Thank you, Mr. Pynchon

In Thomas Pynchon’s A Journey into the Mind of Watts, he gives the reader a different look into his writing style. In this essay, he is very vivid in his details, along with taking a hard stance in what he believes in, which is something that we, as a class, were not used to in reading The Crying Lot of 49. He delivers the story of Leonard Deadwyler, a Negro who was in the process of taking his pregnant wife to the hospital, but was stopped and shot by a Caucasian police officer who claimed the shooting was a complete mistake. Due to the racism in the 1960s occurring through the entire nation, the police officer was let off with no charges. The story presented at the beginning of the essay about Leonard may be used a narrative hook, in order to pull the reader into the story grasping their full attention for the preceding part of the essay. Throughout the rest of the essay, Pynchon continues to exhibit the racism and segregation between East Los Angeles and the rest. He writes “Somehow it occurs to very few of them to leave at the Imperial Highway exit for a change, go east instead of west only a few blocks, and take a look at Watts.” During this time nobody seemed to care about Watts, except for maybe the employers who employed many of the minimum salaried jobs.

On the other hand, The Crying Lot of 49 is perplexing during almost the entire book. The reader is left thinking after nearly every page as to what exactly occurred. We are also able to note that his literary pieces whether being non-fiction or fiction are completely opposite. The Crying Lot of 49, is a fiction novel that baffles nearly all who read it, while Pynchon’s essay A Journey into the Mind of Watts is non-fiction and told very clear to the point with a plethora of evidence to defend his case. In my opinion, I was able to get much more out of his essay, possibly because he gets his reader to sympathize with the community of Watts and other African-Americans during this tough time.