IVIV reception: "stoned fantasy"

[Doug Millison]

http://www.northcoastjournal.com/issues/2009/08/20/inherent-vice/
The Manson murders hang in the backdrop of the novel, signifying the  
end of the hippie dream, but there's such a curious lack of real  
threat in Pynchon's laid-back world that when violence does finally  
break out it seems a bit out of place. The death-haunted  
grandiloquence of Gravity's Rainbow has given way to pothead paranoia,  
and it's interesting to see how the fantastic elements always present  
in Pynchon's work are here framed as someone's stoned fantasy.