run away with the girlfriend of one of the band members. Serge sings a song about Metzger eloping with his girlfriend, in which he draws explicit parallels to the novel Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (who taught Pynchon at Cornell University). Metzger runs away with an underage girl with the intent of marrying her, crossing a far graver moral threshold than Oedipa crossed when she engaged in a consenting affair between two adults. Metzger is another of the men who vanish from Oedipa's life as she delves more deeply into the mystery. His disappearance does not faze Oedipa. She is too preoccupied to feel "classically scorned" (113). Her lack of emotion is an illustration of the purely aesthetic nature of their relationship. Oedipa was never emotionally invested in Metzger. Their interaction was purely physical and transactional. Oedipa has already learned everything she needs from Metzger, about the estate and about herself. He vanishes from the novel as he vanishes from her life, without the capacity to leave any lasting impact.