INHERENT VICE (Exploring the cover)

[Michael Bailey]

Mark Kohut  wrote:
>
>  Since I almost always give TRP the benefit of any doubts....(almost...but
>  "I'm nobody, etc.".....)
>

the reason, though, why we discerning nobodies do so is because
he so often has put our doubts at ease...?

>  I immediately thought that a preexisting picture--an emblematic and ironic
>  historic 'frame"---was purposefully part of the meaning of Inherent Vice, as we know TRPs earlier covers have been.
>

Laura looking at the cruising vessel and seeing planned obsolescence...
now you looking at it and seeing inherent vice...
is it because I grew up near Detroit that despite ecological misgivings
about cars in general, I have a lot more positive vibes from that picture?

A neighbor of ours (all the really cool kids in the neighborhood were
like 5 or 8
years older than I was) hung with a guy who'd pull up in a Hearse to bring our
neighbor Skip and his pet monkey out with him cruising the strip in
it.  It was cool as heck.

Cars painted with psychedelic designs are fun.  Beaches are fun.

Somebody had to say it.  Anterior to all the erudition and life
lessons packed in OBA's wonderful books, the instantly recognizable
and lastingly appreciable main thing about them is they are fun.

Could it signify that Pynchon has taken the noir vehicle and tarted it
up for parties, ridottos, clambakes, transport of xanthocroids for
purposes of wave-riding and beach volleyball?  Too soon to know...

>  That is, one speculation, ala The Recognitions, "This eventually develops into making "new" originals--paintings so perfectly in the style of known masters that they pass for newly discovered works."
>

I read that The Recognitions of Gaddis is based upon or rooted in The
Recognitions of Clementine, written in like the year 2 or something.
I aspire to be somebody who knows more about that topic.





"Certainly this cookbook is for people who are not so neurotically
antiauthoritarian as I am - to whom one can say, "Take the juice of
one lemon," without the furious response: "Is that a direct order?" -
Grace Paley