IVIV (0) This Lively Yarn

[Carvill, John]

Dave

Do we need a thread on the IV Blurb, even if it isn't anywhere near as
interesting as the ATD one?

Here's the text from the Penguin Press site:


"Part noir, part psychedelic romp, all Thomas Pynchon- private eye Doc
Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana haze to watch the end
of an era as free love slips away and paranoia creeps in with the L.A.
fog

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 . . ."


http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781594202247,00.html


What can we say about this? Off the top of my head:


(a)  Can we agree it doesn't very forcefully suggest itself as having
been written by Pynchon? There's nothing I can see that's sufficiently
characterful to stand out as an obvious Pynchon phrasing or usage.


(b) There's that playing with time again. Never too sure when we really
are. Tail end of the Psychedelic Sities eh? What, literally, or
figuratively? Isn't our best guess that the narrative takes place in
1970? As with ATD, there aren't too many places in the narrative of IV
where we can definitively pin it down, time-wise.


(c) "Private eye Doc Sportello comes, occasionally, out of a marijuana
haze" - fits in with the general consensus that Doc is stoned all the
time. But I still ask, well, is he?


(d) That "cast of characters includes.." does recall the ATD blurb.


(e) Obviously, it's a great Pynchon joke that the chief villain is (or
may be) a sinister collective of *dentists*.


(f) 'Lively yarn' is just about the only phrase in here that I can find
that suggests itself, to me, as a possible Pynchonism.


(g) Having said that, 'unaccustomed genre' may be a sly jest from
Pynchon. Not unacusstomed at all, is it?


(h) Would Pynchon really make that 'if you were there, then you . . .
or, wait, is it . . .' joke at the end? It's kinda stupid and obvious,
so that does suggest a marketing department at work; on the oteh rhand,
many of Pynchon's best jokes *are* stupid, so....