[pencilantha]

Does anyone know? I need to figure this out, please. I have been scouring the internet but I can't figure it out? Does anyone know? Can anyone help me?

[Wondergirl]

Give me a little boost with this. Is this referring to literature in some way? Are you supposed to simply define it or write an essay on it or find books that are surreal conspiracies?

[pencilantha]

Yes, this is referring to literature. I am supposed to write a short story with the theme being "surreal conspiracy".

[Wondergirl]

Was there any class discussion about this?

[pencilantha]

No, there wasn't. Everyone got a slip of paper and they have to write a short story about whatever was on the paper.

[Wondergirl]

Apparently, there are realistic conspiracy novels like Da Vinci Code, and surreal conspiracy novels like The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon. In a surreal conspiracy novel, "the evidence for the conspiracy itself [is] a conspiracy to fake a conspiracy. So by the end of the novel, you’re just as confused about what is real and what may be a giant ruse, as the protagonist is."

[pencilantha]

Oh, I get it now. Thanks for your help!

[Wondergirl]

More:

"Pynchon is writing fully aware of how he’s toying with, manipulating, side-swiping the reader. He does it without maliciousness, perhaps, but he’s forcing the reader to look away from the details and instead focus on the Big Picture — not just in the story, but in the socio-cultural conditions in which a story like this can even take place (and its audience can live in)."

[Wondergirl]

More on Pynchon's Lot 49:

"Is the conspiracy real or not? Did Oedipa's deceased former uber-rich boyfriend set the whole thing up as an elaborate practical joke? The answer is it doesn't matter, Pynchon himself probably doesn't know, and that's what make the themes of the book more effective, but at the same time, the abrupt end more unfulfilling to the mind that's used to and expecting resolution and denouement. The rich boyfriend manipulating people, exploiting labor, setting up the conditions of what people accept as “reality,” literally crafting the dominant culture from buildings to artwork all around the protagonist — if this isn't a comment on modern capitalism and its cultural logic, I (nor Fredric Jameson) don't know what is! Whether the conspiracies are real or a joke, either way, the absolute constant underlying everything that happens in the story is the effect that those who own the capital control what people do and believe, sometimes overtly, usually with the subtlety of a shadow organization.

When Metzger, the lawyer hired to co-execute the millionaire's will, tells Oedipa at the beginning of the novel (after they'd had sex), that her dead former boyfriend told him she “wouldn't be easy,” naturally we assume he's talking about getting her in bed. But by the end of the story, when we're left to wonder what's real and what's scam and what's the result of pure paranoia and delusion, that line at the beginning of the novel carries more meaning. Was it a comment on her ability to be fooled or not?

Questions like this, the reader's search for clues and meaning in the same way the characters are, should reveal to us that there's only three choices — we're surrounded by conspiracy so deep it's endemic in the culture around us, we're surrounded by conspiracy that turns the mundane into unintended signifiers, or we're paranoid and delusional."

[Wondergirl]

If I had to write a short story as a surreal conspiracy, I'd use President Obama's birth certificate as my main idea.

[Wondergirl]

Let me know what you ended up writing about and how you did on it. (I'd love to know what other students got as assignments.)

[pencilantha]

I will. Thank you so much for all your help! :D

[Wondergirl]

Hey, what about "is Osama bin Laden really dead?" Surreal conspiracy.