Editing The Crying of Lot 49 (section)

===The Beatles===

''The Crying of Lot 49'' was published shortly after [[Beatlemania]] and the "[[British invasion]]" that took place in the United States and other Western countries. Internal context clues indicate that the novel is set in the summer of 1964, the year in which ''[[A Hard Day's Night (film)|A Hard Day's Night]]'' was released. Pynchon makes a wide variety of Beatles allusions. Most prominent are the Paranoids, a band composed of cheerful [[cannabis (drug)|marijuana]] smokers whose lead singer, Miles, is a high-school dropout described as having a "Beatle haircut". The Paranoids all speak with American accents but sing in English ones; at one point, a guitar player is forced to relinquish control of a car to his girlfriend because he cannot see through his hair. It is not clear whether Pynchon was aware of the Beatles' nickname for themselves, "Los Para Noias"; since the novel is replete with other references to paranoia, Pynchon may have chosen the band's name for other reasons.<ref name="harrison">[[George Harrison|Harrison, George MBE]] ''et al.''  ''The Beatles Anthology'' (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000).  {{ISBN|0-8118-2684-8}}.</ref>

Pynchon refers to a rock song, "I Want to Kiss Your Feet", an adulteration of "[[I Want to Hold Your Hand]]". The song's artist, Sick Dick and the Volkswagens, evokes the names of such historical rock groups as [[the El Dorados]], [[the Edsels]], [[the Cadillacs]] and the Jaguars (as well as an early name the Beatles themselves used, "Long John and the Silver Beetles"). "Sick Dick" may also refer to Richard Wharfinger, author of "that ill, ill [[Literature in English#Jacobean literature|Jacobean revenge play]]" known as ''The Courier's Tragedy''.<ref name="grant"/> The song's title also keeps up a recurring sequence of allusions to [[Narcissus of Jerusalem|Saint Narcissus]], a 3rd-century bishop of [[Jerusalem]].

Late in the novel, Oedipa's husband, Mucho Maas, a disc jockey at Kinneret radio station [[Fuck|KCUF]], describes his experience of discovering the Beatles. Mucho refers to their early song "[[She Loves You]]", as well as hinting at the areas the Beatles were later to explore.  Pynchon wrote,

<blockquote>Whenever I put the headset on now," he'd continued, "I really do understand what I find there. When those kids sing about 'She loves you,' yeah well, you know, she does, she's any number of people, all over the world, back through time, different colors, sizes, ages, shapes, distances from death, but she loves. And the 'you' is everybody. And herself. Oedipa, the human voice, you know, it's a flipping miracle." His eyes brimming, reflecting the color of beer. "Baby," she said, helpless, knowing of nothing she could do for this, and afraid for him. He put a little clear plastic bottle on the table between them. She stared at the pills in it, and then understood. "That's [[LSD]]?" she said.</blockquote>