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"The attack of The Crying of Lot 49, expressed by the narrator but reflective of Oedipa [Maas]'s consciousness, is directed at America, where, "with the chances once so good for diversity, " a form of the sterile has nevertheless evolved as a result of the "excluded middles." [...] Although punctuated by a sense of loss, the apposite passage near the end of Pynchon's short narrative uses a conventional means of attack, vulgar invective, to pit narrator-Oedipa in opposition to America: "She had heard all about excluded middles; they were bad shit, to be avoided; and how had it ever happened here, with the chances once so good for diversity?" (136). One of the essential principles of classical logic, the Law of the Excluded Middles states that every proposition must be either true or false, thereby eliminating the possibility that a proposition may be neither true or false but, rather, doubtful or undecidable. [...] Such uncertainty functions as a metaphor for the neglected middle of diversity that emerges from The Crying of Lot 49's eccentric narrative. As metaphor, the attack on logical positivism is central to the text's vision: it entails attack as well on an America that excludes from power those whom the text identifies punningly as "W.A.S.T.E.," the unofficial organization of communication for America's disinherited. America is thus the object of The Crying of Lot 49's satire."

Quoted from: Theodore D. Kharpertian. "The Crying of Lot 49: History as Mail Conspiracy." A Hand to Turn the Time: The Menippean Satires of Thomas Pynchon. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, London/Toronto, 1990: 85-107 (86).