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Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing >

New Thomas Pynchon novel "Inherent Vice" out tomorrow.

17:59 / 03.08.09

And this time, it isn't a 1,600, it's only 400 pages.

Supposedly, there are lots of similarities to Vineland, again with California and nonconformists. The main protagonist, Doc Sportello is a mix between Mike Hammer and "The Dude".

According to today's newspaper IV is "funnier and more accessible" than any of his work before, and they already sold the film rights.

It's the seventies, right after the Tate/LaBianca murders, and the PI gets an assignment from his ex: to find her very wealthy lover.

There are of course a lot of characters with names like Flaco The Bad, Dr. Buddy Tubeside, Sledge Poteet and Trillium Fortnight. There are secret agents, potheads, loan sharks and surf-saxofonists. And a secret order, "The Golden Fang".

According to the paper, it's a parody, a "Chandler in a Hawaiian shirt", the Maltese Falcon for potheads. Some critics got tired by the density of pop culture references and insider jokes, but for people that have liked Pynchon so far, it's supposed to be a "must read".

12:40 / 04.08.09

Really looking forward to this. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Pynchon yet (after Crying..., ATD, and Vineland in-progress), but the descriptions are intriguing.

18:28 / 05.08.09

Pretty good so far, only a few chapters in, but it's exactly as it's been described. As funny and as narratively straightforward as I've ever seen him.

And Chiropteran, you've read the most accessible of his stuff so far, but Gravity's Rainbow and Mason & Dixon are the two to really judge his talent by.

06:04 / 09.08.09

Tom Pynchon - he's taken a shitload of drugs, hasn't he?

No wonder he hasn't been photographed since the early sixties!

10:27 / 09.08.09

You may not see a photo of him, but you can hear his voice on the trailer. I'm a little confused by a book having a trailer, but why not?

14:57 / 09.08.09

I like the trailer. But I'll wait for the paperback. "27.95? Really? That used to be three weeks of groceries, man."

And I saw a picture circa one or two years ago of an old man with kids in Manhattan. That was supposed to be him and his grandchildren.

18:00 / 09.08.09

It was his son.

Organic Resident

21:16 / 10.08.09

I thought 'Against the day' was a struggle to read, compared to everything else he wrote. It just wasn't that good in whole sections. Mason and Dixon, for example, was a winner from the start but ATD was, well, boring.
I think I'll wait until the new one comes out in paperback this time.

14:05 / 11.08.09

Pynchon does The Big Lebowski??

17:27 / 11.08.09

Yes, according to my newspaper critic, there are many parallels. Maybe some HC readers will comment on this?

19:58 / 11.08.09

There are some similarities, but they're both rooted pretty firmly in Chandler, and a lot of what they share with each other comes from him. The Dude is a product of the era in which this book is set, so he'd fit in, but Pynchon's got his own thing going on here. The main character is actually a detective trying to solve a disorientingly baroque case, as opposed to the Dude just bumbling through trying to get a replacement rug. And despite all the pot humor, Inherent Vice seems like a slightly more "serious" examination of how the events of the late sixties/early seventies have played out in modern times. The main character comes across someone hooked up to the ARPAnet, for instance, which occasions thinly veiled musings on the effects of the internet. Both are fun, funny, stories about people who smoke pot and inadvertently become involved with wealthy interests in southern California, but the similarities pretty much end there. I'd actually say the Dude has more in common with Zoyd Wheeler, from Vineland, than he does with Doc Sportello from Inherent Vice.

21:24 / 11.08.09

I'd actually say the Dude has more in common with Zoyd Wheeler, from Vineland, than he does with Doc Sportello from Inherent Vice.

And Vineland is closer to the Dude's timeline.

21:33 / 25.08.09

I finally finished. A lot of fun. I definitely put this on the same spectrum as The Crying of Lot 49 and Vineland. It falls pretty much in the middle of those two, as a matter of fact, both in terms of style and in terms of how much I liked it (though I like all three). It's not as cartoonish as Vineland yet neither is it as straightforwardly affecting as Lot 49. One minor bonus: I didn't spot any typos, as opposed to the hundred or so I found in the hardcover of Against the Day (thankfully all corrected in the paperback).

Charles Manson seems to be at the heart of this book in a weird way. Perhaps representing the collapse of the peaceful countercultural dream. Even though for a brief moment it seemed as if they'd succeed, ultimately hippies were beaten by the Man. Just as the Lakers were beaten by the Knicks. There was a nice complexity to the vision here, though: even when some of the characters were a little flat, they weren't simple. Not every cop is evil. Not every hippie is good. Some plot strands seemed a little underdeveloped or prematurely abandoned, but plot is almost beside the point in a Pynchon novel (or even in a Chandler novel, which is what this is riffing on). It's not about the solution to the mystery as much as it is about the detective muddling his way through. All in all, I very much enjoyed my time with this book, and I look forward to reading it again some day. Lot 49 is still probably the best entry point into the Pynchon ouevre, but I think Inherent Vice is a good place to go next before diving into the longer, denser works like Gravity's Rainbow.