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There are a number of things about this book that make it a great read for someone who wants to get an idea of what Thomas Pynchon鈥檚 work is like. First of all, at just over a hundred pages The Crying of Lot 49 is not a long epic novel like the 760-page work Gravity's Rainbow. Moreover, the center of consciousness remains the same for most of the novel: what the protagonist, Oedipa Maas, knows is what we the readers know. In addition, there are few flashbacks, and most of the events of the story are told in chronological order. Because of all this, it is possible, in contrast to works like Gravity鈥檚 Rainbow and V., to keep the story straight in your head as you read it. The story does not emerge right away: the function of the first couple of chapters is to tell us something about Oedipa Maas and about the cultural setting (California in the 1960s). The story does emerge, however, and grows darker and more apocalyptic, culminating in a profound statement on postwar America.

The book includes many of the techniques Pynchon employs in his other, much longer novels, such as historical and economical analysis, references to physics and engineering, and metafictional commentary on narrative, conspiracy theory and paranoia. A great way of getting a sense of Pynchon's style.