Both Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 and Susan Sontag’s Death Kit are based around the actions of one central character attempting to make sense of the world which surrounds them, and the idea of paranoia is a crucial factor influencing the way they view this world. However, when exploring the theme of paranoia within these two novels it is also necessary to examine its relationship with another key concept in the fiction of Pynchon and Sontag – the theory of entropy. First however, I intend to look at how the nature of paranoia is explored in The Crying of Lot 49, before examining how the concept of entropy relates to this and the novels parallels with Death Kit.
Virtually every character in The Crying of Lot 49 is paranoid to some degree – Miles from the Paranoids originally assumes that Oedipa hates him, Dr. Hilarius believes that the police are Israeli terrorists seeking revenge on him for his actions as a Nazi scientist during the war, and Oedipa’s husband Mucho is unable to stand the sight of honey because
like all things viscous it distressed him… he walked out of a party one night because somebody used the word ‘creampuff’, it seemed maliciously, in his hearing.
John Stark defines Pynchon’s view of paranoia as related to information, specifically “belief that one has secret information and fear that one lacks important information that someone else knows” . This, of course, is the central problem which plagues Oedipa throughout the novel. In attempting to solve the mystery of the Tristero she repeatedly finds herself in the position of needing to search for yet more information - the Tristero, if indeed it exists, is always one step ahead of her, clues only lead to more clues, leaving Oedipa in an increasingly isolated and confused state of mind. However, her deductions are also grounded in one central question – ‘does the Tristero exist?’. If it does, of course, then Oedipa is quite right to follow its leads, otherwise she is merely paranoid. In her own words:
Either way, they’ll call it paranoia. They. Either you have stumbled indeed, without the aid of LSD or other indole alkaloids, on to a secret richness and concealed density of dreams; on to a network by which X number of Americans are truly communicating whilst reserving their lies, recitations of routine, arid betrayals of spiritual poverty, for the official government delivery system; maybe even on to a real alternative to the exitlessness, to the absence of surprise to life, that harrows the head of every American you know, and you too sweetie. Or you are hallucinating it. Or a plot has been mounted against you… all financed out of the estate in a way either too secret or too involved for your non-legal mind to know about even though you are co-executor, so labyrinthine that it must have meaning beyond just a practical joke. Or you are fantasying some plot, in which case you are a nut, Oedipa, out of your skull.
There is the distinct possibility that the Tristero does not exist at all: the mention of the word ‘Trystero’ in The Courier’s Tragedy hinges on a textual problem; when Oedipa returns to The Scope she finds that the post horn message has disappeared from the toilet wall and so on, this may be a huge plot of which Pierce Inverarity, who seems to have owned all of America, is architect and causes everyone she meets to conspire against her. Only definite proof of a Tristero-like conspiracy can convince Oedipa she is not paranoid, and this proof continues to elude her. Either way, if the Tristero and WASTE do exist, then they exist as a system which allows all kinds of paranoid outsiders – Nazis, anarchists, Marxists, homosexuals, misanthropes and those with various bizarre sexual preferences to communicate with each other without being discovered by the government. This, of course implies a fear that official lines of communication are in some way being monitored by the government, or whoever is really in charge. So either Oedipa herself is paranoid or she has discovered a system indicative of a paranoia inherent throughout American society . Furthermore if the Tristero does exist then it is significant that one of the few characters who does not use WASTE is the dead man, Pierce Inverarity, the capitalist, and the one who owns America. If the Tristero does not exist, then it may be part of a huge plot devised by Inverarity mocking the whole idea of the paranoid American outsider. Either way, there are no answers.
Pynchon uses one particular central metaphor to highlight Oedipa’s predicament, the idea of Maxwell’s Demon and the concept of entropy. The American Standard College Dictionary defines ‘entropy’ as
a. Physics. A mathematical expression of the degree in which the energy of a thermodynamic system is so distributed as to be unavailable for conversion into work…
The irreversible tendency of a system, including the universe, towards increasing disorder and inertness; also, the final state predictable from this tendency.
Pynchon begins by explaining the theory behind Maxwell’s Demon, the idea that in any closed system there is a degree of entropy caused, in part, by molecules moving at different speeds. The Demon in question would be a tiny being capable of sorting the fast moving molecules from the slower ones, thus decreasing the amount of entropy. This parallels Oedipa’s own situation, she is like the Demon, sorting the various clues she comes across in order to make sense of the disorder which surrounds her. However, a scientist would argue that the amount of energy expended by the Demon in the process of opening and closing the door which aids the sorting would serve only to increase entropy far more than the process of sorting would help to decrease it. Once again this reflects Oedipa’s situation – in seeking to establish a system of order by deducing the various clues which lead to the Tristero, she succeeds only in creating more disorder, leading to the unhappy fate of those who surround her, and her own increasing confusion, isolation and paranoia. Furthermore, the concept of entropy is also related to the transmission of information
… there were two types of entropy. One having to do with heat-engines, the other to do with communication. The equation for one, back in the 30’s, had looked very like the equation for the other. It was a coincidence. The two fields were entirely unconnected, except at one point: Maxwell’s Demon.
Despite the similarity in equations which forms the basis for the Demon, the Nefastis machine communicates nothing - Oedipa herself realises this, asking “but what… if the demon exists only because the two equations look alike? Because of the metaphor?” Yet again, this parallels Oedipa’s situation, or at least one of her options, what if the post horn is nothing more than a widely used symbol that can fulfil various functions? What if she is merely relying on a coincidence and forcing connections which aren’t there? Is the whole thing then meaningless? This reflects not only Oedipa’s situation, but also that of the reader. It would be possible to provide a detailed semiotic analysis of every sign, symbol, name, metaphor and situation in the book (and one Internet based essay does indeed attempt this ) and it would still lead us no closer to fully understanding the novel, indeed it could only throw up more questions, the most prominent of which would be ‘do any of these really mean anything, or are they just ‘red herrings’ deliberately placed there by Pynchon with the intention to confuse?’ And so Pynchon succeeds in highlighting the universal nature of this paranoia by helping to induce it in the reader.
This idea of entropy is taken further by Tony Tanner, who views entropy as a state of disorder tending inevitably towards a homogenous state of “uniform motion”. Quoting from Norbert Wiener’s book The Human Use of Human Beings (1954), he mentions that
As entropy increases, the universe, and all closed systems in the universe, tend naturally to deteriorate and lose their distinctiveness, to move from the least to the most probable state, from a state of organization and differentiation in which distinctions and forms exist, to a state of chaos and sameness
This could be applied metaphorically in two ways, firstly it may symbolise the gradual descent into chaos of Oedipa and her acquaintances. On the other hand, is it not possible that she could have been in a state of entropy, at this point of indistinct homogeneity masquerading as order, at the start of the book, and in seeking to establish order succeeds only in increasing the entropy, and with it the chaos, which continues until the end of the novel? At the opening of the novel, Oedipa describes the recent years of her life as “a fat deckful of days, which seemed… almost identical” . This idea of entropic sameness is explored in further detail by Susan Sontag in Death Kit. While appearing to live a perfectly ‘normal’, everyday life, Diddy is in reality troubled by a sense of “everything running down”. Sontag’s description of Diddy’s anxieties appears very similar to Tanner’s vision of entropy:
Diddy needs faith. Which he lacks (now). Making everything unpredictable. Showing up promptly at ten o’clock at the Lexington Avenue offices of Watkins & Company must be accomplished five times a week in the face of Diddy’s suspicion, each morning, that it’s never been done before. Each morning he does it. That’s a miracle. Yet, lacking faith, Diddy is unable to conclude that the occurrence of miracles guarantees a world in which such miracles take place. Concludes, instead, that to perform something one sets out to perform isn’t really a miracle. More like a gross rupture of the inert, fragile, sticky fabric of things. Or a silly accident; as when somebody carelessly brandishes a pair of scissors and makes an ugly rent in the fabric, or inadvertently burns holes in it with a cigarette.
Diddy then goes on to envisage an imaginary, malevolent generator, spraying ugly refuse over all aspects of Diddy’s life. This is a highly chaotic, paranoid image, similar to the way in which Oedipa perceives herself as trapped in an imaginary tower’, held there by “magic, anonymous and malignant, visited on her from outside and for no reason at all” , the only escape routes from this are to “fall back on superstition, or take up a useful hobby like embroidery, or go mad, or marry a disc jockey”. In other words, the only ways to escape the paranoia caused by this entropy are to institute some significant change, ignore it, or go insane. The idea of escape is also an important factor when considering the link between entropy and paranoia. Another characteristic of entropy is that, when not in any closed system, it does not necessarily have to increase. A human is not generally a ‘closed system’ - as well as food and water, we take in information as to our surroundings, and can only become such a system if we are to retreat solely inside our own heads, be it through madness, death or drugs. This is exactly what happens to Diddy, as well as the majority of the characters in The Crying of Lot 49. Diddy works for a company which sells microscopes, symbolic of the way in which Diddy feels a compulsion to look at everything far too closely, he has a “Brobdignagian eye”, and like Swift’s Gulliver is able to see the ugliness inherent in society. It is as if, in looking so closely at the world, Diddy and the characters in …Lot 49 are able to gain a perception of this chaotic ‘uniform motion’, and it is this feeds their paranoia, driving Mucho Maas into his drug induced delusion, Dr. Hilarius to insanity, and Diddy to suicide.
Where Diddy differs from the characters in …Lot 49 is that we are aware exactly of what is going on inside his head. The narrative is in fact a dream experienced by Diddy immediately preceding his death, during which he is completely within his own closed system which, as entropy increases, causes his dream to become more paranoid and chaotic as the novel progresses. The dream is dominated by Diddy’s relationship with two characters, Incardona and Hester – he is murderer of one, lover of the other. These are not real people at all, but personifications of two sides of Diddy’s character, one from which he seeks to escape, the other to which he aspires. Both characters are extremities and caricatures – Incardona is overbearing, ugly, masculine, almost animalistic, while Hester is etherealised and beautiful. Incardona is certainly the more realistic of the two, an everyday working class Italian American, yet Diddy still fears him. On the first occasion he ‘kills’ him, Diddy does so because he believes Incardona is about to attack him with an axe, whereas in reality he is probably only about to continue breaking down the wall. On their second meeting he has become a monster, outsized, openly confrontational, and looking to rape Hester. Incardona is a reflection of Diddy’s intense distrust of everyone in society, he
finds the world closing in on him, untransformed and unequivocally menacing. Hard and heartless as a stainless-steel mirror. Quite simply, every person he knows – from Paul to the merest acquaintance – speaks to him of Incardona. All people… address him on Incardona’s behalf. Without knowing it, every person seems to be Incardona’s deputy; howling mutely for Diddy’s blood. Hester alone stands outside this magic world of infinite duplication.
Hester represents a kind of idyllic state which Diddy spends the whole novel attempting to reach – he imagines her as being ‘nobly’ blind, like a statue of a Greek god or hero, living inside her own head, unable to see the world around her which Diddy, in viewing everything too closely, is forced to see with such hate and distrust. To Diddy, Hester is a way of escape from the outside world. Before Diddy can be wholly inside his own head he must destroy his fear and paranoia and embrace his new-found serenity. The first time he kills the workman he is unsuccessful, he feels guilt and later remorse, and as a result Hester does not believe it even happened, he cannot fully let go, symbolised by their tentative lovemaking on the train. At the end of the novel however, Incardona’s death is far more violent, as if he has totally exorcised the ghost of his own fear and paranoia, and makes wild love to Hester in the train tunnel, rolling around in Incardona’s blood. Significantly, when Diddy dreams of Incardona’s autopsy, it is conducted by the same “Negro in a white jacket and pants, reeking of vomit” who appears at the beginning and end of the novel. Incardona and Diddy are one and the same, and Diddy must destroy the Incardona in him before he can transcend the world he reviles. However, paranoia is so ingrained in Diddy that the only way he can do this is in death, when he can reach the state he believes Hester exists in, and finally truly embrace her like a fairy tale princess. For Diddy, “Life = the world. Death = being completely inside your own head.”
The novel ends by informing us that “Diddy has perceived the inventory of the world”, yet this perception is warped and nightmarish - it is not the young black nurse who reeks of vomit after all, it is Diddy himself. Like The Crying of Lot 49, part of the genius of Death Kit is that it breaks down and re-examines conventional notions of realism by presenting a distorted view of the world, exaggerating its characteristics in order to show us its faults. This, of course, is exactly what paranoids do, when they exaggerate negativity and use it to fuel their own anxieties, their sense of “everything falling down”. The concept of ‘entropy’ in both books could then be a mere metaphor, a way in which both Pynchon and Sontag are able to effectively give us an insight into the mind of a paranoid, as well as a reflection of the paranoia inherent throughout American society.
― Matt DC (Matt DC), Wednesday, 31 March 2004 22:10 (twenty-two years ago)
one year passes...