Pynchon mimics some famous works with his literary style with allusions to the way they were written. The most prevalent and obvious is the book within a book. This is similar to Shakespeare’s Hamlet which featured a play within a play. Like that of Hamlet’s, it mirrored things that were going on in the book. Oedipa goes to a play entitled “The Couriers Tragedy” hoping that it will provide her with clues to the mystery of the bugle symbol. While Hamlet shows the play because he thinks it will reveal the mystery of who killed his father.

Although I do not personally like Pynchon’s style, I have to give him credit, he is unique. He writes in a frantic deeply metaphorical style. I will give some example sentences so that you get the feel of what I am trying to convey.

“The face of the nymph was much like Oedipa’s, which didn’t startle her so much as a concealed blower system that kept the nymph’s gauze chiton in constant agitation, revealing enormous vermilion-tipped breast and long pink thighs at each flap”

This sentence is describing a statue, which I believe is an allusion to Marilyn Monroes famous picture of her over the steam vent. Pynchon is also not one to hold back details.

“They came in among earth-moving machines, a total absence of trees, the usual hieratic geometry, and eventually, shimmying for the sand roads, down in a helix to a sculptured body of water named lake Inverarity.

This sentence I feel is a compilation of the first descriptive words that came to his head. Most of the book is written like this, deep description for everything, and a slightly mysterious quality to the descriptions.