Back from the beach

[Heikki Raudaskoski]

I never got as far as the Danish coast (provided that you vacationed in
Denmark to begin with) - I camped for three nights in the middle of the
Mid-Jutlandish countryside instead. Fortunately, my tent is waterproof...
But it is beautiful out there.

I finished Inherent Vice yesterday, and love it too. On its own terms,
I must add - the "terms" of GR, TCoL49, V. and M&D bear remarkably more
significance to me.

IMO, as a work of art, it's clearly more successful than AtD and VL. Its
ambitions and realization seem much more in balance. Unlike VL, IV mainly
keeps rolling in the narrative present into which the occasional flashbacks
are smoothly embedded - which suits a relatively light ride like this.
Pynchon won't try to saddle IV with weight that its method of narration
and characterization cannot bear (which I see is the case with VL).


Heikki

On Sun, 26 Jul 2009, Tore Rye Andersen wrote:

>
> Hi foax,
>
> just back from two weeks vacation in a secluded (and webless) beach
> cottage with my family and my review copy of Inherent Vice (courtesy of
> the good people at Cape), only to find that the pynchon-list is
> gradually turning into the james-list....
>
> Anyway, a couple of more or less unspoilerish first impressions of IV:
>
> I more or less agree with other p-listers take on Inherent Vice: I
> loved it - LOVED it - but it is also clearly Pynchon's lightest effort
> yet. Those p-listers who have never forgiven Pynchon for Vineland, and
> who still wait for him to surpass the unsurpassable GR, will probably
> hate it (and won't hesitate to tell us so), but I'm willing to bet that
> a lot of listers will consider it an enjoyable romp.
>
> Comparisons with Elmore Leonard are way off the mark, IMO: Even though
> it is a much more relaxed work than his dense historical masterpieces,
> no one but Pynchon could have written this. I love the prose this time
> around: fluid and effortless with occasional flashes of brilliance, and
> much more consistent than AtD's motley of different styles. I find Doc
> Sportello more likeable than any of AtD's characters, and I love the
> novel's portrait of the LA scene around 1970 - a scene where, as Janos
> has pointed out, Pynchon wrote most of GR. Together with Vineland, this
> is probably the closest we'll get to an autobiography by Pynchon.
>
> Despite its lightness, we ARE dealing with Pynchon, who as usual
> weaves a complex web of allusions and historical references. Skillful
> googlists willing to track down obscure allusions and esoteric arcana
> won't be disappointed, but this time around the story seems more
> important - or at least more visible - than the allusive web, and one
> can easily breeze through this novel without a research library at hand.
>
> Theory of the day: The presence/absence of a member of the Bodine
> family in a Pynchon novel is a marker of the level of ambition in that
> novel. I won't tell you whether there are any Bodines in IV, though...
>
> I can't wait to hear what the rest of you think of the novel.
>
> Tore
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