Trivia / The Crying of Lot 49

• Believe it or not, Crying does not contain any f-word.
• Creator Backlash: While it’s one of his most popular works, Pynchon himself isn’t very fond of it, writing in Slow Learner that Crying “was marketed as a ‘novel,’ and in which I seem to have forgotten most of what I thought I’d learned up until then”.
• Contains what is probably the first use of the word “shrink” to refer to a psychiatrist (this is the origin reported by the Oxford English Dictionary, although the term “headshrinker”, from which it originates, is slightly older).
• Referenced by...: Radiohead's fan club W.A.S.T.E. is named after an acronym from the novel (We Await Silent Trystero's Empire).