INHERENT VICE (Exploring the cover)

[Mark Kohut]

 But it is what lies beneath the cracked and faded paint that really matters. It is the character and wisdom that comes with age as well as appreciation for life that defines a beach cruiser. It's not about the past or good looks.  It's about a spirit and a special way of life that is focused on now. The past doesn't matter and the future lies no further ahead than the next breaking wave.



--- On Sat, 11/29/08, robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> From: robinlandseadel at comcast.net <robinlandseadel at comcast.net>
> Subject: Re: INHERENT VICE (Exploring the cover)
> To: "P-list" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Date: Saturday, November 29, 2008, 12:16 PM
> Mark Kohut:
> 
>           ETERNAL SUMMER! 
> 
>           The ironies ripple ripplingly....
> 
> . . . .and increasingly . . .
> 
>  "  . . .But with time change is inevitable. And in
> the automobile industry 
> styling and mechanical advances lead the way.  In the span
> of a few 
> short years our state of art cruiser was no longer the
> newest and latest.  
> Indeed before long it's likely our cruiser found itself
> in the hands of a 
> second or third owner where utility rather than the latest
> look became 
> the priority.  Our cruiser undoubtedly experienced a less
> pampered 
> existence as the harsh realities of life now took center
> stage.  Fast-
> forward a decade or two and for most cruisers life has
> evolved from 
> a world burdened with few concerns to one focused on
> day-to-day 
> survival.  Routine maintenance and regular washing, let
> alone an 
> occasional polishing, are a thing of the past.  Minor dings
> and 
> emerging rust spots are ignored. The ethos becomes
> "keep running 
> and deal with this new, harsher life -- or else".  Or
> else the junkyard 
> or the car crusher may be just one breakdown away. . . 
> "
> 
> http://www.cruiserart.com/1959_cadillac-hearse-beach-cruiser.htm
> "Cadillac Hearse Beach Cruiser Story"
> 
> Yet at least he had believed in the cars. Maybe to excess:
> how could 
> he not, seeing people poorer than him come in, Negro,
> Mexican, 
> cracker, a parade seven days a week, bringing the most
> godawful 
> of trade-ins: motorized, metal extensions of themselves, of
> their 
> families and what their whole lives must be like, out there
> so naked for 
> anybody, a stranger like himself, to look at, frame
> cockeyed, rusty 
> underneath, fender repainted in a shade just off enough to
> depress 
> the value, if not Mucho himself, inside smelling hopelessly
> of children, 
> supermarket booze, two, sometimes three generations of
> cigarette 
> smokers, or only of dust and when the cars were swept out
> you had to 
> look at the actual residue of these lives, and there was no
> way of telling 
> what things had been truly refused . . .
> 
> CoL49, early on---hey, there's at least three different
> versions
> & I've only got one right now有ately I've been
> looking up passages 
> by smell.
> 
> But, in a way, the point that got lost in CoL49 is Inherent
> Vice, all those
> cars, the "Nada, Nada," sign blinking away all
> night long, entropy as the 
> nick of time. And I'd take a serious look at
> Arrabal's "The Automobile 
> Graveyard" If I was you.