IVIV Chandler

[Doug Millison]

Since I finished IV last week, I've opened the book once, spent a  
little time looking through the first 100 pages closely enough to  
establish that Doc consumes enough THC daily, punctuated by LSD trips  
frequent enough  to keep him in  a more or less hazy frame of mind all  
the time.  Not compelled to re-read the way I was the first time I  
encountered GR or COL49 or V.  Same thing when I finished Vineland, it  
was a fun read, I set it aside (for a few years), and only upon re- 
reading & discussing it in detail here on Pynchon-L did I begin to  
appreciate its special qualities, and realized how it is of a piece  
with his earlier books.

Like Robin, I've also been re-reading Chandler  - The Big Sleep, now  
finishing up Farewell, My Lovely. TBS moves along with rather casual  
diction, shot through with threads of a richer prose, some of it  
startling and beautiful --  like IV.  These passages kept sneaking up  
on me in TBS, as they have done in IV.

Marlowe is fun to read about, but what a brute in real life he is.   
Count me among the folks who don't particularly enjoy hanging with  
police, hardened criminals, on the scummy margin of the big city pond,  
that whole smoke-filled, hungover when not dangerously drunk, "Out of  
my way, small change, I'm a white man in a hurry" approach to women,  
minorities, homosexuals. I like having good friends who are women and  
gay, I think Officer Crowley still needs to apologize to Henry Gates  
for invading the Constitutionally preserved privacy of his home and  
castle (speaking of knights of olde).  Marlowe and company wouldn't  
accept a black president any more than today's pinhead tea-baggers  
do.  Marlowe is of a piece with the post-WWII American power structure  
that Pynchon savages in his work again and again, under the same  
shadow that still darkens the American landscape, the shadow that all  
those greatest generation troops discovered and brought back from that  
War which, it has become obvious, never ends. At the same time this is  
Pynchon's world, the world of his childhood, so of course he presents  
it ambiguously, in love with the world as he is, to the point of  
detailing it in the series of novels he's written.

I still think it may be worth the effort to compare Doc's movements  
around LA with Marlowe's.  There's some cool stuff involving ships in  
FML, too, cf. Golden Fang.

Very interesting how, in the book trailer video, Pynchon drops in that  
detail about Doc's compromised past as a PI, a guy who does the dirty  
work for the police, but apparently doesn't include it in the text.   
Pynchon has imagined a back story for Doc that, once we know it from  
his narration in the video, casts a new light on Doc in the novel.  
This might seem to call in question the validity of critical  
approaches to Pynchon's work which deny consideration of anything but  
the specific words found on the pages of his book - in this case,  
Pynchon obviously has characterized Doc in a way that we may not be  
able to piece together absent Pynchon's voice in the trailer, if it  
proves not to be between the covers of the book.

Inhabiting Doc's character and bringing it to life as Pynchon does -  
making him human, showing us his humor, even as that little detail out  
of his past puts his shadow in relief,  in the video seems to  
demonstrate his ability to identify with Doc.

Since Pynchon uses it to present this key bit of info about his  
narrator, I wonder if we should consider the video part of the IV  
text.  Or, does it remain separate, like  the dust jacket copy, not to  
be considered as part of the novel's text.

I keep wondering why Pynchon chooses to make and release this book  
release video.  Video trailers have become part of the standard big- 
book launch. Tthe video may also function as a pitch for a feature  
film based on IV. Just like those noir films Pynchon celebrates:   
voiceover 1st person narration by the not-quite-hardboiled Private Eye  
as he roams the turf where the story's set.

Does Pynchon want to be a TV and film actor, even if it's only in a  
voiceover mode?