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Pierce Inverarity
Metzger is Pierce Inverarity’s lawyer, a handsome former child actor who clumsily seduces Oedipa. In fact, Oedipa receives a letter about Inverarity’s will from Metzger in the book’s opening passage, and this is what initially spurs her to go south to San Narciso. When Oedipa arrives at the Echo Courts motel, Metzger shows up at her room unannounced with several bottles of alcohol. They watch one of his old movies, Cashiered, in which he played a young boy who accompanies his father to World War I and then dies a gruesome death. During the movie, Metzger makes overtly sexual advances at the ambivalent Oedipa and then finally convinces to a play a flirtatious that game he calls “Strip Botticelli.” They eventually have sex, although they are too drunk and tired to stay awake through it all. Afterward, Metzger comments that Inverarity told him that Oedipa “wouldn’t be easy” to sleep with, and this drives Oedipa to tears. For the rest of the book, although Metzger is supposed to be guiding Oedipa through this process of executing Inverarity’s will, in reality he does nothing at all. He and Oedipa spend most of their time having sex, drinking, and otherwise wasting time. When Oedipa returns to San Narciso at in the last chapter, she learns that Metzger has run away with a much younger woman who was previously dating one of the Paranoids. But, owing to the totally transactional and emotionless nature of her connection with Metzger, Oedipa does not mind. Metzger’s name is German for “butcher,” which could be a reference to his cruelty in both his relationship with Oedipa and his job protecting Inverarity’s absurd business ventures. Curiously, Oedipa never even learns Metzger’s first name, which further attests to the emptiness of their affair.
Metzger Quotes in The Crying of Lot 49
The The Crying of Lot 49 quotes below are all either spoken by Metzger or refer to Metzger. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 2 Quotes
She made the mistake of looking at herself in the full-length mirror, saw a beach ball with feet, and laughed so violently she fell over, taking a can of hair spray on the sink with her. The can hit the floor, something broke, and with a great outsurge of pressure the stuff commenced atomizing, propelling the can swiftly about the bathroom. […] The can collided with a mirror and bounced away, leaving a silvery, reticulated bloom of glass to hang a second before it all fell jingling into the sink; zoomed over to the enclosed shower, where it crashed into and totally destroyed a panel of frosted glass; thence around the three tile walls, up to the ceiling, past the light, over the two prostrate bodies, amid its own whoosh and the buzzing, distorted uproar from the TV set. She could imagine no end to it; yet presently the can did give up in midflight and fall to the floor, about a foot from Oedipa's nose.
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Outside a fugue of guitars had begun, and she counted each electronic voice as it came in, till she reached six or so and recalled only three of the Paranoids played guitars; so others must be plugging in.
Which indeed they were. Her climax and Metzger's, when it came, coincided with every light in the place, including the TV tube, suddenly going out, dead, black. It was a curious experience. The Paranoids had blown a fuse.
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Chapter 3 Quotes
Things then did not delay in turning curious. If one object behind her discovery of what she was to label the Tristero System or often only The Tristero (as if it might be something’s secret title) were to bring to an end her encapsulation in her tower, then that night’s infidelity with Metzger would logically be the starting point for it; logically. That’s what would come to haunt her most, perhaps: the way it fitted, logically, together. As if (as she’d guessed that first minute in San Narciso) there were revelation in progress all around her.
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“It’s the principle,” Fallopian agreed, sounding defensive. “To keep it up to some kind of a reasonable volume, each member has to send at least one letter a week through the Yoyodyne system. If you don’t, you get fined.” He opened his letter and showed Oedipa and Metzger.
Dear Mike, it said, how are you? Just thought I’d drop you a note. How’s your book coming? Guess that’s all for now. See you at The Scope.
“That’s how it is,” Fallopian confessed bitterly, “most of the time.”
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Metzger Character Timeline in The Crying of Lot 49
The timeline below shows where the character Metzger appears in The Crying of Lot 49. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...and wonders how Inverarity might have died. Oedipa has received a letter from someone named Metzger at a Los Angeles law firm, who writes that Inverarity died several months before and...
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Chapter 2
Oedipa leaves Mucho in Kinneret-Among-The-Pines and goes to meet Metzger in Pierce Inverarity’s hometown San Narciso, which is an average suburb of Los Angeles. As...
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Metzger surprises Oedipa at Echo Courts the same night. He is so attractive that Oedipa wonders...
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Oedipa turns on the television, which shows a dog licking an androgynous-looking child: it is Metzger, acting as Baby Igor in an absurd movie called Cashiered. The film is about a...
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Metzger pulls out a bottle of tequila and tells Oedipa that being a lawyer and being...
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The next scene of Cashiered shows the father character alone, and Metzger objects that the movie is out of order. Oedipa asks where this current scene belongs,...
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...their age. They think that the sight of Oedipa dressed in all her clothes, biting Metzger on the bathroom floor, is “kinky.” Miles starts talking about a similar orgy he went...
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Oedipa and Metzger return to Cashiered, and Oedipa starts making guesses about the plot and taking off one...
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When the lights come back on, Oedipa and Metzger watch the end of Cashiered. The protagonists die one by one in their submarine, and...
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Chapter 3
...in life, like Rapunzel in her tower. This process begins when she has sex with Metzger and gradually unfolds around her, as though the world were logically revealing the truth to...
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...letter from Mucho. In her letters to him, she does not mention her affair with Metzger. She does this out of respect, just as she and Mucho do not talk about...
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...thinks about Inverarity’s stamps is that she visits a nearby bar called The Scope with Metzger. They go to get a break from Echo Courts, where Miles and the Paranoids frequently...
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At The Scope, a young man named Mike Fallopian approaches Oedipa and Metzger and starts telling them about the Peter Pinguid Society. The Society is named after an...
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...is that they have nothing to send or say to one another—Fallopian shows Oedipa and Metzger the letter he has just received, which is from a friend who asks how he’s...
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...truth unfolds for her over time, like a performance. Its continues with a trip with Metzger and the Paranoids to the Fangoso Lagoons neighborhood that Inverarity built. On the drive over,...
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Manny Di Presso, the lawyer-turned-actor who works with Metzger, suddenly jumps out from under a tarp and boards the boat. He needs to cross...
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Oedipa asks where the bones for Beaconsfield cigarettes came from. Metzger suggests that they have to dig up cemeteries to build highways like the East San...
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Oedipa, Metzger, and the Paranoids eventually get off the island after they get the neighborhood security force’s...
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...Driblette. Oedipa insists on meeting Driblette backstage after the play to ask about the bones. Metzger mocks her for caring so much about an unsolved mystery from World War II, 20...
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...and leaves, then realizes that she completely forgot to ask about the bones. She meets Metzger in his car, where he is listening to Mucho on KCUF.
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Chapter 4
While Metzger and Fallopian get into an argument about patent rights and politics, Oedipa thinks about the...
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Next, Oedipa visits Genghis Cohen, a local stamp expert whom Metzger has asked to evaluate Pierce Inverarity’s stamp collection. He calls and asks her to visit...
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Chapter 5
Oedipa drives to Berkeley to investigate the Wharfinger play and the inventor John Nefastis. Metzger does not mind her going, and she does not stop at Kinneret-Among-the-Pines, even though it...
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...and Mucho go to a restaurant to get pizza. Mucho asks about Oedipa’s relationship with Metzger, and then he starts commenting on the background music in the restaurant: one of the...
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Chapter 6
...frozen in time. Serge, one of the Paranoids, explains that his girlfriend left him for Metzger, and then he sings a song about copying the ways of older men by dating...
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...what he means—she only thinks about how all the men in her life (Hilarius, Mucho, Metzger, and Driblette) are disappearing or losing their minds.
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