Thomas Pynchon: Inherent Vice

[Stewart]

Nothing wrong with getting in there early, seeding Google, and all that, so this thread can be a nest for discussion of the forthcoming novel from Thomas Pynchon.

Here's the blurb:

It?s been awhile since Doc Sportello has seen his ex-girlfriend. Suddenly out of nowhere she shows up with a story about a plot to kidnap a billionaire land developer whom she just happens to be in love with. Easy for her to say. It?s the tail end of the psychedelic sixties in L.A., and Doc knows that ?love? is another of those words going around at the moment, like ?trip? or ?groovy,? except that this one usually leads to trouble. Despite which he soon finds himself drawn into a bizarre tangle of motives and passions whose cast of characters includes surfers, hustlers, dopers and rockers, a murderous loan shark, a tenor sax player working undercover, an ex-con with a swastika tattoo and a fondness for Ethel Merman, and a mysterious entity known as the Golden Fang, which may only be a tax dodge set up by some dentists.

In this lively yarn, Thomas Pynchon, working in an unaccustomed genre, provides a classic illustration of the principle that if you can remember the sixties, you weren?t there . . .or . . . if you were there, then you . . . or, wait, is it . . .

Summer 2009, though, so you've a wait on your hands.

[Mirabell]

yay! looks like he wrote the blurb himself again! yay for pynchon!

[jackdawdle]

well, that makes 2 books for shopping cart for the year 2009 thus far: pynchon's inherent vice and nabokov's the original of laura.

[promtbr]

Just found via twitter...

Some early reviews.



-

[Mirabell]

My review

Gumsandal: Thomas Pynchon’s “Inherent Vice” shigekuni.

[Bjorn]

My review

Gumsandal: Thomas Pynchon?s ?Inherent Vice? shigekuni.

Great review. I really liked this:

Pynchon textualizes his landscapes, by turning every word that could carry references to the real world into a name with a symbol system attached to it.

Obvious, yes, but very well put. (Frequent compar-ee Bob Dylan is similarly obsessed with that technique.) And of course that ties nicely into...

The book has its hooks firmly in the web that has been created by his past books. And, of course, in other books and texts, movies, songs. Pynchon is greedy, an omnivore, that has always been true for his work and it?s true for this one. And we the readers profit from this. We ride shotgun on his tours through America, and if there?s a similarity in his books, that?s to be expected.

Now I really want to get out of the office and plant myself somewhere with a beer and Inherent Vice.

[Mirabell]

thanks bjorn. now, hiow far along are you?

[stats]

I'm about 130 pages into the book - he references Cheech and Chong, were they popular when this book was suppose to be happening? Wiki says they were late 70's, this book was late 60's.

[beelzebubbles]

thanks bjorn. now, how far along are you?

Bjorn is pregnant?

Sorry can't help it. Knee jerk joke reaction. As you were.

[beelzebubbles]

I'm about 130 pages into the book - he references Cheech and Chong, were they popular when this book was suppose to be happening? Wiki says they were late 70's, this book was late 60's.

Cheech and Chong were around almost as long as I can remember. All the stoners listened to there albums when I was in high school in the Seventies. I think there first record came out in 1970.



Etch a sketch art it's like Tibetan sand painting without the chanting. "Om mani padme om."

[Richard Sheehan]

I've just started listening to this on audio today. My previous Pynchon experience is limited to 'Against the Day' which I really enjoyed, so I have high hopes for this one.

Of course then I need to educate myself and read his other novels.

[waalkwriter]

I'm sorry. Being a spoil sport here, lol. But Elmore Leonard could have written that book and that blurb, it literally is uncanny how Leonardesque that is. The difference is that Leonard would likely be far less of a pain to read and be a lot funnier, more to the point.

[Manuel76]

finished the book about two weeks ago. Funny, entertaining, needs a lot of wikipedia to know sometimes what he's talking about. No Gravity's Rainbow but I still preferred it to Mason and Dixon.

Found the last 50 pages somewhat dissapointing but I enjoyed it a lot.

Of course I've got no idea how the 60's really were (and in California!!) but I suppose Pybchon doesn't even try to be realistic.

[shaunrandol]

Here's an intense review that compares Inherent Vice to V.


By now we?ve all read that Inherent Vice, Thomas Pynchon?s most recent novel, is an accessible and fun mix of detective noir plot twists indebted to Raymond Chandler?s The Big Sleep; a hippie character study in the tone of the Coen Brothers? The Big Lebowski; and a battery of classic Pynchonian motifs, including paranoia, conspiracy, and countercultural desire. Instead of merely seeking out exemplars of elements of or cultural references in Inherent Vice, however, we should also inquire into or seek deeper meaning of ?inherent vice? itself. This is necessary because, perhaps more than any other contemporary writer, Pynchon?s work is ultimately and dazzlingly (and also dizzyingly) self-referential. Each novel is a universe unto itself?attempting to cash out this universe by providing a laundry list of allusions or references only perpetuates (much more vulgarly) the twin Pynchonian techniques of authorial digression and readerly (self-)distantiation, effectively obscuring the possibility of gaining insight into the whole.

?Inherent vice? refers to a notion drawn from maritime law that relieves an insurer of liability for damages sustained to cargo during transit, when such damage occurs as a consequence of some internal or innate cause, i.e. as ?the result of inherent vice or the nature of the subject-matter of the insurance.? The notion has prompted legal theorists to: a) introduce a distinction between internal or ?inherent? causes of defect, on the one hand, and external or ?fortuitous? causes of defect, on the other; and b) posit a kind of frontier of potential defectibility or self-destructibility that unfurls inherently from the subject-matter, and from neither its accidents, nor function, nor circumstance. That is to say, when pushed far enough, the attempt at devising a standardized or generalized insurability results in positing an instance of extreme uninsurability that is fundamental, or, we might conjecture, essential.

But essential to whom or to what? Related to but opposite the notion of force majeure (or ?act of God,? whereby the insurer?s relief from liability results from ?any and all? external or fortuitous causes ?beyond? the control of the contractor), the notion of inherent vice marks an attempt to insure, if you will, a certain zone of uninsurability innately unknowable, or at least undecidable. The notion of inherent vice functions within legal discourse as itself an instance of inherent vice: i.e., just as the notion defines and thus neutralizes an innate kernel of uninsurability in order to render consistent its outer, theoretical husk (i.e., the insurance adjustor?s dream of a general insurability), so too the letter of this obscure and oft-overlooked notion functions as a tacit but necessary admission of the impotence or internal limitation of Law itself, which is taken to be economic, bureaucratic and political inflections of the dream of a total insurability.

So we have two theoretical limits or endpoints: the possibility of unavoidable, creatorly destruction on one side, and the possibility of unavoidable creaturely defection on the other. They are posited in order to achieve the dream of a general or total insurability?a domain of pure exchangeability, where the resolutions to all conflicts are determined in advance as so many tits for tats, where all damages are redressed, and all reparations awarded. The dream is economic in nature, more or less one of capitalistic empowerment, but the double gesture of accepting infinite creatorly caprice and all-too-finite creaturely imperfection is a political reality with religious origins. This field, where reality, economics, politics and dream (along with other such oppositions like mathematical science and religion, animate and inanimate, and many more) converge, where they attain indistinction, is the universe of Thomas Pynchon.


Read more here: http://www.mantlethought.org/content/v-vice

[the nice marmot]

i haven't had the time to read this but the mention of the big lebowski makes it the top spot on my reading list. reading vineland also gave some associations to this fantastic movie.

[Bottle Rocket]

I'm sorry. Being a spoil sport here, lol. But Elmore Leonard could have written that book and that blurb, it literally is uncanny how Leonardesque that is.

I had the same thought when I read Inherent Vice, which I found considerably more linear and less demanding than your typical Pynchon novel.

The difference is that Leonard would likely be far less of a pain to read and be a lot funnier, more to the point.

To be mentioned in the same sentence as Elmore Leonard would in itself suggest high praise, but I don't think the two are engaged in the same endeavor at all.

For style, economy of expression, and above all dialogue, Leonard has few peers anywhere, but I don't believe he's much interested in the larger themes and subjects that underlie Pynchon's work -- obsessive, paranoid threads intended (often successfully) to weave a fairly grim tapestry of American culture disguised by color, humor (frequently rather juvenile, IMHO), and headlong event whose sheer momentum offers delightfully funny images and ideas (the runcible spoon fight toward the end of Gravity's Rainbow springs to mind, but I could reel off a dozen other scenes equally as unexpected and hilarious.)

I don't think Leonard aspires to that kind of depth; to me, anyway, he's more an amazingly accomplished raconteur with perfect pitch for dialogue. When he's interviewed, his modesty strikes me as a bit disingenuous -- surely he knows his books are gems of their kind -- but I think he's being honest when he says he's not that involved with BIG ideas (one of the fundamental pillars of Pynchon's work.)

Both writers often make me laugh out loud, but rarely for the same reasons. Leonard, IMO, is a genius at summoning the bizarre notions of small-time crooks and the way their schemes unfold, all rendered in a demotic prose that absolutely nails the way people really talk -- his gift for that simply takes my breath away. To me, reading Leonard is exhilarating: a blend of technical mastery and keen, funny, unerring storytelling. But I feel that it's basically entertainment, although of the highest order.

Whereas Pynchon is altogether more substantial in terms of intellectual architecture, even if his work seems sprawling, sometimes self-indulgent, and seemingly obscure. He's inclusive (way too much so, from time to time), in contrast to Leonard's habitual tight focus; one gets the sense of wandering in a demented wilderness of motifs and allusions with Pynchon, but when (if?) you get your bearings, he mostly manages to make some larger point in the process of tying up the many loose threads he's worked with, however unrelated they may have appeared as the narrative unfolds.

I'm not trying to suggest that one is "better" than the other -- give me a choice between Get Shorty and V and I'll choose both. But I really don't think that if Pynchon's prose were magically transformed into Leonard-ese it would somehow be transformed and/or improved.

But, yes, Waalkwriter, I agree that Inherent Vice is far and away the most Leonardesque of Pynchon's novels, and in a "blind taste test" I am not sure I'd correctly choose who wrote which passages. But when I finish a Pynchon book, I spend time thinking about it; with Leonard I just reach for the next of his books. And I'm happy either way.


BRocket

[Jan Mbali]

An excellent review by Mirabell. But. You forgot to mention the positive nostalgia effect. It is like a closely woven magic carpet that flies you back to certain time of Gravities Rainbow and Burroughs and Vietnam and such. Especially if you were alive back then. Another hole in your review is that you dont mention that it is bloody funny. Your description of its rhythms though is masterly. Also found comparison made to Leonard above sharp and true. Jan