This is an analysis of Krystal Sardinas’s most recent reading response.
After reading Krystal’s response, the affect that I am able to intuit from this new narrative is one of a woman, swallowed by a quest she neither asked for nor is fully prepared to undertake. Krystal’s first two vignettes convey Oedipa as a woman so consumed with executing the will, whether by loyalty to a respected friends wishes, or by the growing curiosity she felt about Tristero, that she was willing to sacrifice her own health to uncover the truth.
Krystal skillfully wove her own narrative in with Pynchon’s novel, The Crying of Lot 49. After reading her response, I didn’t feel I was reading original narrative fragments as I was the unabridged text from Pynchon himself. I thought it was clever how Krystal used Sig, Sigmund Freud as a historical reference, then had Sig reference his own book to Oedipa, again drifting in and out of events Pynchon wrote.
Krystal wrote this narrative supplement in the mode of reason; While it seems as if some of the things that happen to Oedipa, happen only by chance, Oedipa is actually using deductive reasoning. Although Oedipa seems to have a chance encounter with Sigmund Freud, it later leads to another piece of her puzzle, while still failing to lead anywhere. I think this was effectively written because this is in essence what I feel Pynchon also does to his readers; leading them in several viable directions yet failing to reveal key missing elements.
