The weight of the world

The first chapter of The Crying of Lot is very interesting and contains a lot to translate and digest. After reading it twice, it seems as if all the characters have underlying emotional or physical problems. Oedipa, however, seems the most in control of herself, but she still apparently struggles with hallucinations that keep her up all night. When prescribed medicine (which happens to be LSD) she says, "I am having a hallucination now, I don't need drugs for that." It is also apparent that Oedipa has a lot of trouble with men.
First, there is Pierce Inverarity. He is a boyfriend of Oedipa's from the past who seemed to be very whimsical. Later in the chapter, Oedipa, while looking at a tapestry, imagines herself as Rapunzel. Pierce begins to climb her hair but it ultimately falls off like a wig. He then uses a credit card to get into the tower, but ultimately nothing comes of it. I feel like Oedipa really liked the audacity and capriciousness of Pierce, but could not bring herself to accept his lifestyle. She ended up breaking up with him and marrying Wendell ("Mucho") Maas. One evening, a year before she had received the letter that she was the executor of Pierce's will, she had received a phone call from him. Mucho tells Oedipa to hang up, but the reader gets a sense that she is intrigued by the phone call and perhaps a bit flattered. Pierce went through all of his vocal impersonations which it stirred up all of those feelings that Oedipa once held for him.
In speaking of Mucho, he was a very insecure man. He had worked at a used car lot that he despised. He constantly saw the destitute lives of those who came to trade in cars. Five years of the dirt, the grunge, and the impurity caked upon those cars caused him to approach having a nervous breakdown. He tried to dissociate from that image by keeping himself obsessively clean. However, he still saw himself in every car that he sold--dirty and broken.
It was stated that, "he could see the way each owner, each shadow, filed in only to exchange a dented, malfunctioning version of himself for another." It is ambiguous here as to whether "himself" refers to the one trading in the car or to Mucho. After he quit this job, he began to work for KCUF radio station. At this point, one must pause and look at what KCUF actually spells backwards.
Not only did Oedipa have to deal with her husband's insecurity but she also had to deal with the family lawyer's, Roseman, attraction towards her. Not only does he try to play footsie with her, but he also asks her to run away with him. Oedipa, being level-headed, constantly combats his fronts with facetious, but hard hitting responses. The first chapter does not give us anything solid as far as motifs or themes, but it does give us a solid foundation for the issues that are going to be addressed in the novel. Oedipa has a lot to deal with on her plate, and I am looking forward to see how she digests it all.