Best Simile Ever

[... our heroine, backstage after a performance of the play, The Courier's Tragedy, seeing the director / actor up close for the first time ...]


She couldn't stop watching his eyes. They were bright black, surrounded by an incredible network of lines, like a laboratory maze for studying intelligence in tears. They seemed to know what she wanted, even if she didn't.

- The Crying of Lot 49, by Thomas Pynchon, pg 77 of the 1986 First Perennial Fiction Library Edition.


Maybe it's not the best simile ever, but if I kept mental track of my top thirteen, it'd be up there. A laboratory maze for studying intelligence in tears is not something thought out, worked out on pen and paper like a solving an integral. It's simply tossed out by the Muse to be caught by the lucky few on their toes.

Finished Lot 49 yesterday; not sure what to think. Do I reread it (it's relatively short)? Do I read the companion booklet explaining much of the Pynchonian esoterica? Not sure; may just move on and let it percolate a bit in my mind over the next few days. Uncertain how to tackle a review of the book. A review by someone like myself may be an exercise in self-immolating futility. There's no way I could come out with dignity and self-respect intact.

We'll see. It's truly a strange, intriguing, laugh-out-loud book. But what the heck it means I haven't the slightest clue.