The Crying of Lot 49

by Thomas Pynchon

“Oedipa had been named also to execute the will in a codicil dated a year ago. She tried to think back to whether anything unusual had happened around then. Through the rest of the afternoon, through her trip to the market in downtown Kinneret-Among-The-Pines to buy ricotta and listen the Muzak (today she came through the bead-curtained entrance around bar 4 of the Fort Wayne Settecento Ensemble's variorum recording of Vivaldi Kazoo Concerto, Boyd Beaver, soloist); then through the sunned gathering of marjoram and sweet basil from the herb garden, reading of book reviews in the latest Scientific American, into the layering of lasagna, garlicking of a bread, tearing up of romaine leaves, eventually, oven on, into the mixing of the twilight's whiskey sours against the arrival of her husband, Wendell ("Mucho") Maas from work, she wondered, wondered, shuffling back through a fat deckful of days which seemed (wouldn't she be the first to admit it?) more or less identical, or all pointing the same way subtly like a conjurer's deck, any odd one readily clear to a trained eye." pg. 2

“He walked out of a party one night because somebody used the word 'creampuff,' it seemed maliciously, in his hearing. The man was a refugee Hungarian pastry chef talking shop, but there was your Mucho: thin-skinned." p.4