The Crying of Lot 49 Narrator:

Who is the narrator, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?

Third Person (Limited Omniscient)

The novel is narrated in the third person, with limited access to the minds of Oedipa and Mucho Maas. The narrator is detached, describing the events—no matter how absurd and insane—in a totally deadpan manner.

It is only when he describes the thoughts of Oedipa or Mucho that we see him zooming out to offer greater perspective on the story. This technique gets some flak, because Oedipa and Mucho do not always seem capable of the rather grandiose inner monologues attributed to them. You kind of get the sense that the narrator (*cough, Pynchon *cough) has deeply profound things to say, but that he's trapped by his limited and detached point of view. It's only by expanding the minds of his main characters—sometimes unbelievably—that he can articulate his thoughts.