Fantastical material in The Crying of Lot 49

I decided to reread a part of chapter 5 of the book The Crying of Lot 49 which caught my attention due to the fact that it contained a lot of fantastic material. Throughout this segment of the chapter, the characters experiment various hallucinations, dreams and fantasies.

When I observed that fantasy was present in this chapter so many times, I concluded that it was probably a tool that the author used to make reference to the 60’s which was a time that promoted drugs. The hippie culture consumed drugs such as LSD which produced hallucinations and strong sensations. This drug is mentioned in various occasions in this chapter and in the throughout the novel.

The first example that I found related to the hallucinations mentioned in the book is the following , “decorating each alienation, each species of withdrawal, a cufflink, decal, aimless doodling, there was always the post horn She grew so to expect it that perhaps she did not see it quite as often as she later was to remember seeing it.” (100) Here, Oedipa begins to imagine that she has seen the horn symbol almost everywhere she goes and almost in every object she looks at. She is imagining this things and she doesn’t really know why. One possible theory is that she is actually using LSD. The other possibility is that she has begun to loose her mind due to the stress and confusion.

The next example appears some pages later when Oedipa goes to Dr. Hilarious office to see if he could help her to get her head straight. But what she encounters that day is Dr. Hilarious gone completely mad, fantasizing that he is being followed by Israelis searching for revenge because he used to be a Nazi. It is also inferred that because Hilarious is prescribing LSD to people, he becomes so paranoid after a time that he looses his mind. In the following quote, he comments on fantasy and of the importance it should be given after Oedipa asks him about it. “‘I came,’ she said ‘hoping you could talk me out of fantasy.’ – ‘Cherish it!’ cried Hilarious, fiercely. ‘What else do any of you have? Hold it tightly by its little tentacle, don’t let the Freudians coax it away or the pharmacists poison it out of you. What ever it is, hold it dear, for when you loose it you go over by that much to the others. You begin to cease to be.” (113) In this fragment of the chapter the Dr. is really crazy, but he does say something that is very true. Without any fantasy and dreams, you are nothing. It’s like ceasing to exist because you are not using your brain to create. Hilarious may also be saying this to induce Oedipa into LSD so that his business will continue to prosper.

Finally I read the quotation below, which is said by Mucho Maas to Oedipa in their reencounter, “Let me tell you. The bad dream that I used to have all the time, about the car lot, remember that?...It was only that sign in the lot, that’s what scared me...We were members of the National Automobile Dealer’s Association. N.A.D.A. Just this creaking metal sign that said nada, nada against the blue sky. I used to wake up hollering.”(118) In this part of the text, Mucho shares a dream he has repeatedly and that used to torment him. Nada, meaning nothing in Spanish, may represent the emptiness and hollowness of his life with Oedipa as a couple. This dream could also have been caused by drugs, since we are informed that he became a junky because of the prescriptions of LSD given to him by Dr. Hilarious. This was the final example of the evidence of fantastic material in this novel.