IVIV Chandler

[John Carvill]

> 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.

Yes, but only by inference. I still question just how affected by weed
Doc is, how much of the time. Of course, it could be argued that
depicting a character who continually smokes joints, and is therefore
dazed and semi-coherent and semi-capable, might not make for the most
engaging of narratives.


> Marlowe is fun to read about, but what a brute in real life he is.

Poor old Marlowe is taking a kicking lately. Don't think he's anywhere
near as much of a 'brute' as is being suggeted.


> 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.

Yes, and a negative light at that. But the book *does* make clear that
Doc spent some time as a 'skip tracer', having skipped and been traced
himself, a sort of 'poacher turned gamekeeper'. He never hit anybody
up with that syringe, but he carried it and used it as a threatening
visual aid.

> I keep wondering why Pynchon chooses to make and release this book release
> video.

We all do. As has been said here a couple of times, Pynchon has
crossed some sort of Rubicon here. Why did he do it? WHose idea was
it? Will he do more of it? Who knows? But the video, his narration
particularly, is a joy.